“Papa,” I whisper, a lump forming in my throat. I pick up the photo of the two of us on the dock. “You did all this?”
“I told you he talked about you all the time,” Rasmus says from behind me. “I know you don’t know me from Adam, but that’s why it feels like I know you. Here.”
I twist around and he’s handing me a ceramic plate with a chip out of it, a warm bun on top. “You need to eat. It’s pulla. I’m sure you’ve had it before,” he says before he walks back to the kitchen. “Your father’s recipe, by the way.”
I eye the bun stuffed with cinnamon and cardamom, sprinkled with big shiny hunks of pearl sugar. My stomach growls ravenously. There’s a slight chance that Rasmus is trying to poison me, but if he wanted to kill me he could have just left me behind with Noora and Eero.
At the thought of them I shudder. It’s enough to squash my appetite. I take the plate over to the couch and sit down, watching as Rasmus tidies the kitchen.
“So,” I begin, trying to form my thoughts and keep the panic at bay. “I hate to be blunt, but now that I’m awake and apparently in one piece, you need to tell me just what the fuck is going on here. Because I can’t tell if last night was a jet-lag infused nightmare or not, but either way you have a lot of explaining to do.”
Rasmus sighs and then comes over to me, holding two mugs of something hot and places them on the tree-trunk coffee table in front of me.
“What’s that?” I ask, nodding at the mug.
He raises a brow. “I’m not poisoning you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He sits down on a leather armchair. “It’s pine needle tea.”
I peer down in the mug to see a few pine needles floating as well as a couple of tiny flower buds. They’re dusky pink in color, yet when I move the mug and the water jostles, the flowers look gold, like they’ve been painted with a metallic sheen.
“And the flowers?”
He takes a sip of his tea and then smiles. “Frost flowers.”
“What are frost flowers?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
I stare at him for a moment. “Can you fucking blame me?”
“You swear a lot too. Your father didn’t mention that.”
I ignore that. “Tell me where he is. Then tell me why we’re in his house. Tell me how you’re his apprentice. Then tell me what the fuck Eero and Noora wanted. In that order.”
He lets out another low sigh, tapping his fingers on the leather armrests. “I’ll tell you everything. And it will be the truth. But I need you to drink your tea first.”
I stiffen, eyeing the tea for a moment. “Why?” I ask hesitantly.
“Because it will open your heart and mind. What I’m about to tell you will be hard to believe at first, but it’s imperative that you believe. The tea will help.”
“How do I know this tea isn’t going to make me forget everything you say?”
He chuckles, looking positively boyish, and I’m briefly trying to place his age again. He could be eighteen. He could be in his mid-thirties. He might even be in his eighties since he just used the word imperative. “There’s another tea for that. And I don’t want you to forget a single word. I’m going to need you to remember. The truth will serve as fuel.”
I stare at him to go on, my patience already threadbare.
He stares right back until I relent. I pick up the tea and have a tepid sip. It’s hot, but not scalding, and the fragrant scent of the pines seems to wake me up. The tea itself tastes like sugared lemons, and before I know it I’ve finished the whole thing.
He clears his throat. “Good.” Then he looks into my eyes, so deep that I feel like I’m being pushed back into the couch cushions, my body melting. “Hanna, your father was dying of cancer.”
I didn’t expect him to say that. The words are sharp and cold and they seem to puncture the air.
“What?”
He grimaces. “He didn’t want to tell you. He didn’t want to tell anyone. Only I knew. Eventually Eero and Noora figured it out, but he didn’t want them to know either.”
It feels like I have a vice placed over my heart, the pressure coming slow and painful. “What kind of cancer?” God, why didn’t he at least tell me?
“I don’t know, he never said. He did go to a doctor in town. They gave him six months.”
“And how long ago was that?” my voice shakes as I speak.
“Six months ago.”
I try to take in the information but it’s not sinking in. Not sure if this tea is working since it just doesn’t seem real. How could my dad have had cancer?