At lunch the next day, Ivy had saved the chair beside her by resting her blue folder across the seat. Raina slid the folder onto the desk and sat down before she could talk herself out of it.
“So,” Raina said, opening her water bottle. “Who is this mystery person I’m supposed to meet?”
“My brother,” Ivy said, barely looking up from her phone. “He’s running late.”
“Emil? The one who dragged you to the wrong end of London?”
Ivy pointed a ink-stained finger at her. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that story.” She checked her screen again with a sigh. “He’s bringing my phone charger. I just thought you two should say hello.”
“You made it sound like a state secret.”
“I was having fun.”
Before Raina could answer, someone called Ivy’s name from the double doors of the cafeteria.
A young man in a damp canvas work jacket crossed the room toward them, a white charging cable looped loosely around his fingers and a grease-stained paper bag tucked under his arm. He had Ivy’s dark, almond-shaped eyes and a streak of motor oil along the cuff of his sleeve.
“Your phone was dead again,” he said without preamble, dropping the cable onto the laminate table between their trays.
“It had eleven percent, Emil.”
“When Mum tried calling you at noon, it had zero.”
“I was in media lab.”
“You’re always in media lab when you don't feel like answering.” He turned his eyes toward Raina, his expression softening into a quick, warm smile. “Sorry. I’m Emil.”
“Raina. I’ve heard all about your navigational skills in England.”
Emil shot Ivy a dry look. “She was holding the map upside down on the Underground.”
“That was after you brought us to the wrong station!” Ivy protested.
“I brought us to the station you pointed at.”
“The wrong one!” Ivy reached for the brown paper bag. “Is there food in here?”
“Was,” Emil said. “Mum made an extra sandwich for your new friend.” He passed a wrapped wax-paper package over to Raina. “She saw the proof of the ferry picture you took for the paper. She liked it.”
Raina blinked, holding the warm package. “It hasn’t even been printed yet.”
“Ivy brought the layout home last night,” Emil said, shifting the heavy strap of his tool bag higher on his shoulder. “Anyway, I’ve got to get back down to the boatyard before shift starts. Good to meet you, Raina.”
“You too. And... thank your mum for me.”
“I will.” Emil tapped Ivy’s dead phone with two fingers. “Plug it in.”
Ivy waved him off with a flick of her wrist. He waved back without turning around, already striding back out toward the rain-slicked courtyard.
Raina looked down at the sandwich. “That was the grand mystery?”
“Yep. Were you expecting someone more dramatic?”
“I don’t know. You wouldn’t tell me.” Raina touched the corner of the wax paper. “Your mum doesn’t even know who I am.”
“That’s never stopped Liv Berg from feeding a human being in her life,” Ivy said, unwrapping her own lunch. “Eat it. She used the fresh sourdough on yours.”
The front page of The Current ran the following Tuesday, with Photograph by Raina Hale printed in neat, italicized type beneath the grey ferry shot.
Raina brought a copy back to the small flat. After her next forty-eight-hour hospital rotation, Helena took the paper from the table, smoothed out the folds, and set it on the kitchen counter right beside her coffee mug. When Raina tried to move it later to keep soup from splashing the newsprint, Helena quietly moved it right back.
As the weeks turned grey and cold, Raina kept going to the Thursday media meetings in Room B214. She learned which desktop monitor had a dead pixel line down the center, and she learned how long Ivy would stare blankly at a page layout before admitting her headline sounded ridiculous. Ivy, in turn, learned that Raina would sit in the dark editing suite long after the heat had kicked off if a photograph's contrast didn't feel right.
One rainy Thursday afternoon, they were struggling to finalize a double-page spread on the harbour. Ivy stood directly behind Raina’s swivel chair, leaning over her shoulder so close that Raina could smell the faint scent of cherry lip balm and rain on her sweater.
“Can you lift the exposure on that docks photo?” Ivy asked, pointing at the monitor.
“It was nearly six o’clock when I shot it, Ivy. It was dark.”
“I know, but the headline says Daylight at the Docks.”
Raina paused, leaning back against the headboard of the chair. “Then change the headline.”
“We’ve already locked the text boxes!”
Raina rolled her chair back six inches so Ivy could see the screen clearly. In the photograph, the iron streetlamps had just flickered to life, casting long, orange ribbons of light across the wet cobblestones.
Ivy crouched down beside the desk, staring at the screen for a long, quiet moment. “I suppose calling that 'daylight' is a bit of a stretch.”
“A bit.”
Ivy let out a soft snort. “Fine. Give me the keyboard.”
They worked until the school janitor rattled his keys against the frosted glass of the door at six-thirty.
On the walk down to the bus stop, Ivy asked how Mia’s art exhibition back in Surrey had gone. Raina stopped mid-step on the icy pavement, staring at her.
“You remembered that was today?”
“You’ve been checking the countdown on your phone all week,” Ivy said simply.
Raina pulled her hands from her pockets, unlocking her screen. “Mia sent a walkthrough video. The prints looked really good... right up until she knocked a wooden frame off the easel halfway through the tour.”
“Was it one of yours?”
“No. She made sure to scream 'It wasn't Raina's!' into the microphone before the video cut out.”
Ivy laughed out loud, that warm, infectious sound that seemed to scatter the dark Norwegian fog, and watched the video twice standing right there on the sidewalk. On the bus ride down the hill, Ivy made Raina point out every photograph in the background of Mia's video, asking about the light, the lenses, and the stories behind them. Raina ended up missing her stop by three blocks, but she didn't care.
By late October, the coastal wind had turned sharp enough to bite through wool.
Ivy caught Raina outside her locker after third period, slinging an arm through hers. “Are you busy tonight?”
“Going home,” Raina said, adjusting her heavy camera bag. “Mum’s on the night shift again.”
“Perfect. My mum’s making fish soup. She made enough to feed a small army, and Emil is threatening to eat a whole loaf of sourdough for dinner. Come over.”
Raina hesitated. “Does your mum actually know you’re inviting me?”
“She’s the one who told me to grab you.” Ivy pulled her phone out. “If you hate seafood, tell me now so I can brace myself for her disappointment.”
“I like fish,” Raina said softly, thinking of her silent, dark flat and the microwave meal waiting for her. “Let me text my mum first.”
Helena replied before they even reached the bus stop: Of course, love. Send me the address. Please text me when you get back safely. A second message popped up a moment later: And bring home the recipe if it’s good.
Raina showed the screen to Ivy. “She wants soup.”
Ivy grinned. “Consider it done.”
The Berg house sat perched near the top of a steep, narrow cobblestone street that wound down toward the commercial harbor. Inside, the entryway was small, warm, and chaotic. A pair of mud-caked work boots lay kicked onto their sides right in the middle of the floorboards.
Ivy stepped over them without missing a beat. “Emil! Move these before someone breaks an ankle!”
“They were upright when I took them off!” his voice boomed back from the kitchen.
“Well, they’re dead now!”
Liv Berg emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a flour-dusted tea towel. Her dark hair was pinned up in a loose clip, strands escaping around her face.
“Raina! Come in, come in,” Liv said warmly, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’d hug you, but I’ve been chopping onions for an hour.” She glanced down at the boots on the floor and sighed. “Ignore those. Emil will move them, or I’ll throw them into the fjord.”
“I can hear you, Mum!” Emil called out.
“Good! That was the point!” Liv smiled at Raina, taking her heavy wet coat. “Is your mother working at the clinic tonight?”
“She went in at six,” Raina said, unlacing her boots.
“Then we’re packing a container for her to take on her shift tomorrow,” Liv said firmly.
The house smelled incredible: steaming fish broth, fresh dill, melted butter, and baked bread. Books were stacked in uneven towers beneath the bay window, and a wicker basket of clean laundry sat on the fourth step of the staircase. There was no polite stiffness, no artificial small talk. Liv went back to her simmering pot, and Emil padded out in his socks to finally drag his boots out of the hallway.
“Hello again,” Emil said, leaning against the doorframe. “Did Ivy force you to look at her tragic London holiday album yet?”
“Not yet,” Raina said, setting her camera bag down near the sideboard.
“Don’t let her. She took six photos of a bus stop because she thought the sign looked 'cinematic.'”
“It was cinematic,” Ivy declared, setting four ceramic bowls onto the dining table.
Raina looked over at the set table. It was long, dark oak, surrounded by five mismatched wooden chairs. But only four places were laid out with napkins and spoons. The chair at the far end sat slightly apart from the rest, its seat bare.
“Kieran usually sits there,” Ivy said softly, noticing Raina’s gaze. “My boyfriend. He’s up the coast on a wilderness photography retreat this week. Otherwise he’d be here, making a mess.”
“That chair rocks,” Emil noted, sitting down at his spot. “He’s the only one allowed to use it because he’s the only one who doesn't fall off.”
“Because he anchors it with his foot against the sideboard,” Liv corrected, carrying a massive steaming tureen from the kitchen. “I’ve asked you to tighten the leg screws three times, Emil.”
“I tightened them!”
“Then tighten them again.”
Ivy laughed, her eyes softening as she stared at the empty chair at the end of the table. “Kieran likes that chair. He says it gives him the best view of the room.”
“He likes being closest to the bread basket,” Emil corrected.
“That too.” Ivy picked up the bread plate, setting it right beside the empty setting before catching herself. She paused, a tiny flicker of something shadowed crossing her face, before she slid the plate back into the center of the table. “He’s working on a darkroom series for the regional youth grant. He spends hours waiting for the light to hit the water just right, and then pretends he didn't plan it at all.”
Raina looked at the empty wooden chair, the dark grain worn smooth where someone’s hands usually rested. “Is that why I haven’t seen him around school?”
“Mostly,” Ivy said, spooning rich, creamy soup into Raina’s bowl. “He does half his coursework independently in the media lab. But you’ll love his work, Raina. Honestly. He sees things the rest of us completely miss.”
Dinner was loud, warm, and chaotic. Liv asked Raina about her transition to Fjordvik, listening intently as Raina confessed that she still managed to get turned around coming out of the local bookstore. Emil immediately launched into a detailed explanation of a shortcut through an alleyway, while Ivy loudly argued that his route passed three dumpsters and took twice as long. They ended up drawing conflicting maps on a paper napkin until Liv confiscated it so it wouldn't fall into the soup.
At one point, Ivy reached across Emil’s bowl for the last heel of sourdough. Emil had already picked it up, but without breaking his sentence, he tore the piece cleanly in half and dropped the larger piece onto Ivy’s plate. A few minutes later, when a cold draft whistled through the window latch behind Emil’s neck, Ivy stood up without a word and pulled the sash tight. Neither of them said thank you. It was a silent, effortless language built over eighteen years of living under the same roof.
Raina sat back in her chair, watching them, feeling a strange, hollow ache in her chest. It was the kind of warmth she hadn't felt since her parents' divorce, a house that felt lived-in, solid, and safe.
After dinner, while Liv worked on a crossword puzzle in the parlor, Emil cleared the dishes and Ivy showed Raina how to dry the heavy Norwegian stoneware properly.
“I’m applying to Trondheim for university,” Ivy mentioned casually, passing a wet plate to Raina.
Raina looked up from the tea towel. “Trondheim? Isn't that four hours north?”
“Five by train,” Ivy corrected, wiping a splash of soap from her forearm. “Architecture program. If I can get my portfolio together in time.”
“That feels really far.”
“Far enough to feel like a new life,” Ivy murmured, her voice dropping into a rare moment of quiet reflection. “Close enough to come back when Mum realizes Emil can’t be trusted to keep the house from burning down.”
“Hey! I heard that!” Emil called from the dining room.
“You were meant to!” Ivy shouted back, a faint smile touching her lips. She looked at Raina. “What about you? Have you looked at any programs here in Norway?”
“No,” Raina admitted, folding the towel over her wrist. “I keep telling Mia 'when I come back to Surrey,' like this is just a temporary hiatus. But Mum’s contract at the hospital just got extended for two years. I don't think she wants to go back.”
“Have you talked to her about it?”
“Not really. If I ask, and she says we’re staying forever... then I have to accept that my life back home is over.”
Ivy turned off the kitchen tap, drying her hands on her apron. She looked at Raina with a serious, gentle understanding that cut right through Raina’s defenses.
“I’ve got some links from the guidance office,” Ivy said softly. “For arts programs in Bergen and Oslo. I can send them over. Just to look at.”
Raina swallowed hard. “Maybe. Not tonight.”
“Sure,” Ivy nodded easily. “Another day.”
By nine o'clock, Raina was gathering her coat. Liv handed her a heavy glass Pyrex container packed to the brim with fish soup, wrapped carefully in foil, alongside two thick slices of fresh bread.
Emil looked at the container, picked it up, and immediately swapped the plastic lid for another one from the cabinet. “That blue lid leaks if you tilt it,” he warned.
“You could have mentioned that before I filled it!” Liv scolded.
“I just saw it now!”
Emil turned to Raina, noticing her camera bag hanging from her shoulder. “Wait. Your strap stitching is fraying at the brass ring.”
Raina looked down. “It’s fine, I can fix it at home...”
“With what? Thread?” Emil pulled open a utility drawer, pulling out a length of thick, waxed cord. “Hold the bag steady.”
He knelt down beside her in the hallway, his fingers moving with swift, practiced efficiency as he bound the leather strap tightly around the brass loop, securing it with a heavy industrial knot. He gave it a sharp, hard yank to test it.
“There,” Emil said, standing up. “That’ll hold a twenty-pound lens now. But get it stitched properly before winter. Cold leather snaps fast out here.”
“Thank you, Emil. Seriously.”
“Don’t thank me until it gets you home in one piece.”
Ivy, who was leaning against the doorframe watching them, pulled her coat off the rack. “Emil, walk Raina down to the number four bus stop.”
“I know the way, Ivy,” Raina laughed.
“And I have to finish scrubbing the soup pot,” Emil said, holding up a steel wool pad. “Ivy, you have legs. Walk her yourself.”
“Fine,” Ivy smiled.
Liv pressed the warm container of soup into Raina’s hands, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “Tell Helena to heat it on low. And tell her she’s invited over the second she has an evening off.”
“I will,” Raina promised.
Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the cobblestones glistening like black glass under the streetlights. The air was freezing, carrying the sharp, clean scent of the salt fjord below. Ivy walked beside Raina down the hill, her hands shoved deep into her coat pockets, her boots making a soft crunch against the damp gravel.
Halfway down the slope, Ivy’s phone buzzed in her pocket with a low, sharp vibration.
She pulled it out, illuminated by the pale blue glare of the screen, stared at it for a long second, and then slid it back into her coat without replying.
Raina glanced over. “Kieran?”
“He sent a photo,” Ivy said, her voice turning quiet, subdued against the quiet night. “Some wooden fishing boats tied up at a pier in the rain.”
“Sounds like he’s keeping you updated.”
Ivy smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. She stared down at her wet boots as they walked. “He’s good at that. Sending me pictures of what he’s looking at.”
They reached the pedestrian crossing near the main avenue. The light was red, flashing amber against the dark glass of the shopfronts.
Ivy stopped, looking out toward the dark expanse of the harbor. “Can I ask you something, Raina? I know you haven’t met him yet.”
“Sure. Anything.”
Ivy pulled her collar tighter around her neck. “Lately... I can’t tell what he’s thinking anymore. Even before he left for this trip. I’d ask him if something was wrong, and he’d just say 'I'm fine' and barely say ten words to me for the rest of the night. Now he just sends me a picture of a boat, and nothing else. No text. No caption.”
“Maybe he’s just stressed about his portfolio deadline,” Raina suggested gently.
“Maybe,” Ivy whispered, staring at her reflection in the wet pavement. “That’s what I keep telling myself. But he used to tell me when he was having a bad day. He used to talk to me about everything. Now, whenever I try to press him, it’s like... it’s like I’m forcing him into a corner. Like I'm bothering him.”
Raina shifted the heavy bag of soup to her other arm. She thought of the empty, wobbly chair at the dining table, and the way Ivy’s eyes had lingered on it with that quiet, desperate longing.
“I don’t know him, Ivy,” Raina said softly. “So I could be completely wrong. But he sent you that photo. Out of everyone in the world, he was standing on some freezing pier in the dark, looked at those boats, and thought of you.”
Ivy looked over at her, her dark eyes shiny in the amber glow of the streetlamp. “I suppose.”
“When he gets back from the coast, don't ask him 'what's wrong?'” Raina advised gently. “Just tell him you miss him. Tell him you miss talking to him.”
Ivy let out a shaky, quiet breath that misted in the freezing air. “I tried before he left. I got halfway through, and then he had to pack his gear, and...” She shook her head, forcing a brave, familiar smile back onto her face. “I’ll try again when he’s home.”
“Good. Because you can’t fix a relationship through a picture of a boat.”
Ivy let out a genuine, breathless laugh, her shoulders dropping. “No. I guess you can’t.”
They reached the glass bus shelter at the corner. The digital display indicated the number four bus was two minutes away.
Raina turned to face her, holding the warm glass container of soup against her coat. “I’m really glad you asked me over tonight, Ivy.”
Ivy’s expression softened into something intensely sweet, vulnerable, and completely unguarded. She looked back up the hill toward her family’s lit windows, and then back at Raina.
“I’m glad you came,” Ivy said softly, reaching out to give Raina’s arm a quick, warm squeeze. “Now you’ve met almost everyone I love.”
Aksara