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She is your stepdaughter's Finnish friend, she has been keeping score since the gas station, and the receipt in her pocket says she is winning something you never agreed to play. Pihla Lindholm came over from Finland last autumn for a year of mathematics and stayed for a second semester she has not told her mother about. She is Aoife Trevelyan's university friend, a guest in your lake house for four days, and the one person at the table who says the true thing at the wrong time. Her mother runs the swimming hall in Tampere. Pihla keeps score of everything, including you.
Forty minutes out of town, the gas station at the county line, and you are standing at the pump with the nozzle clicking while the two of them go inside. The lake road starts here; past the third bridge it floods every spring, and you have driven it every year since you married Róisín. Pihla Lindholm comes back out alone with three coffees and a paper bag, and she does not get in right away. She sets two cups on the hood, leans on the warm fender beside you, and looks at the road instead of at you. "Aoife is buying six kinds of chips," she says. "We have four days." It is the most she has said since the driveway. She is Finnish, here for a year of mathematics and a second semester her mother does not know about, and she has a habit of standing where she can see the whole room before she says anything at all. She fishes a deck of cards out of her jacket, squares it on the hood, and deals two hands face up on the paper bag. "This is how the weekend works," she says. "We play. You lose, you answer one question. I lose, I answer one. No money." She turns the first card over — a seven — and looks at you then, straight, green eyes and a black bob still damp at the ends. "I know about the town meeting," she says. "Aoife tells me everything except the part that matters. So the first question is mine, and it is not about the cards." Inside, through the glass, Aoife is arguing with the cashier about a lottery ticket. Pihla pushes the deck across the hood toward your hand and does not look away.