Page 3 of Viking
Sleep was impossible.I’d tried -- changed into my oldest, softest pajamas, made a cup of chamomile tea, even taken the melatonin I kept for emergencies.Nothing worked.My mind wouldn’t stop spinning with images of Kris and questions about Athena, a swirl of grief and confusion that kept me wide awake at two in the morning.That’s how I ended up on my bedroom floor, surrounded by photo albums I hadn’t looked at in years.
The oldest album had a faded blue cover, the corners worn smooth from handling.Inside, plastic sheets protected photos of Kris and me as children -- gap-toothed grins on our first day of school, Halloween costumes Mom had sewn herself, Christmas mornings with piles of torn wrapping paper at our feet.At first it was only my brother, then when he was in high school, there were pictures of him holding me as a baby.I’d been a huge surprise to my parents.
My finger lingered on a photo of nineteen-year-old Kris with his arm slung around my four-year-old shoulders, both of us holding ice cream cones at the beach.Even then, my hair had been a vibrant red beacon, while Kris’s was a more muted auburn.In every photo, his smile was wide and genuine, his eyes crinkled at the corners.The kind of brother who never minded when his little sister tagged along, who defended me fiercely from playground bullies who teased me about my Christmas-themed name.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Kris?”I whispered to his frozen image.“Why didn’t you let me meet her?”
I turned the pages slowly, watching us grow older through the years.At first, it was just Kris in the photos.Then later, some of my school pictures were mingled in.My awkward middle school phase.And then, in the newer albums, photos that included the person I was really looking for.
Lief Hansen.Viking, as he was called now, according to the last email Kris had sent.
There he was -- tall and golden even at eighteen, standing beside Kris in their football uniforms after a game.Both sweaty and grinning, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders.Even then, Lief had towered over my brother, his blond hair longer than most of the other boys’, his shoulders impossibly broad.
I flipped to another page and found a photo from Kris’s twentieth birthday party.I’d been five, but he’d still included me.And there was Lief, twenty and heart-stoppingly beautiful, ruffling my hair as I stared up at him with undisguised adoration.
The memory rushed back, vivid and immediate.
“Little Kringle,” he called me, his voice already deep but gentler than when he spoke to Kris or the other guys.“You’re getting tall.Pretty soon you’ll be looking down on all of us.”
“No way,” I’d said, my voice whistling a little through a missing tooth.“You’re like a giant.”
He’d laughed, warm and genuine.“Vikings are supposed to be tall.It’s in the blood.”
I remembered how I’d followed him around that entire day, hanging on his every word, bringing him cake without him asking, my heart thundering every time he smiled at me.I remembered, too, how Kris had teased me mercilessly afterward, but never in front of Lief.Never in a way that would have made me feel truly embarrassed.I hadn’t realized then that my hero worship would later turn into a hardcore crush.
“You’ll grow out of it,” Kris had said years later.“And if you don’t, well… you could do worse than Lief.He’s a good guy.”
I traced Lief’s face in the photo, the lines of his jaw, the curve of his smile.I’d had a crush on him for as long as I could remember, but I’d always been just Kris’s little sister to him.Up until I was fifteen, I’d seen him at holidays sometimes, when Kris brought him home because Lief’s own family situation was complicated.He was always kind, always treated me like I mattered, but the gap between us remained.But I hadn’t seen him in years.One day, he’d just disappeared from our lives.Not completely -- Kris still mentioned him in emails and phone calls -- but he stopped coming for holidays, stopped showing up in person.When I asked why, Kris had been evasive.
“He’s got a new life now,” was all he’d say.“Different priorities.”
I flipped to another page, not remembering what would come next.My parents had put these together for me and Kris years after the pictures were taken.To say they weren’t chronological was an understatement.On the next page, I found a photo from the last time I’d seen Lief in person.Christmas, twelve years ago.He stood by our fireplace, a Santa hat perched on his blond head, looking faintly embarrassed but pleased as my mother handed him a carefully wrapped gift.He’d opened it to find a hand-knit sweater in deep blue that matched his eyes, and the smile he’d given my mother had been so genuine it made my chest ache.
That night, I’d overheard him and Kris talking on the back porch, their voices low but intense.
“You can’t keep doing this,” Kris had said.“It’s going to get you killed.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Lief had replied.“They might be family, but it’s not the type you walk away from.Once I patched in, that was it.It’s too late to back out.”
“We’re your family,” Kris had insisted.
I never learned what they were talking about.When I’d asked Kris the next day, he’d brushed me off with a rare flash of impatience.“It’s not your business, Lina.Leave it alone.”
Now, staring at Lief’s face in these old photos, I wondered if he knew about Athena.If he knew what Kris had been doing these past few years, why he’d kept his daughter a secret.Lief and Kris had been as close as brothers -- surely Kris would have told him, even if he hadn’t told his own family.
More importantly, Lief deserved to know that Kris was gone.I couldn’t bear the thought of him finding out from someone else, or worse, not finding out at all.
I carefully closed the album and reached for my laptop, powering it on.The blue light illuminated the darkened room as I opened a search engine.
“Lief Hansen,” I typed, then paused.Kris had called him Viking in his emails.A nickname, obviously, but maybe more than that.On a hunch, I added “Viking” to the search.
Nothing useful came up immediately -- just some historical articles about actual Vikings, a few social media profiles that clearly weren’t him.I tried narrowing it down with “motorcycle club,” remembering how Kris had once mentioned that Lief was “riding with a new crowd.”Still nothing definitive.
I leaned back against my bed, exhaustion finally starting to creep in around the edges of my consciousness.Tomorrow I would meet my niece.Tomorrow I would have to start figuring out how to be whatever she needed me to be.But tonight, in these quiet hours before dawn, I needed to find the one person who might understand what I was going through.The one person who had loved Kris almost as much as I had.
“Where are you now, Lief Hansen?”I whispered as tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and silent.
Outside my window, the night was vast and dark, offering no answers.But as I continued searching, clicking through pages of results, I felt a sense of purpose cutting through my grief.I would find him.I would tell him about Kris.And maybe he would have answers to the questions that kept me awake.
