The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(19)

Daisy said nothing about his beverage of choice, though, and opened her book again. Erik went back to work, and a pleasant interlude passed where he was busy and she was reading, yet the space they shared was companionable. The silence between them shimmered warm and inviting, like a campfire. He settled into it contentedly. A cat on the hearth.

“I like your necklace,” she said.

“This?”

“Can I see?”

He put his pencil down, reached behind his neck and unclasped it. He put it in a coiled heap in her waiting palm. She stretched it carefully across her long fingers. It was a gold chain with squared, faceted links. The squares gave it a unique, masculine silhouette, heavy but streamlined. Off the chain hung three small charms. Erik watched as Daisy examined each one: a boat, a fish and a saint’s medal, which was also square.

“Who is this?”

“Birgitta. She’s the patron saint of Sweden.”

Her fingers, with their unpolished oval nails, played with the charms which, like the chain, were old gold, weathered. They had a dull, wise brightness. Many fingers had rubbed, contemplated and worried over them.

“This is beautiful,” Daisy said. “Actually it’s handsome. I don’t want to say macho, but it’s strong-looking.”

“I like the weight of it,” he said. “It’s solid.”

“Is it old?”

He reached and turned the medal over, to show her the engraving on the back: B.K.E.F. 1865.

“Bjorn Kennet Erik Fiskare. My great-great-great-grandfather.”

“Wow. This is like your history right here.”

“I’m told the boat and the fish are even older but nobody knows really. See. Here.” Erik turned the boat over and showed her Fiskare engraved into its bottom. “Fiskare means fisherman in Swedish.”

She looked at him sheepishly. “I thought it meant scissors. You know, the ones with the orange handles.”

He laughed. “I get that all the time.”

“Do you know the word for scissors?”

“No idea.”

“You’re Swedish but your eyes are brown,” she said, gazing intently at him.

“You’re French but your eyes are impossible.”

“I get that all the time.”

He looked away. “My mother’s Italian. So I get blond hair and brown eyes. Makes for a weird combination.”

“Not weird at all. I like it.” She studied the necklace again, holding it up. “So this has come down through the generations?”

He nodded. She wasn’t the first girl to ask him questions about his father’s side of the family. But other girls’ questions always felt like birds pecking at him, wearing him down or tearing him open. Daisy’s curiosity was soft on his skin. She was a beautiful china cup on a table, quietly asking to be filled. And little by little, Erik was tipping over and pouring out.

“Do you remember your father wearing this?”

“Sure. All the time. If I was sitting on his lap I’d like, you know, play with it. I had a little story in my head, this is the pretty lady and this is her boat and she goes sailing in the boat and catches this beautiful fish…”

She held the chain back out to him and he took it, their fingertips touching. “When did he give it to you? You said you were eight when he left.”

He fastened the chain behind his neck again. “The story I know,” he said, “is my mom saw him one more time after he left. To sign divorce papers.”

He glanced down. Daisy had put her hand out, palm up on the table between them. “And sometime during the meeting—” he put his hand on hers. “—he gave this to her. To give to me. And she didn’t for a long time, she kept it put away. I was too young.” His other hand joined the first, holding Daisy’s, rolling it between his palms, running his fingertips along the edges of her nails. “Then when I was about sixteen, she gave it to me.”

“Did you want it?”

“I hadn’t seen it in years so at first it was like, ‘Oh wow, I remember this, the lady and the boat.’ But then I had to be sixteen about it, you know, prove he was no big deal to me. I told her I didn’t want it, I didn’t want anything of his. Screw him. All that shit.”

Under the table their ankles had cozied up together. It felt intimate and close there in the booth, holding her hands and feet, telling her secret things.

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t push it. Just reminded me it had been my grandfather’s too, and his father’s before, and back on through the generations. It was mine now, to give to my son if I ever had one. She said, and I still remember this, she said, ‘It’s an heirloom, it belongs to your name. Don’t let one * ruin it for you.’”

“Don’t let one weak link break the chain.”

“Right. I kept in a little box in my dresser for a while, and then my great-uncle died, my grandfather’s brother. And he was the last Fiskare brother, the last of his generation and… I don’t know. I was just moved to start wearing it.”

She leaned forward again, touched the chain, then put her chin on the heel of her hand. “For the record, you know what my favorite candy is?”

Which seemed a random question but then it hit him. “Swedish Fish?”