Chapter 6: Skating Backward

Toby's POV

Lars Heikkinen came to the lodge at four in the afternoon with a thermos and a driver, and I met him at the door and did not let him past the mat.

"Tobias," Lars said, warm and sad, and held out the thermos. "I heard you had a house guest. I brought coffee."

I took the thermos and did not unscrew it.

"She's resting," I said.

"Of course she is. Poor girl. What a thing, that boy. I wouldn't have thought it of him."

His blue eyes were wet at the edges, and he patted his coat pocket for his handkerchief.

I had known that face since I was six years old.

It bought me a sled once.

It stood by my father's grave in the sleet.

It had run the books of the Reinholt family for thirty years, and I had loved it.

"I'd like to say hello," Lars said. "Her mother and I go back."

"I know," I said.

"Do you?" Lars said.

He smiled with great gentleness.

"You always remember who your friends were, Tobias. It's your best quality."

I let him in and put him in the great room, where the fire was banked low.

Then I went up the pine stairs myself and stopped outside her door.

I did not knock.

I listened.

I could hear nothing on the other side of the oak.

That meant she was awake and standing very still.

"Iris," I said. "Lars is downstairs. He wants to say hello. You don't have to come. I'll tell him you're sleeping."

A long silence.

Then the bolt slid, and the door opened, and she stood in the gap in a gray sweatshirt of mine with her braid over her shoulder.

Her lips were still faintly swollen from the morning.

I looked at them for one second and made myself stop.

"Is he the one?" she said.

"The one what?"

"The voice that told everyone I'd be fine."

I said nothing.

It was an answer, and she took it.

"I'll come down," she said.

"You don't have to."

"I want to see his face when he says my name."

She went down ahead of me, straight-backed, and I followed a step behind with my heart going hard.

Lars rose from the couch with both arms out.

"Iris, kulta," he said. "Look at you. Your mother's been sick with worry."