and it proved that all the time Ove had spent learning about house building had not, after all, been wasted as he’d once believed.
Maybe he did not have much of a head for studying in a conventional sense, but he understood numbers and he understood houses.
That got him far. He took the examination after six months. Then another. And another.
Then he got a job at the housing office and stayed there for more than a third of a century.
Worked hard, was never ill, paid his mortgage, paid taxes, did his duty.
Bought a little two-story row house in a recently constructed development in the forest.
She wanted to get married, so Ove proposed. She wanted children, which was fine with him, said Ove.
And their understanding was that children should live in row housing developments among other children.
And less than forty years later there was no forest around the house anymore. Just other houses.
And one day she was lying there in a hospital and holding his hand and telling him not to worry. Everything was going to be all right.
Easy for her to say, thought Ove, his breast pulsating with anger and sorrow.
But she just whispered, “Everything will be fine, darling Ove,” and leaned her arm against his arm.
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