Only One Life (22 page)

At first Mik didn’t realize what she’d done, even though she was sitting there in front of him, soaking wet, with a huge grin on her face. It wasn’t until the men in the group started catcalling that he exclaimed, “What the hell are you doing? You can’t just do a roll like that!” But then he started clapping too and smiling at her, impressed, while tactfully not mentioning the fact that this was probably due more to astoundingly good luck than to her technique.

Louise’s heart was still pounding and she was a tad shaken that it had even occurred to her to do that. She couldn’t comprehend how humiliating it would have been if she hadn’t made it all the way around. At any rate, she couldn’t help but be glad that she could still get it into her head to do things without overthinking them to death.

“So, I guess that means you picked the Eskimo roll instead of getting drunk?” Mik said when they were standing around the clubhouse afterward having a soda.

Louise nodded, but still agreed when he suggested they celebrate her Eskimo roll with a beer back at his farm.

They drove out past Strandmølleengen and Holbæk Marina, which was full of pleasure boats. The road narrowed as they continued out toward the golf course and Dragerup, where Mik’s red U-shaped farmhouse stood. The roof was thatched, the house freshly whitewashed, and the timber framing had been tarred over that summer. Everything looked like you would expect for a Copenhagen dweller who moves to the countryside and puts his all into realizing the dream of a pastoral idyll. But Mik wasn’t from the city; he’d taken over the farm from his parents and fixed it up himself with the help of a couple of friends and the local roof thatcher.

“Do you want to see the puppies?” he asked once they’d gotten out of the car.

Louise followed him to the house, but then quickly took a step back when an exuberant wirehaired pointer came running out and started dancing around them until it lost interest and continued around behind the house into the yard. Mik waved for her to follow and then went into the kitchen, where the puppies were sleeping in a big basket.

“They’re not always this calm,” he said, leaning down and petting the mother, a black Lab, who stood up when they came in.

Louise kneeled next to the basket and stuck her hand down to touch the soft puppies, who were beginning to move. A second later they were wriggling. They came tumbling over to curiously sniff her hand and then started nudging it. Mik came over and picked up a puppy for her. She put her cheek down next to it and felt its muzzle against her skin. When it started getting fidgety, she carefully put it back in with the others and stood up.

“Every time I get close to a puppy, I forget I don’t want a dog,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. Then Mik said that one of the puppies was still for sale.

She followed him as he grabbed two beers from the fridge and they strolled back out into the yard again.

“Shall we sit here?” He gestured to a wood bench bearing the inscription
DAD’S BEER-DRINKING BENCH.

Louise winced to think Mik didn’t have enough taste to acquire a nicer bench, but at the same time had to concede that at least the view couldn’t be better. She stood for a second, enjoying the sight of the fields and woods on the other side of the road.

“Don’t you ever miss the countryside?” he asked once he’d sat down.

She shook her head and said she probably never would miss it enough to picture herself moving back.

“But every now and then I do need to get out of the city,” she admitted, looking at the horses in the corral in the field opposite them.

“Do your folks still live out here?” he asked, watching her as she took a swig of beer.

She nodded and smiled at him. Not because he was asking about her, but because she’d misjudged him. She didn’t have to pull every word out of him. He was the one who was grilling her, which surprised her a little.

She told him about her parents’ place, which was between Roskilde and Holbæk, and said that her brother still lived out there, not in an old farmhouse, but in a house in a new development that didn’t have even a smidge of the charm her folks’ country home or his farm had.

“Actually, what is the difference between a country home and a farm?” she asked, then volunteered an answer to her own question: “Isn’t it mostly that you tend a farm, while a country home is mostly just for fun?”

Mik nodded. That pretty much summed up the definition.

“How much land do you have here?” she asked him. “Are you growing anything?”

“Almost seventy acres, but I lease it to the farm over there.” He nodded toward the large farm on the other side of the narrow road, the one with the horse corral. “They have the machinery and a barn.”

Mik brought them another two beers and a blanket Louise could wrap around herself.

“My parents are dead, but I’m sure I told you that,” he said after he sat down again.

Louise nodded.

“My mom died this spring, but it’s been almost six years since my father died. His heart just stopped one morning while he was out checking on the cows. But if he had to go, I couldn’t imagine a more fitting way for him to do it.”

Louise watched him as he spoke. He sagged a little and was picking at the label on his beer bottle, but he didn’t seem as if he felt any pressure to tell her about himself.

“It didn’t take more than a few months after my father died for my mom and me to move. She couldn’t manage this whole place on her own and I had a small house on Fasanvej in town.” He nodded in the direction of Holbæk. “And then I have a sister in Dubai. She moved down there with her husband almost ten years ago and I really doubt they’re coming back. The kids go to a European school and she stays home and does her thing, so she wasn’t interested in taking over this place.”

Louise explained that her parents hadn’t bought their country place until she was old enough to start school. Before that, they’d lived in a big apartment in Østerbro. “My mom’s a ceramics artist,” Louise explained. “She needed more room, a bigger kiln, and space for her potting wheel.” She spoke the words slowly with enough of a pregnant pause in between them to make it clear that she had not inherited her mother’s creative abilities.

“What does your dad do?” Mik asked out of curiosity.

“He’s an ornithologist,” she replied, and then quickly elaborated. “He works for the Danish Ornithological Society a couple of days a week doing conservation and preservation work, and he edits their journal. He’s one of those guys who lives his whole life with a spotting scope around his neck.”

Suddenly Mik laughed out loud, and something boyish came over his face that Louise hadn’t seen before. She smiled and waited for him to explain what was so funny.

He shook his head a little before explaining that that was the last thing he would have imagined.

“I pictured him as maybe a detective or a lawyer. How the heck did you end up in the police?” he asked, looking at her with interest.

She gave him a look of mock affront. “Why? Is that so odd?”

“I don’t know. With parents with skills and abilities like that, I would have figured some of it would have rubbed off on you.” He said it as if she’d been cheated out of something marvelous. The same way you might if a couple of very attractive parents had produced a really ugly baby.

An awkward silence settled between them as she contemplated this. Why had she chosen to join the police?

He interrupted her thoughts.

“Would you like an Irish coffee?” he asked so quietly that she had the sense he didn’t want to bother her if she was actually trying to explain how she ended up in her job.

She nodded absentmindedly, her thoughts locked on both her parents. It had never occurred to her that she could have followed in her mother’s footsteps. She didn’t think she had even a hint of creativity in her, but she had never really put herself to the test to see if that was true.

Mik came back with a tray of mugs, coffee, whipped cream, brown sugar, a bottle of Tullamore, and three large, square candles that were stacked up on the tray, threatening to tip over onto the coffee fixings.

“I grew up with birds,” Louise said as he put brown sugar and whiskey into her cup, mixed them together, poured coffee over them, and topped it off with freshly whipped cream. “I got bird posters, bird books, and stuffed birds, while all my friends were getting Barbies and pop-music posters. And my mother walked around in her work clothes all the time covered in splotches of clay with a towel around her hair. I didn’t want to look like that when I grew up.”

“Did you rebel?” he asked, handing her the cup.

“Maybe, but that’s not how I saw it. I didn’t go in a different direction to defy my parents. I just did it because what they did didn’t interest me. I went to one of those forest kindergartens in Langelinie as a kid, one of those places where school is held outdoors all day regardless of the weather. I know they chose that because they wanted what was best for me. But I really would have rather gone to a kindergarten where you sat on little chairs and drew or played with puzzles and cleaned up nicely after yourself after each meal, instead of relying on the public restrooms out by the Little Mermaid statue and never eating a hot lunch, just sandwiches from our lunch boxes, even in the rain.”

Mik listened without interrupting.

“I like there to be some kind of structure, so you have something to adhere to.”

They’d finished their drinks and when he offered her another, she was well aware it was time to say no, thanks and force herself to be on her way. He’d said she could borrow his bike, since they hadn’t brought her loaner bike along from the Rowing Club.

Instead, she nodded and held out her cup. She thought about the next morning. How smart was it to show up to work with a hangover? Sure, tomorrow was Sunday, but they were going to meet anyway. On the other hand, hadn’t they pretty much been working around the clock for the weeks the case had been open? They needed to unwind a little.

He stood concentrating, letting the whipped cream slide down onto the warm coffee so carefully that it spread out like a white comforter over the blackness.

She didn’t have a chance to stop herself. Before she knew it, she was on her feet, still wrapped in the blanket, starting to kiss him. Somewhere in the very back of her mind she heard stern warnings that what she was doing was extremely unwise, but she ignored them, letting the blanket fall as he reached around her shoulders and pulled her toward him. She stretched, standing on her toes, to press her cheek against his and noticed the short stubble against her skin in the few pauses between the volleys of kisses that ran back and forth between them. Nibbling, yearning, hungry, and indulgent.

Where did that come from
? she wondered when her brain started sending signals again that had to do with things besides him and his mouth. They still hadn’t made eye contact, she didn’t dare, couldn’t deal with what she’d set in motion, but also didn’t want to run away from it.

“Do you think this is wise?” he asked, his mouth against her throat, as both of his hands slid up over the skin on her back.

She sought out his mouth again even as she shook her head. It wasn’t wise at all, and wasn’t she supposed to be the one saying that? Truly, it was anything but wise. They shared an office, and they were still going to be sharing it the next day and the day after that. No one knew how long she was going to be in Holbæk.
But they had already crossed this line, so no matter what they did it was going to be awkward and totally wrong to see each other at work after this,
she thought. And besides, he wasn’t her type at all. Not the way he looked, not his interests, or his Dad’s Beer-Drinking Bench. All he had going for him was that he hadn’t turned his head away when she kissed him.

She released his lips and inhaled in short bursts to calm her breathing.

“Let’s stop here,” she said, releasing her firm hold on him, but nonetheless willingly allowing herself to be pushed along as he guided her backward, both hands on her hips, away from the Irish coffee toward the house. As they walked slowly so she wouldn’t stumble, her eyes bore into his to determine how big a catastrophe this was. What did he think of her? Had she pressured him into this? Did he feel like he couldn’t turn her down? How crushing a failure would it be when he said this was all a mistake? That they should have stopped before they even started. He didn’t seem like the type to turn down a colleague, so maybe she’d already really overstepped his boundaries. And he
had
already suggested that this wasn’t particularly wise. The thoughts were whipping around in her head, but she couldn’t read anything from his eyes. They were just blue eyes smiling at her and they didn’t seem to be suffering from any kind of crisis of conscience or harassment.

After he settled her onto the sofa and brushed her dark curls away from her face, he carefully pulled her sweater up over her head. After that her blouse, and finally he unbuttoned her jeans. He sat there caressing her stomach, letting his fingers glide gently over her body, until his hand settled softly around the back of her head and he leaned over and kissed her. Kissed her tenderly and intensely, slowly, the whole way down her body.

“Now we kind of have to keep going, don’t we?” he asked, once he’d pulled his own shirt over his head and loosened his belt.

Louise nodded in silence without opening her eyes. They kind of did have to keep going now.

22

T
HE MELODY WAS SO INSISTENT AND THE VOLUME RISING SUCH
that it couldn’t be ignored. Louise did a rapid damage check inside her head before opening her eyes to be confronted with the mess she’d gotten herself into the night before. They had ended up in his bed after first making love on the sofa, then on the living-room floor. She had no sense of when they had collapsed from exhaustion.
Actually, that’s not so bad,
she thought.

Mik’s cell phone was ringing off the hook, and she shook him. The worst thing was that at one point he had whispered to her that this seemed like something she had really needed and she had hungrily agreed with him. After which she had really let go and abandoned herself to a level of enjoyment she could scarcely control.