They Booked Four Seats Without Me, So I Booked One to California novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Form

Hanne files an independence appeal and asks at dinner what the trip cost. Aunt Ingrid arrives a day early and demands to know why her father refused to let her have Hanne. He says it is because Hanne would ask questions.

I called the financial aid office from the attic at eight the next morning.

A woman with a patient voice answered, and I told her my father would not sign the form.

"You're twenty," she said. "Do you pay your own rent and your own bills?"

"I pay for my phone and my food and my books, from my job at the coffee shop."

"Then you can file an independence appeal," she said. "You need your pay records and a letter from an adult who isn't your parent, saying where you will live and who supports you."

"I have the pay records."

"And the letter?"

I thought of the text on my phone that said I'll start the paperwork right now.

"I'll have it by tomorrow," I said.

I wrote down every word she said on the back of a pay stub.

Then I went downstairs on my crutches to make coffee.

Mom was at the counter in her work clothes, eating toast over the sink.

She didn't look at me.

"Your father is only trying to protect you," she said to the toast.

"From what?"

"From making a big mistake. California is expensive, Hanne."

"I'm not asking either of you for a dollar."

She put the plate in the sink and picked up her keys.

"Be sensible," she said, and went to work.

Dinner was at six, and all of us sat down together for the first time since the trip.

Linnea had cut her dolls' first winter jackets from the navy wool and set them on the table beside her plate.

One of them had a tiny collar.

I looked at the collar and ate my soup.

Erik talked about the restaurant for ten minutes.

He had a list of the courses on his phone, and he read it to us in order.

"The lobster was nothing special, honestly," he said. "I think the soup was the best part."

"How much did the whole trip cost, Dad?" I asked.

The table went quiet.

Dad put down his spoon.

"Why does that matter to you?"

"I asked for a hundred dollars for my lab fee in October, and you said there wasn't any."

"That was different."

"How was it different?"

"Hanne." Mom's voice was sharp. "Not at the dinner table."

Erik laughed through his nose.

"She's keeping a ledger now," he said. "That's so sad."

Dad looked at me for a long time.

He was not angry.

He looked careful.

"You're a child who doesn't understand money," he said. "Things were tight, and they got better. That's all."

I put my napkin on the table.

"Then I don't have to ask for yours," I said. "I'll do it without you."

"Do what?" he asked.

The doorbell rang before I could answer.

It rang three times in a row.

Linnea ran to the front hall and screamed, "There's a lady in a really big coat!"

I knew that voice before I saw her.

"Is this the Halvorsen house or did I land at the wrong airport?"

Aunt Ingrid stood on the doormat in a red parka covered in snow, with a duffel over her shoulder.

She was shorter than I remembered and broader, with gray-blond hair cut close to her head.

She had the same pale eyes as my father, but they were warm.

They were warm on me.

She walked straight across the dining room, dropped the duffel on a chair and put both arms around me.

She smelled like soil and coffee.

I hadn't been held like that since I was twelve.

"You're a day early," Dad said, stiffly.

"I changed my flight when I read your text," she said, still holding me.

"What text?" Mom asked.

"The one Paul sent me on Sunday, telling me to stay out of his family's business."

Ingrid let me go and turned around.

She looked at the three of them in their chairs, the dolls' jackets, the soup, Erik's phone.

She looked at my boot.

She looked at my scraped palm, which I had wrapped in a paper napkin.

"Hanne," she said, not looking away from my father. "Do you have the pay stubs?"

"On the table."

"Good. Then let's do this properly. Your letter is in my bag."

"Ingrid, sit down and have some soup," Dad said.

"I haven't come for soup."

She took a step toward him.

"Paul, say it in front of the children. Why have you turned me down every single time I asked to have her?"

Dad stood up.

The chair scraped on the floor.

"Because she's my daughter," he said.

"That's not the reason."

He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt.

His hands were shaking.

"Because," he said, in a voice that I had never heard him use, "she'd ask questions."

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