The Forest Lodge – Part 2: Mushroom Season

In September, the mushrooms came up.

Klaus took her into the forest at dawn with two baskets and a pocketknife. The trees stood tall and dark and dripping, the floor thick with moss and fern. Shafts of pale light fell between the trunks. The air was cold and sweet with the smell of wet earth.

"Here," he whispered.

Under a spruce, in a drift of needles, a cluster of golden chanterelles glowed like lamps. Ingeborg gasped. He knelt and cut one carefully at the base and put it in her palm. It was soft and apricot-coloured, smelling faintly of fruit.

"They only grow where the soil is old," he said.

"Like us."

His beard twitched. "Like us."

They gathered for two hours, silent and happy, moving through the trees together. Ingeborg's basket filled. A woodpecker hammered somewhere above. A roe deer lifted its head from the ferns and watched them, unafraid.

In a mossy clearing, they stopped to rest. Sun poured gold through the leaves. Klaus took off his hat and sat on a fallen log, and Ingeborg sat beside him. Their baskets stood at their feet, heaped with mushrooms.

"I have not spoken so much in eleven years," he said.

"You're very good at it."

"It is the company."

"Can I ask you something?" said Ingeborg.

"Yes."

"May I kiss you, Klaus?"

His hands stilled on his hat. He looked at her for a long, grave moment. "Yes," he said. "And if you say stop, you must teach me to dance."

"I'd teach you anyway."

She kissed him, gentle and certain, a hand against his bearded cheek. He kissed her back with a slow, trembling sweetness, tasting of coffee and cold air. The forest stood round them, hushed and green. A late bee drifted through the light.

When they parted, both of them were smiling.

"Green?" he asked.

"Green," said Ingeborg. "Very green."

She cooked the chanterelles that night with cream and parsley. He came to dinner in a clean shirt. He stayed.

More mature romance stories: Autumn in Quebec · The Quilting Circle · The Silver Ballroom