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“Help me get it into the parlor?”

She took the front end and I the back. It wasn’t an easy job, and we made some noise making our way through the corridor. Lilja and Helena came out from the kitchen.

“What do you think?” I asked Lilja when Alma and I had placed my contraption in the spot by the window where the Christmas tree always stood.

“It’s beautiful.” She wrapped her arms around my waist. “Thank you, Selma.”

I dared a kiss on the top of her head—my first ever in front of Alma and Helena. They didn’t take much notice, and I liked that. I didn’t want Lilja and I to be a spectacle.

Helena got the box of decorations from the attic. I sat in the armchair and watched them adorn my tree. In that endearing way of hers, Lilja studied each bauble and julbock. She held up a paper cone. “Did you make this?” she asked me.

“When I was about ten.”

“It’s just darling,” she said, admiring the blue cut-out paper snowflake I had glued onto the cone’s side. Alma and Helena exchanged a knowing smile that made my cheeks hot.

As the tallest of the three, Alma placed the star on top where I had attached a spiral of wire for that exact purpose. Last came the garlands of flags. As was tradition, the yarn was tangled, and it took the better part of half an hour to untie the knots.

All of us fetched our presents from where we had stashed them in our rooms. Mine were in the bottom of my closet. There weren’t as many under the wire branches as my teasing of Alma had suggested. She wasn’t going to give Helena hers in front of her father since burying your cousin’s housekeeper in gifts was a bit revealing. I kept one present to myself as well. I was going to give Lilja the amber heart when we were alone.

She perched on the armrest of my chair when we were all done. “What do you think of it now?” I asked.

Her eyes were shiny with excitement. “It’s beautiful.” She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I pulled her down on my lap. She kissed me on the lips, then laid her head against my shoulder, and I tightened my grip around her waist as Alma and Helena hung the holders with the candles on the tree.

Chapter Twenty-One

We ate julskinka, meatballs, potatoes, gravy, and red cabbage at my uncle’s house before we all made our way back to mine—my uncle and Karin included. I lit the candles. Once it had been my father’s job, but now, as the head of the household, that task had fallen to me.

“It looks good,” my uncle said with an appreciative nod. “And Miss Norling’s right. It’s a shame to cut down a tree each year. This one we can use again and again.”

I sat down on the sofa next to Lilja. Karin had made glögg, Helena brought out a plate with pepparkakor and knäck, and my uncle, as the oldest among us, set to distributing the presents. He always chose one for himself first. As children, Alma and I had groaned and complained, but now it was a cherished tradition. The gift was from Alma, and it was a gold fob watch she had snuck back from Stockholm in her pocket. Helena opened the lace collars from Alma—the only non-covert present. Helena was officially my employee, but to the rest of the world she and Alma were quite obviously friends and no gift would have been equally as odd as ten. What a balancing act all this was. And on Christmas Eve.

There was an apron and stockings for Karin, a new knife and a set of paintbrushes for me, a book by Fredrika Bremer for Alma, and so much more.

My heart did a silly little trot when my uncle placed the gifts from me in Lilja’s lap. She opened the vase first. “For your room,” I said before she could even thank me. “If you’d like to pick flowers.”

“I love picking flowers.”

Next came the mittens. She laughed when she pulled the wrapping open.

“For your hands,” I said.

“I am always cold.”

“I know you are.”

I glanced at my uncle. Perhaps I ought to have saved a few of the presents for later. He was entirely absorbed in eating a pepparkaka. Good thing he wasn’t exactly the most perceptive sort.

The shawl was last, and I watched Lilja open it.

“Because I know you like red,” I told her.

“It’s my very favorite color.” She slung it around her shoulders and kissed me on the lips. Again, I glanced at my uncle, but he was entirely oblivious, studying the watch from Alma. It would be in pieces on his bench tomorrow.

Lilja slipped her hand into her pocket and took out a small present wrapped in green paper with a pink ribbon. She held it out to me. “For you. Merry Christmas, Selma.”

I took it from her. Foolishly, my hand trembled as I opened it. Inside the paper lay a box, and inside that lay a leather string with seven wooden beads. Each one was painted a different hue of green or blue, and on each one was a series of swirls and curlicues painted in white with the very smallest paintbrush.

“It’s a bracelet,” Lilja said. “I painted the beads myself.”