For nearly the first year they were together, Mike and Kirsten’s relationship was, at least officially, an extended one-night stand. Neither would commit to much more than the following evening, and neither would come close to admitting that they were “living together,” although most of Kirsten’s clothes and personal items made it over to Mike’s apartment in the first month or two. It wasn’t a big apartment to begin with, and the two of them made it awfully crowded.
On the other hand, neither of them indulged in any fictions about what they were doing, either, not that there was much covering it up. For the first few days Mike half expected to see Kirsten’s dad come through the door at any second bearing a shotgun, and was deadly scared to meet her parents. She finally talked him into a visit, along in September, and he was surprised to discover they were a friendly, delightful couple in their fifties. Rather than be upset at the fact that he was shacking up with their daughter – he had to call it something, although didn’t use those words in front of her until many years later – they seemed delighted with the prospect. The only way they seemed tempted to kill him was through piling more good German cooking in front of him, and he quickly became something like a son to them.
It seemed strange to Mike, but he never asked them about it; there was no point of looking a gift horse in the month. It wasn’t until he had a nearly grown daughter of his own that the epiphany came to him: they’d suffered right along with Kirsten for years, first clutching the hope that Henry would be coming home, and then sharing the agony that he wouldn’t be, although they were more willing to admit the truth than she was. Having an extended relationship with Mike was a sign that she was starting to finally put Henry behind her, and get her own life again. However unconventional it was, whatever they thought the morality of it might be – and they were good Lutherans who rarely missed church – having Kirsten with Mike was obviously better for her than what had gone by in the past, which included Kirsten chasing after a lot of things in pants. They didn’t resent Mike; they were grateful he had come along and could manage to put up with her.
Mike was grateful the Langenderfers were so kind to him, since his relationship with Kirsten didn’t go over quite as well with his own parents. He’d essentially been away from home for over four years when he and Kirsten began sharing his apartment. They lived in Overland Heights, which was several hundred miles off, so he didn’t see them that often. When he did there were sure to be some pointed comments about grandchildren or making things legal, or just general disapproval that the visits were few and generally more distant as time went on.
As the months rolled by Mike began to feel comfortable in Spearfish Lake. No longer was he without friends, and no longer did he feel like he knew no one. Everything wasn’t a mystery to him anymore. Slowly, piece by piece and bit by bit, the thought of having to leave the comforts of Spearfish Lake and start over again on a daily seemed more repugnant. He wasn’t at all sure how Kirsten was going to react to the idea of a move somewhere else, to a distant and bigger city. In fact, she seemed wedded to the idea that she wanted to stay in Spearfish Lake where she would be more likely to hear if any news of Henry were to come in, even though in her heart she knew her friends and family would immediately contact her wherever she was.
It seemed a small problem, at first, and Mike didn’t think about it much in the excitement of his first months with Kirsten, but it was always there in the background. Mike was busy that fall; the Record-Herald traditionally worked the tails off their junior reporters, and between covering sports and covering meetings and trying to spend as much time as he could with Kirsten, there wasn’t a lot of time to think about it. The Spearfish Lake Marlins had a good football season that year; they went undefeated in the regular season, for the first time in many years; to make life more interesting, it was the first year that a state playoff system was in effect. The Marlins made it to the state quarter-finals before losing to one of the sandbagging Catholic schools from downstate that could, and did, recruit and give scholarships to promising athletes from all over the city, where Spearfish Lake had to make do with the kids who lived in the district. It was an exciting time to be in Spearfish Lake, and the kids played the bigger team tough and almost pulled out the win.
But, in late November, things began to slow down to where Mike could take a breath. They had a joyous Thanksgiving dinner with Kirsten’s family, and shortly afterward Mike had a call from the Geneva Reporter, in the southern part of the state, in response to one of his resumés sent out the previous spring. It was a better job, at better money, and on a daily at that, but mentioning it to Kirsten brought on a depression in her that he’d never seen before, a crying spell and a bitterness that had to be experienced to be believed. Over a period of hours, Mike was able to get out of Kirsten that she couldn’t stand to have him leave, but couldn’t make herself want to leave Spearfish Lake, either. Mike was frankly of the opinion that Kirsten would be better off outside Spearfish Lake, where she wouldn’t be continually reminded of Henry and the old days, but that didn’t seem to matter to Kirsten – she wasn’t about to leave.
Mike had been aware from the beginning that Kirsten was a few bricks shy of a barbecue pit. He’d gone into the affair with his eyes open and with that knowledge, and also understood from the beginning most of the missing bricks involved Henry Toivo in one way or another. But, in every other way, Kirsten was the girl of his dreams, and he was closer and far more deeply in love with her than he could have imagined, so being a little screwy in some areas didn’t seem like that big a deal. Even in Spearfish Lake, he knew people who were interesting and delightful and good people – but who were a little goofy in some area or other. While one could hope for perfection in an imperfect world, they were not likely to find it. Especially comparing her to the Ice Queen, his sometimes girl friend in college, Kirsten was about all the woman he’d dared hope to find, and then a little: bright, cheerful, sexy, chipper, a good cook, a great lover, well-built, a good sense of humor . . . the list could go on a long time. From what he could tell, she felt much the same way about him. But there was this one problem, the Henry Toivo problem. It seemed somehow like Henry’s ghost was watching over his shoulder every minute he was with Kirsten. Was it something he could overlook, something he could learn to live with?
In the end, Mike cancelled the interview with the Geneva Reporter, but it set him to thinking. The problem would arise again, but maybe in a few months or a year or two, Kirsten might be even closer to him and more willing to follow if he were to move. But, then, maybe not. The longer he delayed a decision, the harder it might be to make one. The whole thing hinged around Henry Toivo, Mike well knew.
The days just before Christmas were slow around the news side of the Record-Herald, although the advertising staff was near its peak busy season of the year. One afternoon late in the week Mike watched Kirsten bustle around with ad layouts, but mostly he thought about her and Henry Toivo. It was a slow afternoon and Mike didn’t have much else to do. Sitting there musing about the problem, it struck him all of a sudden that he didn’t really know that much about Henry, and especially about how – or even, if – he died. There had been a few half-sentences from Kirsten over the months that added up to a lot less than the shorthand account he’d gotten from Carrie. It was clear that he couldn’t ask Kirsten much about it without risking trouble, but then he remembered Carrie saying that most of what she knew, and what Kirsten knew, came from Gil.
It was probably better to get it from the horse’s mouth. “I’m going to head up the street and see if I can come up with an idea for a feature,” he told Webb, got his coat, and headed for Spearfish Lake Appliance.