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mostly, but some of them are super cute. And they wouldn’t mind a bald guy, right?”
    Fiona shook her head. “Just whenever you’re ready.”
    Lars nodded.
    Fiona turned to Jarl. “Which ones do you think are super cute?”
    Jarl ignored her and sipped his beer. “So, can we stay here tonight, or should we take her back to our place?”
    “Whatever you want.”
    “And, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Jarl said, standing up. “Maybe now’s not the best time to bring this up, but, I was actually wondering, because she sleeps in your room every night, and there’s that empty room—we could move in for a while, split the rent with you.”
    Fiona nodded. “It would really help.”
    At the time, Lars didn’t want to admit that he might have needed them even more, so in his classic Lars way, he just told them he’d think about it, and he walked to his room to get dressed for work. As he buttoned his white shirt, he was already thinking where he’d move furniture around, already thinking about the good and the bad and the deep human necessity of it all, and how anybody ever got anything done without family, and how someone could give that up in the amount of time it takes to seal an envelope, with the same saliva once used to seal a marriage.
     • • • 
    Christmas is only exciting when there’s a child in the middle of it, and it’s lovely and sad how three adults with about one and a half jobs between them will pile presents under a tree for a six-month-old baby. Fiona was particularly intent on getting little Eva up to date with somemodern fashions, such as baby leggings, a My Little Pony onesie, and some pink Stride Rite shoes.
    The adults didn’t have wish lists, but Lars was working on a surprise for Jarl. He absolutely didn’t want to make it himself, but he had a lead on a butcher down south of the Cities who apparently sold the freshest lutefisk in the metro area, at some old family-owned shop that had been in operation for eighty years. While he was at work, Lars would make the accompanying cream sauce—which softens lutefisk from being a hostile sensory assault to merely a disgusting one—and he would surprise Jarl with the whole shebang as a big practical joke on Christmas Eve night.
     • • • 
    There was a lot to think about on Christmas Eve. The restaurant was closed, thank goodness, because Lars had planned a five-course meal for Eva, Lars, Jarl, Fiona, and the four people who would drive up from West Des Moines: Fiona’s sister Amy Jo, Amy Jo’s art professor husband, Wojtek, and their kids, Rothko and Braque. Wojtek and Amy Jo were really into food and culture, or so Lars was told. They were attracted to the idea of having their Christmas Eve dinner prepared by a professional chef; that seemed to be Fiona’s selling point. Lars hadn’t met them yet, but being that they were driving so far out of their way and staying the night in a hotel, he felt inspired to pull out all the stops—pork shoulder, winter squash, venison meatballs, wild rice salad, crème brûlée, and, of course, the surprise for Jarl.
    It was ten in the morning, and Lars was just about to make the drive to the old butcher shop to acquire the key ingredient for the surprise when Amy Jo and Wojtek Dragelski’s Mazda 626 pulled into a guest parking space outside. Lars watched from his living room window as the family, who must’ve left Iowa around 6:00 a.m. to arrive here so early, trudged through the snow toward the lobby of his building.
    “They’re here, Fiona,” Lars called out to his brother’s fiancée. Fionaand Jarl had gotten engaged a few weeks before, on Black Friday. Jarl thought they could get a better deal on rings that way.
    Fiona set down her magazine and leapt from the sofa; he’d never seen her move so quickly. “Let’s go down and greet them at the door,” she said, already putting her shoes on.
    The Dragelskis looked like one of those odd families where, but for some vague