§ § § - July 18, 1977
Christian had to admit he'd never seen anything quite like this, not even during the 1983 tour he had taken across North America with his parents, Carl Johan and Amalia. They had never really seen everyday, small-town, mundane America. But here, he could tell, he was going to get an overdose of that very thing. The numerous huge station wagons and coupes of the type he remembered his wife referring to as "land yachts" peppered the parking lot of a large grocery store; all over the place, women sporting pink plastic curlers in their hair and children in sandals, sneakers, shorts, tank tops and T-shirts ran around or trailed their mothers. Babies and toddlers kicked their feet in the fold-out seats of shopping carts; people flowed constantly in and out the entrance; kids on bikes kept circling the lot's perimeter; and over all was the noise of traffic on the nearby streets and the calls of mothers reprimanding wayward children.
"All right, girls, come on," said a voice nearby, and he twisted around at the waist to see, behind him, a weary-looking Shannon Hamilton, corralling Kristy and Kelly as they emerged from the tailgate of the same dusty white station wagon he had seen in Leslie's 1973 memory. The car now looked even dustier somehow. Kristy and Kelly were in the middle of a scuffle, and Shannon said in a sharp voice, "Stop that now, both of you!" Christian was surprised when they did so instantly; but the startled looks the twins gave their mother indicated that she probably didn't often raise her voice in that manner. Shannon eyed them in warning, then peered over her shoulder and called, "Leslie, where are you?"
Leslie emerged from behind a huge, shiny black pickup truck, pushing a shopping cart. "Getting one of these," she said. "We're gonna need it."
"Thank you, Leslie," Shannon said with a wan smile. Christian sensed a movement at his side and looked around in time to see Kelly give Kristy a pinch that made Kristy squawk aloud and Shannon turn around. "Kelly Janet, if you don't stop this instant, I'll make you ride in the cart seat like a two-year-old!"
"I wouldn't fit," Kelly protested.
Shannon glared at her; Kristy made a face, and Leslie caught up to them with the cart, venturing, "I've got the list and all the coupons too, Mom."
Again Shannon thanked her, releasing a long sigh. Pushing back her limp hair, she started for the store, giving the girls a perfunctory order to follow her. Christian fell in beside the cart so he could gaze at Leslie again; she had been right about looking like the family portrait that resided on a living-room shelf in their house. She looked a little tired herself, pulling out the collar of the mint-green shirt she wore and trying to fan herself with it. Christian couldn't blame her; the heat raised shimmery distortions on the pavement and atop every car in the lot, and he realized it must be high summer in this recollection.
Fortunately, the interior of the supermarket was air-conditioned, making them all sigh with relief. "Mom, could we get some ice cream?" Kelly asked the moment they had cleared the automatic doors.
Shannon shot her an exasperated look that Christian had seen on his mother, sister, both sisters-in-law, his wife, and his nephew Gerhard's wife. "Kelly, I'm going to warn you one last time," she said. "If you ask for anything else, or if you pick any more fights with either of your sisters, you'll go out and sit in the car till we're through."
Her ultimatum astonished Christian and he made a note to ask Leslie about it when he returned to the present day. Kelly just pouted, but she finally did fall silent, and the foursome moved along through the aisles while Christian trailed along, staving off boredom only by reading labels on packages. In the third aisle Kristy broke the silence by asking, "Is ice cream on the shopping list, Leslie?"
Leslie picked up the list, which she had dropped onto the cart's child seat, and ran an index finger down it. "Yeah, but it's butter brickle again," she said, grimacing. Christian chuckled when Kristy copied it.
"Really?" Kelly broke in, perking up.
"It's Dad's favorite," Kristy reminded her twin pointedly. Kelly looked at Leslie for confirmation, and Leslie nodded, a you better believe it look on her face that made Christian grin. Fate forfend they buy Michael Hamilton's choice of ice cream flavor, he thought.
"Oh, blast," Kelly grumbled. "I wish I could find a quarter under something, and then I could get a Coke out of the machine."
"I wish we had two dollars to buy a great big bucket of ice cream over at Baskin-Robbins," Kristy said dreamily, climbing onto the back end of the shopping cart.
"I wish we had a secret bank account that had a million dollars in it," said Leslie unexpectedly. "One that Dad could never, ever get into." Christian stared at her in amused surprise and wondered if the present-day incarnation of his wife remembered saying that.
"I wish I could go on a shopping trip without a lot of wishes," murmured Shannon through a sigh. "Leslie, do me a favor, please. Go through those coupons and see if we have any for ice cream in there. I have to admit, I wouldn't mind something besides butter brickle myself." Her daughters giggled, and Leslie picked up a sheaf of coupons that had been paper-clipped together and began searching through it. When she did indeed unearth one, her sisters cheered, and Shannon sent Leslie to go find the brand in question. Of course, Christian went with Leslie, curious as to what flavor she'd pick.
He was watching her search through the floor freezers for the brand on the coupon when both he and Leslie heard someone call her name. They looked around at the same moment, and Leslie straightened up with pure surprise all over her face, watching another girl approach her. "Hi, Leslie. Are you doing anything fun this summer?"
Leslie grinned and seemed to relax. "Not a whole lot, but my mother's been taking me and my sisters to the town pool most days. It's been so hot lately. I wish we could take a trip to the beach."
"We did that last month," the other girl said. "You can't swim in the ocean—it's freezing cold." Leslie shrugged and opened her mouth to say something, but then someone called for "Katie" and the girl whipped around. "Oh...gotta go...have a fun summer."
"You too," Leslie said, watching the other girl depart, then releasing a sigh and going back to her search. Another question for you, my Rose, Christian thought, watching Leslie slide open a glass door and shift ice-cream cartons around till she found one that contained chocolate and lifted it out. She compared the carton with the picture on the coupon, then brightened, grinned, and poked around in the freezer again, eventually unearthing another brick of ice cream just like the first and lifting it out. "Two for one," Leslie said aloud, smirking. "Finally, no more stupid butter brickle." She marched off, proudly toting the cartons, with Christian behind her laughing to himself.
They rejoined Shannon and the twins in the fifth aisle; Kristy and Kelly both cheered again when they saw Leslie's choices. "Two of them?" Shannon asked.
"Look, Mom, it's buy one, get one free," Leslie said excitedly, showing her the coupon. "I bet we could finish faster if we all split up and looked for the stuff on the coupons."
Shannon managed a grin at that and slid an arm around Leslie's shoulders, squeezing. "That's my girl," she said. "By all means. You divide the coupons between you and your sisters, and I'll take care of the other things on the list. We'll meet near the checkout counters, and don't get anything you don't have a coupon for." She eyed Kelly and Kristy as she said this. "Be careful to get exactly what the coupon says you can."
The twins and Leslie nodded, and the girls scattered; again, Christian followed Leslie, amazed when she began rapidly piling up food items in her arms like a pro. When she could no longer hold them, she found her mother and dumped her armload into the cart, gave Shannon the corresponding coupons, and went back for more. So this is how commoners get by every day, he marveled, aware on an uncomfortable level that the very thought made him some kind of out-of-step anachronism, but knowing at the same time that he was only the product of his privileged upbringing. He derailed that train of thought lest he miss too much of this memory he was witnessing, watching Leslie finish gathering groceries and go back to add the latest load to the cart.
After a seeming eon the twins both reappeared and dumped more things into the cart; then Shannon got into line at the nearest open checkout and started double-checking the contents of the cart against her list and the fistful of coupons. Meanwhile, the girls loitered behind her, the twins examining the candy displays and Leslie reading headlines on tabloids and magazines. Christian had been looking over the candy as well, trying to see if there were any familiar brands, when Kristy grew bored with this activity and meandered over to join her older sister. "Ooh, Leslie, look at that one."
"What one?" Leslie murmured absently, as Kelly straightened up and went to take a look herself.
"That one," said Kristy, pointing. "She looks just like a princess, doesn't she?"
The word princess made Christian bolt up straight and take a giant step over to stand behind the girls; his mouth dropped a foot at what he saw. Ten-year-old Kristy Hamilton was pointing at a glossy magazine whose front cover was dominated by a wedding photograph; Christian's own visage stared out at him from behind the image of Johanna Rollefsen, who was beaming as though she now held the deed to the world.
"Dum-dum," Kelly scoffed, eyeing Kristy as though she needed to be booted back to first grade. "Maybe if you knew how to read the caption, you'd know that girl really is a princess." Kristy turned directly to Kelly, jutted her chin out and treated her twin sister to a loud, wet raspberry. Kelly shrank back, squealing in disgust.
Christian all but held his breath as he watched Leslie lift the magazine out of its slot in the stand and study the cover. Now that she had it in her hands, he could see the caption: "Nightmare Royal Wedding!" What are you looking at, my Rose? he thought, actually going so far as to lean over and stare into the girl's face as if that would show him whose face her eyes were trained on. He still couldn't tell, so he straightened back up and gazed at his own expression in the photo. His nineteen-year-old self was looking at the camera with eyes that reflected all the emotions he remembered feeling that day—resignation, annoyance, despair, distrust, and a touch of loathing, directed at the bride.
"Leslie, put that back, please," requested Shannon, having finished going over her list and turned to see what the girls were doing. "We're not getting that."
The twins, distracted from another imminent argument, looked at their sister and began to giggle. "Leslie must have a crush on that guy," Kelly taunted.
Christian grinned when Leslie turned around and whacked Kelly over the head with the magazine. "Oh, shut up. Just because I think he's cute..."
"Yuck," Kristy blurted. "No boys are cute!"
"Well, he is," Leslie said, displaying the picture at her. Christian noticed Shannon watching with amused surprise. "Too bad he's not smiling, or he'd probably be even better-looking." She stared again at Christian's image on the cover. "How come he's not happy?"
"Maybe you oughta read the article and find out," said Kristy, while Christian absorbed Leslie's words and let the wondering smile spread across his face.
"Who is that guy, anyway?" Kelly asked idly, peering at the cover.
"I dunno," said Leslie, shrugging as Shannon pulled Kristy forward to help unload the cart onto the conveyor belt. Christian watched her open the magazine, check the table of contents, then flip pages till she reached the article in question, whose title repeated the cover blurb. "Oh...says here it's Prince Christian of some place called Lill...Lilla Jords-oh." She pronounced the J as it was used in English, and Christian grinned again. He knew he was going to tease his wife about this later. Then she exclaimed in disbelief, "Wow, he's only nineteen...and he just got married on Saturday!"
Even Shannon glanced over her shoulder with surprise at this. "Nineteen years old and married already? Good grief." She peered at the huge photo of the ceremony, showing Christian's depressed expression and Johanna's barely leashed rage. "Looks like neither one of them is very happy about it. Come on, Leslie, put it away now, please. I need you and Kelly to help us get this stuff out of the cart."
"Okay," Leslie agreed with a little sigh, closing the magazine and slipping it back into its slot on the stand, with a last glance at the cover. Kelly ducked around her to get to the cart, managing to step on Leslie's foot in so doing; Leslie let out an annoyed "Ow!" and shot Kelly a glare when the younger girl looked at her oddly. "Watch where you're going—you just flattened my foot!"
"Sor-ree," said Kelly with an eye-roll that belied the word, and Shannon had to stop Leslie from delivering a slap to her sister's shoulder.
"No ice cream for you," Christian heard Leslie mutter at Kelly, and snickered just as the scene vanished from around him. He let himself out the door that materialized before him, and saw Leslie in a relaxed half-slouch in the chair.
"Hi, my love," she said, grinning up at him. "What'd you think?"
Christian laughed good-naturedly. "I'll admit, for most of my time in there, I thought this memory was pointless," he said. "Following you and your mother and your sisters around that grocery store was thoroughly boring to begin with, but when you girls split up to help your mother get finished more quickly, I was impressed at how quickly you found everything you needed. It taught me something, too. I've never before seen the bustle of an ordinary shopping excursion. Even since I married you, either you went alone or you were with me if I went—and we've had the luxury of buying what we want. That clearly wasn't true of your mother."
"Oh, we probably had more leeway than I grew up thinking we did," Leslie said with a shrug. "Michael was such a tightwad, though, we had to stick to a list, and Mom got really good at clipping coupons."
"I suspect the tightwad tendencies didn't apply to him," Christian observed, and at her questioning look, said with a half-grin, "Butter brickle ice cream."
"Eccchhhh!" Leslie blurted, and he laughed again. "To this day I hate even the mention of the stuff! I'm not sure what Mom thought of it, but Kristy and Kelly and I all hated it. Kelly was always asking for ice cream, every time Mom had to take us with her for groceries; she'd beg for any flavor they had as long as it wasn't butter brickle."
"What exactly is butter brickle?" he queried. "I've never heard of it."
"It's kind of a buttery vanilla ice cream with toffee bits in it. They stopped making it sometime in the 80s, I think. It was actually pretty good, but the twins and I avoided it on principle because Michael loved it and ate it all the time." She grinned at his soft laugh. "Any other questions before I take my turn?"
"A few. Your sister Kelly was begging for ice cream on this trip as well, and your mother must have been having problems with you girls all day, because she finally told Kelly to stop or she could sit in the car till the rest of you were finished. You know perfectly well that would never be allowed nowadays, what with the high awareness of the dangers of leaving pets and small children in cars during the summer. Why did she say that?"
"It was different in the seventies," Leslie said. "Nobody thought twice about using that as a punishment. I think it was assumed that if you were beyond a certain age, you should know enough to open the car windows. And you didn't have the constant reports of abducted and vanished kids that you do these days. Those were the closing years of a more innocent era." She smiled faintly with reminiscence, then focused on him. "What else?"
"While you were looking for ice cream, someone named Katie came up to you and talked for a moment. Do you remember anyone by that name?"
"Not off the top of my head, but I probably went to school with her and she recognized me," said Leslie. "The only schoolmate I can really remember anymore was Cindy Lou, and her, I don't want to remember."
Christian laughed again. "I see. I must admit, you certainly surprised me when Kristy pointed out that magazine cover that Johanna and I appeared on. I'm sure you never imagined that one day you'd be married to that 'cute guy' in the photo."
"I'd have died laughing if anyone had told me that," Leslie agreed cheerfully. "Are you done? I've got some questions for you now. Seriously—Snake's Lard?"
Christian's entire upper torso tilted back as he exploded with laughter. "So you did get the meaning of that one! I'll tell you a secret: that was the one I intended to use every time I wanted to annoy my sister, but she reacted with such violence that I thought I'd be better off sticking with Ormsskâgg after all, despite that I preferred Ormsspekk. My nieces and nephews got a big enough kick out of her reaction to the Ormsskägg appellation that I didn't mind so much after all. Anna-Laura's usually difficult to ruffle, but for some reason she has an admiration for Magnus Ormssvärd that I personally think is all out of proportion to the significance the man had in our history. So when I call our original ancestor Ormsskägg, it's like teasing Anna-Kristina—the reaction is always worth seeing."
"You're still an incorrigible rogue," Leslie remarked, grinning. "But I don't think you'd be the same Christian Enstad if you weren't. What amazed me is the fact that both Sire and Arnulf thought it was funny too. They must've been in good moods that evening."
"I always figured that in Arnulf's case, it was due to his being a newlywed; he and Kristina had been married barely two months, I think. Where Father was concerned, fate only knows. In any case, I've always enjoyed that memory." He chuckled one last time, then regarded her. "You know, it occurred to me just now...I thought it quite touching when, in this memory, your mother saw that article about Johanna and me, and expressed sympathy for me when she saw our expressions in that one photo of us during the ceremony. I see now where you got your empathetic bent."
"Now you know for a fact—Mom would've loved you," Leslie said softly. "Not as much as I do, but then again, nobody could." She returned his grin and hugged him; then he pulled back enough to kiss her, which was what Roarke caught them doing a few minutes later when he looked in on them.
"I wondered what was delaying you two," he said humorously, breaking them apart and earning sheepish grins from them. "I trust you enjoyed this latest memory-sharing session? I seem to recall hearing laughter in here."
"We did, yes," Christian said, grinning again. "This is truly an amazing gift you're giving us, Mr. Roarke. Just be careful you don't spoil us—because if Anna-Kristina is deemed in good health when she wakes on Saturday, and allowed to sleep her way through the remainder of her waiting period with the serum, you may find yourself entertaining our pleas to do more of this."
Roarke gave them both a mysterious look, but said only, "Why don't you come out of there. Your daughter has begun to miss you." Christian and Leslie looked at each other, both shrugged at once, and then grinned again, leaving the time-travel room for the day.