Chapter 7: Still Here, Kids

I pressed the green button before I could think.

My grandmother's face filled the tablet, tanned and happy, in sunglasses the size of salad plates.

Beside her sat Aksel Vinter with a glass of something red and a mustache that had never looked so pleased.

Behind them, a whole city lay down a hill toward a river, and a yellow tram went ding-ding across the corner of the screen.

"Hello, darlings!" said Babi.

"Cactus wren," said Soren.

"Oh, damn," said Aksel.

For a moment nobody said anything at all.

"You're married," I said.

"We prefer 'long engaged,'" said Aksel.

"There's a photograph, Farfar. There's a binder."

"There is a binder," said Babi.

She took off her sunglasses and sighed.

"Well. That flour bin was never going to keep a secret. Soren, did you cut yourself?"

"I'm fine," said Soren, in a high voice. "I'm in shock."

They told us on the rooftop of a hotel in Lisbon with the sun going down behind them.

In 1984, Main Street had five empty shops.

The foundry had shut and half the town had left.

The Zemans and the Vinters were down to the last two bakeries on a street nobody drove down.

They were also, said Babi, very much in love, and had been since the church picnic, and neither family would have been pleased.

"So we threw a kringle at each other at the Fish Fry," said Aksel, "for a laugh."

"A travel writer from Milwaukee was in the second row," said Babi.

"The following weekend we had three buses."

"We painted the line that Monday."

"We'd have stopped after the summer," said Aksel. "But the school roof leaked."

"And then the bank note on the library."

"And the pharmacy wanted a loan."

"Forty years of Wednesday sulking," said Babi, "and one new roof on the school, one library, and a Little League field."