Copper Heart Read Online Free PDF

Finding a suitable entrepreneur to restore the mine had been one of the few things keeping him almost sober before his stroke.
    “I’m sure he knows, but we didn’t talk about it. It would’ve gotten him too wound up.” Dad had unconsciously emptied my glass, so I took it to the kitchen and mixed fresh drinks for both of us. For my mother I poured a glass of dry sherry.
    “I imagine Pena also likes Seppo Kivinen because Seppo’s father used to work in the same shaft with him,” Dad said.
    “Yes, Kivinen is from around here, isn’t he? Did either of you ever have him as a student?” I asked my parents.
    “I did in middle school.” Mom had come from the shower and was standing in the middle of the kitchen in her slip. I noticed she had dropped quite a few pounds since the last time I saw her undressed. The light-blue slip hung unflatteringly from her shoulders, the skin of her arms hung loosely, and new wrinkles were visible on her face. But even so, she wore the same expression as the girl laughing in the engagement picture on the mantelpiece. Her eyes, which were just as green as mine, still twinkled.
    “I remember Seppo very well. He was in the first fifth grade class I taught in the fall of sixty-two when we moved here. That was such a pleasant group of children. There wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about Seppo. He was just an ordinary, quiet boy. He was a good student too, good enough that I wassurprised when he decided to go to trade school instead of taking the college track.”
    “I understand he went to night school later to get into college and then started his MBA in his thirties,” my father added. “His family didn’t have the money to keep him in school. He didn’t let that get in the way of his ambitions though, and I’m glad he’s turned out so well.”
    “Let’s start getting dressed so we can be on time,” I said.
    Going into my old room, I pulled on my purple linen dress. I had bought it for Antti’s dissertation defense, and it was the most expensive piece of clothing I had ever owned. But no one had told me how easily linen wrinkles. Well, I thought, we would probably be standing for most of the gala, so I should make it through the evening relatively unrumpled.
    I rolled on my new lace stockings and climbed into my four-inch heels, which I was finally learning to walk in reasonably well.
    My parents were dressed in the same outfits they’d worn to Petri and Helena’s wedding: my dad in a sober, gray three-piece suit; my mom in a cyan chiffon dress. They were trying hard to create a festive atmosphere, but they were clearly concerned about Uncle Pena. So was I. I was afraid I’d never again see him sitting on the steps repairing some gadget out at the farm.
    “What if I call one last time…” Dad said. The family resemblance between my dad and his brother—both short with broad shoulders—was striking, and their differences were slight. Dad might have been an inch or two taller and he still had some black left in his hair, while Pena had gone gray years before. And while Dad had lost his Savo-Karelian dialect sometime during college, Pena still spoke with the elongated vowels and exaggerated consonants of their youth.
    “He’s better,” my dad said when he returned, digging his car keys out of his pocket. “He’s sleeping, and his heartbeat is regular. So I guess we can go.”
    “Jesus Christ, Dad, you’ve had two glasses of gin! All of us have been drinking. We’re taking a taxi and that’s final.”
    When Dad muttered something about how puny the servings of alcohol had been and about the waste of money, I promised I would pay for the cab. “I’m sure you can drive at least to the school in your sleep, but come on, Dad. I’m a cop. Am I supposed to write you up for drunk driving from the backseat?”
    We had to wait a while for the cab to arrive, and by the time we made it up the hill to the Old Mine, the place was already crawling with people. The