He said this apropos of nothing, immediately rousing my suspicion, and Emma’s too, judging from the way she sat up with wide eyes.
Michael looked up from where his hand was laced with Emma’s on his knee. “A what now?”
“A sauna,” Geir said, gruff and terrifying. “You sit in the steam for a while, get a good sweat worked up, then you run outside and jump in the lake.”
“Nice try.” Michael shook his head with a dazzling smile. “Fool me once, Mr. Elwood.”
“Fool you once?” I asked, and Neil gave me an I’m-totally-innocent look that I was not buying.
“At Michael’s first Christmas with the family, Dad told Michael that it was Icelandic custom to strip naked and roll in the snow on Christmas morning,” Emma said, with a peeved edge to her tone. “He told Michael to meet him in the garden at Langhurst Court before breakfast, then never came down.”
“I sat outside in my underwear for seventeen minutes before I decided he was messing with me,” Michael admitted sheepishly.
“This is all legitimate, I assure you,” Runólf said, chuckling at his brother’s horrible prank. “I’ve even got the hole cut out there.”
“It really is something they do,” Helen reassured Michael. “Although Geir shouldn’t, because of his heart.”
“Um, and maybe somebody who just had cancer shouldn’t do it, either.” All the blood drained from my face. “You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely. It’s the perfect male bonding experience, and I haven’t seen my brothers in a while. And anyway, I wouldn’t want Michael to miss out,” Neil said, nodding to him.
“Daddy, don’t be stupid. Of course Michael isn’t going to jump in a frozen lake. He’s not an idiot.” Emma laughed.
“Oh, no offense to be taken from that statement, is there?” Geir grumbled, and stood. “I don’t know about all the rest of you, but I’m going down to start the damn fire. Are you coming?”
“I am, definitely,” Michael said, and I saw in the firm set of his jaw the resolution of a man who saw plunging his overheated body into an icy death lake as a last ditch attempt to win the respect of his mortal enemy.
It was hard not to laugh.
Neil tightened his arm around me and said, low beside my ear, “You’ll be alright without me?”
I nodded and gave him a reassuring smile. Kristine and Helen seemed nice enough, and Emma and I got along great. It wasn’t like he was leaving me alone with Valerie or something.
When the guys were gone, Kristine dropped on the couch beside me with a giant glass of wine. She stretched her legs. “Do you know how long it has been since I’ve had a drink?”
“But it’s all worth it,” Helen laughed. “Still, I wouldn’t trade with you. I like my eight hours.”
Kristine took a huge gulp of wine before responding. “We’re very lucky, we have an overnight nurse, usually. But not at Christmas, that seemed too self-indulgent.”
“So, Sophie, how did Christmas with your family go?” Emma asked, then, to Kristine and Helen, she explained, “It was Dad’s first time meeting them.”
I shrugged. If Emma wanted details, I would fill her in another time. “It went…really well. My mom didn’t like him, but I didn’t think she would.”
Kristine made a sympathetic noise. “My father hates Runólf. All he sees when he looks at him is some perverted old man. It doesn’t help that Runólf is only seven years younger than him.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad I’m not the only one in this situation. Neil is actually older than my mom, and she’s super freaked out.”
“I would be,” Helen said with a shocked blink. “If my child brought home a partner who was older than me? Granted, my kids are in their twenties, and I’m fifty-nine…”
“You married a guy your own age, though,” Kristine pointed out. “So you don’t see the draw. Trust me, there are things an older man can do that a young guy—”
Emma looked at me, horrified, and interrupted, loudly, “New topic of conversation!”
“Okay. New topic,” Kristine agreed. “Helen, how are your classes going?”
Helen had retired from her law practice, and now she taught courses on contract law at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. As it turned out, Kristine had just gone back to school, to get her Master’s degree in modern art.
It had never occurred to me before that conversation, but I could go back to school. I was living with Neil, I wasn’t making a ton of money; my advance for my first book had been generous for a debut memoirist, mostly because of its famous subject matter, but it wasn’t a career I could really imagine myself growing to love. Neil was always saying I could do whatever I wanted to do, and he’d support me… I wondered if that extended to an advanced degree.