The Clinic Swore the Baby Was His, So He Stayed When It Wasn't novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Birch Whisk

Liisa's POV

The sauna was already hot when we came in from the cemetery with snow in our hair.

On Christmas Eve every Finn in Duluth lights a candle on a grave and then takes a sauna, and Mummo had made us do both.

She had stood with us in the dark in West Duluth, over my father's stone, and said nothing at all.

Now Mats dropped the latch on the door and turned around.

Candle flames moved on the shelf.

Steam hung in the red air, and the cedar benches shone dark with the water he had thrown on them.

"Merry Christmas, Captain," I said.

"Merry Christmas, Bridge."

I took off my coat and my sweater and my boots.

I took off everything else while he watched, and I did not hurry, and I did not cover myself.

At eight weeks I had a new softness low in my belly that I had not decided how I felt about.

Mats looked at it for a long moment, and his face went soft.

"Don't say anything," I said.

"I'm not going to."

"You are. You're going to say something kind."

"I'm going to say you're the most beautiful thing in this room," he said.

"There's a candle in this room."

"You are still the most beautiful thing in it."

I laughed.

He took his own clothes off quickly and stood there wide-shouldered and silver-templed in the red light.

I felt the heat of him across the space between us.

On the shelf by the door lay a bundle of birch twigs, tied with string and soaking in a bucket.

A vihta, the Finns call it.

My grandmother had slapped me with one every Saturday of my childhood, to bring the blood up.

"Mummo gave me that," Mats said. "She said you'd know."

"I know."

I climbed to the upper bench and lay down on my stomach, with my cheek on my folded arms.

"Whisk me," I said.

"Here?" he said.

"Captain. I want to lie here and not decide anything."

"Tonight you decide, and I'll tell you if I love it."

"Tonight you decide," I said. "And I'll tell you."

I heard the water drip off the birch.

I heard him breathe in.

Then the first soft slap landed across my shoulders, warm and wet and smelling of green leaves in the middle of the winter.

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