My Stranger Became My Stepbrother, Then Our Parents Divorced novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Long Table

I watch my mother marry his father, then dance with my new brother while he tells me in my ear exactly what he wants.

The wedding was at two, in the Lutheran church on the hill, and I stood at the front in a green dress as my mother's only attendant.

Nils stood on the other side as his father's best man.

We were six feet apart, facing the same pastor, and we looked at nothing.

My mother wore ivory and a hat she had bought herself.

She walked up the aisle alone, because my father was dead, and she smiled at me the whole way.

Gunnar took her hand in his big one and held it.

I heard the vows from far off.

Nils held the ring, and when his father reached for it he put it in the hand without a word.

I saw his knuckles.

They were white.

"You may kiss the bride," the pastor said.

Gunnar kissed my mother in front of the whole church, and it went on a beat too long, and people smiled.

My mother put her hand flat on his chest and moved it away.

The reception was a white tent on the lawn above the lake, with a band and a hundred and twenty guests, most of them from Gunnar's boatyard.

They shook my hand and said how lucky I was.

They called me Gunnar's girl.

I ate four bites of salmon, and when the plates went away, Gunnar stood up with a glass in his hand.

"I want to thank the woman who said yes to an old man," he said.

He waited for the laugh.

"I'm told I'm hard to live with. I'm told I like things done a certain way. And that's true." He smiled at the room. "What's mine, I keep."

There was a cheer.

My mother laughed, and her face was pink.

Nils was staring at his glass.

"Now," Gunnar said, "the photographer wants the kids."

The photographer wanted the kids to dance.

I had not planned for that.

Nils held out a hand, in front of a hundred and twenty people, and I took it, because there was nothing else to do.

The band played something slow.

His right hand settled at the small of my back.

It was a place he had not touched me before.

I knew that and I knew he knew it, and the warmth of his palm came through the green silk all the way to my spine.

"Smile," the photographer called. "Brother and sister!"

I smiled.

"Don't look at me like that," Nils said into my hair.

"I'm looking at the photographer," I said.

"You're looking at me," he said.

"This is your rule. You're breaking it."

"Dancing at my father's wedding is not breaking it," he said.

His mouth was an inch from my ear.

His voice dropped, low and level, for me and no one else.

"I've thought about being inside you every hour since February," he said. "I think about your mouth on my neck. I think about you in that window. I'm going to dance with you for three minutes and then I'm going to go sit down, and you're going to smile at the camera."

My knees went.

He held me up, and his hand pressed once, hard, at the small of my back, and eased.

I put my palm on his chest.

His heart was slamming under it.

I took my hand away and told myself it was the dance.

"That's not a rule," I said, quietly. "That's the opposite of a rule."

"I know," he said.

"Say it out loud, you told me. You just did."

"Smile," he said. "Here comes the photographer."

I smiled.

The song ended.

He let go, and I stood alone on the dance floor with my face burning and my arm raised in front of a camera.

Late in the afternoon the band played the last song, and my mother and Gunnar ran down a tunnel of cheering people to a black car.

They were flying to Bergen in the morning, ten days in Norway.

My mother hugged me over the window.

"You'll be all right at the house, honey? Nils said he'd stay. He said he'd keep an eye on you."

"I'll be fine, Mom."

"He's a good boy," she said. "A little stiff."

I laughed.

I couldn't help it.

Gunnar leaned across her and put his hand out of the window.

He gripped Nils's shoulder and held it there.

"Look after her, son," he said. "Look after the house. She's family now."

"Yes, sir."

The car pulled away with a row of cans on the bumper, and the guests drifted back to the tent.

Nils and I stood on the gravel and watched the taillights go down the drive.

When they were gone he did not turn around.

"Rule," he said.

His voice was unsteady.

I looked at the back of his head, at the place where his hair met his collar.

"Break it," I said.

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