Chapter 17
Suddenly Hitched—What a Trip!
Dear Trixie,
It’s me again. I apologized, asked what my daughter wanted, and practiced Not Talking. It worked!
We had a real conversation, a wonderful hug, and I thought we were golden.
Then at Suomenlinna Fortress she asked about my wedding to her dad. She wanted to know how I knew he was the one. And if I ever had doubts. I froze. Because her father wasn’t my first engagement.
At twenty-six, I was engaged to someone else. For three years, and we had the whole wedding planned and invitations sent. Two weeks before the ceremony, I called it off.
My parents were furious. His family threatened to sue. It was a disaster.
I met her dad six months later, and it was completely different. But I never told her because I was embarrassed I’d almost married the wrong guy. So when she asked about doubts, I said, “Everyone has doubts, sweetie.”
She looked at me like she knew I was lying. “You’ve never had your heart broken. You don’t know what this feels like.”
I DO know. But I’m too chicken to admit I almost made the same mistake she’s avoiding. Should I tell her?
—Keeping Secrets in Helsinki
Dear Keeping Secrets,
YES.
Immediately. Stop hoarding the exact story she needs like an emotional dragon sitting on a pile of gold you refuse to spend.
Your daughter thinks she’s the only woman in this family who’s ever bailed on an engagement. And all the while you’re sitting on a called-off wedding from decades ago because you’re embarrassed you were human in your twenties?
If I were you, I’d tell her something like this: “I’m sorry, I wasn’t exactly telling the truth at the fortress.
I do know what it feels like. I called off my own engagement two weeks before the wedding.
I never told you because I was mortified.
And calling off that wedding was the best decision I ever made. ”
She’ll be shocked. Maybe annoyed. But she’ll also realize she’s not the first woman in this family to trust her gut over everyone else’s opinions.
Tallinn is next. Tell her tonight. Balcony, dinner, somewhere private. She was brave enough to confess.
Your turn.
—Trixie
P.S. Turns out good parenting occasionally requires admitting you’re a disaster too. Welcome to the club. We have matching jackets.
Day 7: Helsinki, Finland (Fortress, Market Square, sauna culture)
Helsinki greets us with a crisp Nordic morning, all bright sun and icy wind, the sort of weather that makes you believe in fairy tales and also hypothermia. Summer this far north is more of a suggestion than an actual season, and the Baltic clearly didn’t get the memo either way.
I’ve already updated my blog post, Fortresses, Finns, and Felonies, with a cheerful paragraph about exploring maritime fortress history with new friends, which is code for investigating murder suspects at a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The photos are mostly stock images of Suomenlinna because I haven’t actually been there yet, but nobody reads travel blogs for accuracy anyway.
They read them for the felonies.
This morning’s double breakfast situation involved Finnish specialties I can barely pronounce but absolutely demolished.
Karelian pasties—think open-face savory pie filled with rice porridge, a little like a creamy risotto—with egg butter at the Blue Water Café, followed by smoked salmon and cloudberry jam at the Main Dining Room.
I don’t know what a cloudberry is, and I’ve decided I don’t need to. Some relationships work better without questions.
Bess, Nettie, and Marina were equally committed to the carb-loading effort.
Between the four of us, we cleared a warm blueberry pie with vanilla sauce, a raspberry Runeberg torte, a plump little almond cake wearing a crown of jam and icing, a strawberry cream cake tall enough to cause a scene, and a tower of korvapuusti, which are Finnish cinnamon rolls whose name translates to slapped ears.
I didn’t ask whose ears. Some questions, much like the cloudberry, are better left alone. Nettie personally accounted for three of the slapped ears, a fact that will matter shortly.
Ransom made a brief appearance before vanishing to handle security matters, which I’m choosing to interpret as strategic avoidance of Nettie’s chaos.
Wes, however, is joining us for the fortress excursion, because not even an active murder investigation can keep a smitten sea captain away from a certain crimson-haired cruise director. And I fully approve.
Today marks our first steps onto Finnish soil, and we’re spending them at Suomenlinna, the sprawling sea fortress parked on a cluster of islands out in the harbor.
The Velvet Vikings booked the excursion as a group for their Shieldmaiden Strength photo shoot, and where fifty suspects go, I go. It’s not stalking if there’s a body count.
The Emerald Queen slid right up to the dock this morning, no tender boats required, which suits me fine. Tender boats and double breakfasts are natural enemies, and I refuse to make my breakfast choose sides.
Helsinki introduces herself the moment we step off the gangway.
The city sits low and graceful along the water, mint and cream and butter-yellow buildings standing in tidy rows, and above the rooftops the great white cathedral lifts its green domes into the sun, like a wedding cake presiding over the whole affair.
Trams hum and ding along the waterfront, seagulls argue over the fish stalls, and underneath it all runs the soft murmur of the Finnish language, which is all rolling double vowels, a lullaby with teeth.
The air smells of sea salt, strong coffee, and something fried and sugary that I fully intend to track down later, and I’ll confess it right here—Finland is winning me over completely. If a place could give you a warm hug while charming you with its culinary delights, it would be this one.
From the pier, a shuttle zipped us over to Market Square in a matter of minutes, where vendors under bright orange canopies were selling smoked fish, paper cones of sweet summer strawberries, and fur hats year-round, because Finnish weather makes no promises, and the Finns have all graciously adjusted.
The ferry to the fortress leaves straight from the square, and it chugs across the choppy Baltic with fifteen minutes of open water between me and my entire suspect list. I stand at the railing watching the harbor shrink behind us while Nettie turns an alarming shade of green beside me.
It’s not her color. Very few people can pull off seasick chartreuse.
“I don’t feel so good,” Nettie moans.
“You ate three cinnamon buns for breakfast,” Bess says from her spot on the bench, looking perfectly comfortable and completely unsympathetic.
“I was carb-loading for adventure!”
“You were being greedy.”
“Same thing!”
“One of them ends with you hanging over a railing, Nettie. The other one doesn’t.”
“Then hold my earrings.”
The fortress islands rise ahead of us, six segments of land connected by bridges and bristling with fortifications from the 1700s. It looks as if a giant built himself a very aggressive toy castle and then wandered off for three hundred years.
Cannons point out to sea. Stone walls climb up from the rocky shores. Red-roofed buildings huddle between the ramparts, keeping their heads down the way smart buildings do.
It’s dramatic. It’s historic. And it’s freezing cold despite being midsummer.
Finland runs on its own thermostat, and no one is allowed to touch it.
Behind us, Helsinki glitters in the sun, and I’ll say this for Finland’s capital—she’s been charming me since the gangway.
According to the ship’s daily newsletter, the Seabreeze, which I gobbled up this morning, the Swedes founded the city back in 1550, the Russians helped themselves to it for over a century, and the Finns finally got the keys in 1917 and have been quietly perfecting the place ever since.
And I do mean quietly. Finns are famously the least chatty souls in Europe, and yet this country keeps getting crowned the happiest on earth, year after year. I suspect the two facts are related.
A country not big on small talk but big on happiness? I’ll take it.
They also drink more coffee per person than any other nation on the planet and own more saunas than cars. Three million saunas for five and a half million people. Caffeine, silence, and a good hot steam. These people solved life while the rest of us are still looking for the instructions.
Magnus materializes beside me and stares at the approaching fortress with a look of disdain. “This is what passes for fortifications now? Built in the 1700s? This is practically modern. In my day—”
“You mean in Gerald Winklebottom’s day?” I mutter under my breath.
He freezes solid as a statue, rage written all over his face. Even his beard looks offended. “We do not speak that name.”
“Gerald the accountant?” I bite back a smile.
“I will haunt you with renewed vigor,” he growls.
“You’re already haunting me with questionable vigor.” True as gospel.
“I can make it worse.”
He can’t. I’ve seen his best work, and it involves a lot of dramatic hovering and the occasional light breeze. I have a feeling his real talent lies with a calculator.
The ferry docks with a bump that sends Nettie lurching toward the railing. Bess grabs her by the back of the jacket without so much as looking up from her bench. She’s done this before. It’s safe to say she’s about to go pro.
“Try not to lose your breakfast at a Finnish national heritage site,” Bess warns.
“I make no promises.”
“You never do,” Bess sighs. “It’s your only consistent quality.”
We disembark onto the main island, and the fortress swallows us whole in the nicest possible way.
The Swedes started building this place in 1748 to keep the Russians out, which worked beautifully right up until the Russians took it anyway, and now the Finns own the whole gorgeous pile.