Chapter 22: Our Cabin

My grandfather's cabin had been shut for two years, and the key still turned.

The door swung open on cold air and the smell of cedar, pipe tobacco and dust.

Astrid stood on the threshold with the pine box in her arms and Mae's blue mug hooked on one finger.

"Home," I said, and found that I meant it.

Inside, the room was low and square, with a woodstove, a plank table and a big iron bed under a sloped ceiling.

A steep stair rose to a loft over the bed, where my grandfather had slept when his knees were young.

Astrid set the box on the mantel.

She hung the mug on the hook beside the window, and for a moment she touched it with one finger.

"Here," she said. "She'd like the view."

The dogs poured in behind us and went through the cabin, nosing every corner.

Pip climbed the stair on his taped paw, looked down, and barked in triumph.

We lit the stove and lit the lamps, and the cabin came alive around us, one warm window at a time.

By dark the room smelled of woodsmoke and soup, and the frost on the glass had begun to melt.

"The sauna," I said. "I built the fire before we ate. It's a short walk."

"Is it like Mae's?"

"It's older. My grandfather built it with a hand saw. The bench has a knot on it shaped like Minnesota."

Astrid laughed softly.

"Show me."

The sauna stood at the edge of the lake in the dark, its little window glowing orange.

I led her to it by the hand.

We undressed in the anteroom and went in naked and pink with cold.

The heat closed over us, and I ladled water over the stones.

The air inside was dry and sharp with cedar, and it smelled so much like him that I half expected a Finnish curse from the corner.

Astrid found the knot on the lower bench and laid her palm over it.

"Minnesota," she said. "There's the Arrowhead, even."

"He claimed he never sanded it on purpose."

"Tell me about him."

I told her about my grandfather, who had sung in Finnish to the stove and cheated at cards.

She stretched out along the lower bench with her head in my lap and listened, and I poured one slow dipper over the stones.

"Mae never let me tend the fire," she said when I was done. "Ten years I carried the wood, and I never once lit it."

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