December 16
The air was cold and the sky was overcast as Ingrid walked across the frozen heather, and there was a distinct smell in the
cold gusts of wind. She recognized that smell: snow .
And sure enough, a flake landed on her cheek. Then another. This was the good snow, the kind that ignited a glimmer of the old anticipation from childhood: the first snowfall, snowball fights, sledding,
skiing. Blue twilight hours outside, warmth and candlelight inside. Music, the smell of baking. The Christmas spirit.
What had happened to the Christmas spirit amid all of the hullabaloo with flooding and the Dalen gang and guests coming and going?
Ingrid remembered the Christmases with Nana Borghild when she was little. Sometimes they’d been with relatives, and other
times it was just the two of them, but they’d always been here at the hotel. Presents and dinner, always wearing bunads. “We’re
not dressing up for other people,” her grandmother had said. “It’s for ourselves. And for Christmas.”
They’d usually go cross-country skiing together during the first hours of light on Christmas Day. Long, leisurely trips with hot chocolate, oranges, and gingerbread in their backpacks, solid speeds down the slopes. Her grandmother had always been so fit. Did Nana Borghild still ski? It occurred to Ingrid that she didn’t actually know. If they could go skiing together this year, that was yet another reason to be happy about the snow—as long as there wasn’t too much.
Once she’d grown up, Ingrid’s Christmas plans had varied. She visited from time to time, but just as often, she was busy with
some job or expedition and told her grandmother that she wouldn’t be coming home this Christmas, either. She felt a pang of
guilt when she thought about it now. But Nana Borghild had never complained. “Do what you have to, honey,” she’d say. “And
come home when you can. You’re always welcome here.”
The sky had brightened while Ingrid was out, but because of the thick cloud cover, the sunrise was a bit more discreet today.
She’d taken a longer walk than usual, along the scree and all the way over to Djupemyr before she turned around and strolled
back along the south side of Heaven’s Horn. It was Monday and therefore a “weekend” for the hotel employees, in the sense
that the hustle and bustle took an ever-so-slight pause. The weekend dinners and lunches were over, and several of the guests
had left; now, things would be quiet until the coming weekend.
She’d gotten yet another request from one of the big hotel chains last night. The investment director wrote that they wanted to set up a meeting as soon as possible. What were they thinking, doing this right before Christmas? Were they hoping she was desperate enough to sell immediately, or what? Ingrid had succinctly replied that the director could send more information about what they wanted to discuss and then set up a meeting in the new year.
The new year... What would things look like then? Glitter Peak Lodge was in the midst of the most pivotal weeks now. She
didn’t really want to think about the possibility of selling—that would feel like too much of a defeat—but she couldn’t shake
off the thought, either. Everything bothering her right now—the financial worries, the flooding, the mice, the gang from the
village, the electrical system—were they signs that she should give up? Even though she didn’t believe in the supernatural
or any of Maja’s stories about ghosts and goblins, there was one ghost that came to her more and more often: the ghost of
bankruptcy.
What if Ingrid was the one who had to throw in the towel after her family had run the hotel for 130 years? The thought was
unbearable.
God doesn ’ t give us any more than we can handle , a voice said inside her head. It was Brother Giovanni, who should have been in the monastery in Bolzano now, busy planning
new trips. Well, he was in Bolzano now. But he wasn’t following up on his environmental and social work. And he wasn’t at
the table with his fellow monks, enjoying a glass of the delicious wine that Muri-Gries was so famous for. No, he was underground,
in the monastery cemetery.
She missed her friend so much. In many ways, they’d been quite different. Their worldviews contrasted, for one. But for a monk, Giovanni had been remarkably nonproselytizing—at least in words. Perhaps he had been more missionary in action. There were several times when they’d faced challenges in their work, and he’d spoken to her about his faith in God. He believed that God always saw and supported them. Ingrid wasn’t so sure—not then, and even less so now.
The snowflakes were falling more densely as she approached the entrance to the kitchen. Aisha was back from dropping Hussein
off at school and was cleaning up after breakfast with Sunny. There weren’t that many guests to serve today, so Maja had a
couple days off.
Ingrid sat down at the kitchen table, and Sunny placed a cup of coffee with milk in front of her.
“You’re not working too much right now, are you, Sunny?” Ingrid asked. “You are supposed to be studying as well, after all.”
“No, no,” the young girl assured her. “The semester’s over, and I couldn’t be doing anything more educational besides working
here at the hotel right now!” She took her phone out of her apron pocket. “Have you seen Pia P’s story on Insta? There’s going
to be a ton of new bookings!”
Ingrid pulled out her own phone and opened Instagram. Pia had posted the picture of Sunny smiling radiantly in the dining
room, and another of Pia herself with a white woolen hat over her honey-blond locks, standing in front of the hotel silhouetted
against a gray-blue sky, with trees in the background covered with a light sprinkle of snow.
Nice place! If I didn’t run it myself, I’d definitely want to visit, Ingrid thought happily, taking a sip of coffee. She scrolled through a few more posts about winter sales and Christmas gift tips, brushed aside the thought of getting started on gift shopping herself, and went to find her grandmother. Ingrid checked in the library, but it was empty, apart from Barry. She opened the shelf at the bottom of the bookcase, found what she was looking for, then went up to her grandmother’s apartment and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she heard from inside.
Her grandmother was sitting at her desk with a notebook in front of her. She shut it as soon as Ingrid came through the door.
“Good morning, dear,” Borghild said, nodding at the kitchen counter. “You can make some coffee if you want some.”
“No, thanks, I just came from breakfast.” Ingrid sat down on the sofa. “There are some things I wanted to talk to you about.
It hasn’t been easy to find time lately...”
Her grandmother shoved the book into the desk, closed it, and locked it with the key she had on the gold chain around her
neck. Then she sat down in the chair by the coffee table.
Ingrid went on, “I wanted to ask you about the newspaper headline Thor and I found. The one about the girl who disappeared.”
“Oh?” Her grandmother’s face showed no sign of any kind of reaction, and she didn’t seem to want to say anything more, so
Ingrid continued, “Can you tell me anything more about what happened?”
Borghild seemed to be wrestling with her thoughts. She took a deep breath.
“I suppose there’s quite a bit to tell,” she began. Her voice sounded a little different that it normally did—almost inaudible. She cleared her throat but stayed silent for a while.
Ingrid was about to ask more questions when they heard a thump against the wall.
“What was that?” Ingrid asked, quickly getting to her feet. “Is someone outside?”
Nana Borghild stood up, too, but Ingrid was the first to get to the door. She opened it and looked out into the hall. There, on her stomach, her face twisted to the side and her hands in front of her on the carpet, was a pale and limp Freya Wilkins, dressed in a headband, lavender tracksuit, and white tennis shoes.
***
Both Alfred and John Wilkins were quick to respond when Ingrid called. Alfred picked up the slender woman with ease and carried
her into Borghild’s room.
Freya made some sounds as he moved her, but she didn’t seem to be conscious.
“Put her here,” Nana Borghild said, pointing at her bed.
Alfred did as she said, and John Wilkins took off his wife’s headband and sneakers before sitting down at the edge of the
bed. He took her pulse and spoke to her calmly and gently. She was blinking her eyes open by now but still hadn’t said anything.
“Could I ask you to please bring the medical bag that’s in our room?” Wilkins said to Alfred. “She probably had a sudden drop
in blood pressure.”
He turned to Borghild and said, “We might have to adjust her blood pressure medication. It’s been going up and down lately,
and now she’s gotten it into her head that she’s going to start exercising, too.” He gestured at the tracksuit.
He turned back to his wife and stroked her cheek. “How are you doing, honey? Sweetie, are you awake?”
It was the first time Ingrid had heard him speak that way. John Wilkins was always friendly and calm, both to his wife and to others, but now he looked worried. Was it normal to be in a daze for so long after fainting? Could something be seriously wrong with her?
Suddenly, Freya opened her eyes and looked around the room, but she was clearly having trouble focusing her gaze. Did she
know where she was? She didn’t seem to recognize any of the people sitting and standing around the bed, not even her husband.
But as she turned her head toward the wall, a jolt went through her, and she struggled to get up onto her elbows. Then she
lifted her head to see better.
Ingrid followed her gaze.
Strange. There was only an old painting hanging there, the one of the two bunad-clad young girls on either side of a birch
tree. They had long braids—one blond and the other brown. There wasn’t really anything special about the painting. The subject
matter was traditional, and the craftsmanship seemed acceptable as far as Ingrid could tell. Painted by a traveling artist
in 1961, wasn’t that what her grandmother had said?
But Freya looked as though she’d seen a ghost. She stared at the picture and moved her lips. Suddenly she sang, hoarsely,
but in perfect Norwegian, part of a traditional lullaby:
Sulla meg litt, du mamma mi,
skal du f? snor til tr?ya di.
Then she fainted again.
***
Thor sat down at his usual table in the far corner. He was early. He looked around as his finger traced the grooves on the table. The furniture in the café area at Dalen Gas & Grill had been the same since the 1980s. Maybe even longer than that. Four tables and sixteen chairs. Each table had a simple candleholder and a basket with ketchup, mustard, salt, pepper, and french fry seasoning. Wagon wheels and old Coca-Cola advertisements hung on the walls. The owner, Olga Plassen, sat behind the counter, and as far as Thor could tell, she was also sitting in the same position as she had been since the 1980s, her sturdy legs planted on the floor, her arms crossed over
her ample bosom, and her eyes fixed on the front door. Every time the bell rang, she rose heavily and fixed her gaze on whoever
came in. If it was someone she knew, they were honored with a nod. If not, she was content with staring at them as though
she could extract their order, payment, and all of their secrets through sheer hypnotic force.
Thor had gotten a nod when he arrived. After all, he had been a regular customer here since his teens. He paid for the gas
he’d filled up his truck with outside and ordered two Cokes and two Dalen Grill Specials with cheese and double fries.
The bell rang again, and the Muskox Calf entered just as Geir Plassen, Olga’s son, came out from the back room with two enormous
plates of food. The Muskox Calf was still wearing his overalls from the workshop, and his thin hair was sticking up in all
directions. He waved at Olga as he walked across the room. He sat down across from Thor and smiled when he saw the burgers
that Geir silently placed on the table in front of him. Karl hadn’t been difficult to convince when Thor dropped by the workshop
earlier that day and offered to treat him to a meal after work. Fortunately, no one else from the Muskox clan had been around,
and there was every indication that the thought of burgers had been just the thing to help Karl forget the caution he’d shown
the past few times they’d met.
“You know what I like, Thor,” Karl said.
“Yes, I know what you like, Karl,” Thor replied. “Because I like the same thing.”
Karl shook a generous helping of salt over the fries before diving into the food eagerly. Thor took a bite of the burger.
He had to wait until they’d satisfied their hunger before he could try to steer the Muskox Calf toward the topics that had
preoccupied Thor recently.
“How are things at the workshop these days?” he asked, dipping a fry into the ketchup. “Anything new?”
The Muskox Calf nodded enthusiastically.
“Got a Mercedes-Benz 220S from 1957 in last week!” he said. “Einar Langmoen bought it. My dad has kept the parts for one of
those since we got a broken one years ago.”
He continued on with a detailed description of the work that needed to be done on the vehicle, but Thor was only half-listening.
Apparently, he needed to get straight to the point.
“Hey, that day you came to see me,” he said. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”
Karl’s eyes wandered a bit before he started shifting around some burned fries with his index finger.
“No...” he said. “It was just that... nah, nothing really.”
“Karl,” Thor said. “You asked if I’ve been up at Glitter Peak a lot lately. I don’t think that was for no reason.”
Karl didn’t answer.
Thor went on, “I’ve gotten the impression that a lot of strange things are happening up there these days. It almost seems
like some people in the village are actually working against the hotel. Do you know anything about that?”
Karl just kept moving the fries around, driving them between salt and ketchup leftovers on his plate as if it were a racetrack and the fries were toy cars.
“Ingrid told us that there have been a lot of cancellations,” Thor continued. “And then a bunch of kids were up there on Friday
and scared the guests. And the flooding... but I guess that couldn’t be...”
The words hung in the air. Thor cleared his throat and looked at his childhood friend again. “You haven’t heard anyone say
anything?”
Karl rubbed the back of his hand over the corners of his mouth and stared out the window. “You know,” he said, finally fixing
his gaze on Thor again, “Uncle Bernt told me not to say anything about it. He said there were so many people around asking
all kinds of questions, it was best to keep my mouth shut. But I guess it’s okay if I give you a little hint.”
He picked up the ketchup bottle and turned it upside down, then laboriously drew two letters on the plate. An X and an O . Red ketchup on the scratched white stoneware. What on earth was that supposed to mean?
Thor didn’t have time to ask before the bell rang again. The door opened, and Olga stood up and nodded. Thor felt disappointment
spreading through his body—but also another, darker feeling. A broad-shouldered figure came stomping across the room toward
their table. It was Hallgrim “Muskox” Dalen.
Hallgrim crossed the room, gave his grandson a stern look, and put a heavy hand on Thor’s shoulder.
“Well, well, boys,” he said. “Sitting here eating burgers and drinking Cokes and having a chat—without a care in the world. You should be getting home to your mother and father now, Karl. There’s plenty of work to be done. And you, Seter.” Hallgrim squeezed Thor’s shoulder so hard that it ached. “Don’t you have a farm to look after? Things’ll go downhill fast with you piddling around. Seter Farm isn’t quite debt-free yet, either, as I recall. Remember that your father borrowed money from me for the tractor when the bank wouldn’t lend him any more. He wouldn’t be happy to hear that you’re wasting both time and money here.”
***
Thor kicked off his shoes, hung up his work clothes in the mudroom, and locked the door behind him. He didn’t normally do
that, but today he did it almost automatically. On any other day, he might have paused for a moment in the hallway, looked
at the photographs of the buildings and animals, and thought about the next step in the never-ending process of maintaining
and renovating the farm. Today, however, he went straight into the bathroom, tore off the rest of his clothes, and stepped
into the shower. As he let hot water run over his body, he wished he could let his anxiety run down the drain along with the
soap and the smell of sheep.
But the meeting with Hallgrim Dalen churned round and round in his head.
The threats weren’t exactly subtle. Seter Farm had been struggling for a long time, especially after the recent changes in
agricultural subsidies. And Thor’s father, Thorbj?rn, hadn’t ever been the best with money, to say the least. Now, Thorbj?rn
was retired, hoping his son would be able to run the farm better than he himself had. Hallgrim Dalen had come to their financial
rescue several times—or was rescue the right word? You could just as well say that he set traps for gullible people like Thorbj?rn. People often went to Hallgrim when the bank put its foot down and desperation set in. And Hallgrim could almost always help. But everything had its price. And this meeting was a reminder of what that price was. Hallgrim Dalen had the Seter family in his clutches, and he intended to leverage his position if Thor didn’t mind his own business.
Thor pictured Ingrid’s face—happy and proud as manager of the hotel. Excited and eager as they talked about the hotel’s history.
Serious as she sat hunched over the bills. All of the worries that hung over her, the uncertainty about what kind of game
she and the hotel were wrapped up in. And when he had these thoughts, Thor wasn’t so sure whether he could just mind his own business anymore.
He had to find out what this was all about, both for his own sake and for Ingrid’s. Ingrid Berg, who’d smiled her bright smile
and waved goodbye to Dalen and Glitter Peak so many years ago, but who was now back to run the hotel. He truly hoped she would
succeed. And he would gladly— very gladly—be the one to help her make it happen.
Thor turned off the shower and grabbed the towel hanging on a hook on the wall. His shoulder still ached where the Muskox’s
fingers had grabbed it. He lifted a hand to the foggy mirror and drew the same two letters that the Muskox Calf had drawn
in the ketchup: XO .
***
From Borghild Berg’s diary:
I suppose I do know why Hallgrim is the way he is. It’s all because of what happened with Charlie. He thinks it was my fault. But he doesn’t know what really happened. I could have made it easier for myself by telling him the truth a long time ago. I made a promise, though, and I’ve kept it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. But now it’s started coming to the surface again, everything that’s been buried so deep for such a long time. And now she is here. I should have realized it right away. Those eyes.
The hand holding the pen trembled over the diary. Maybe Borghild had understood it right away—how it was all connected—on a subconscious level. But she hadn’t been able to turn her gut feeling
into a conscious train of thought, perhaps because she couldn’t really believe it. And it had been far too long since she’d
seen such eyes. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe she was remembering wrong.
Now Ingrid has started asking questions. She comes along with this newspaper and wants me to tell her more. And I’m going
to. I was about to, or at least to start explaining, but then Freya fainted outside my door.
What was she doing there? Was she listening? Or was that also a coincidence?
What definitely wasn’t a coincidence was Freya’s reaction when she saw the picture on the wall—surely this must be proof that
what I’ve been thinking is true? Or does it just show that she’s overly excitable, and I’m making connections that aren’t
really there?
Borghild shut her diary, stood up, and found the thick cardboard folder at the back of the closet. It was closed with twine that felt stiff under her fingers. It had been many years since it had last been opened. She thought she smelled dust when she put it on the table in front of her. Dust and grief.
Darling B,
Last summer was a dream
A dream filled with heather and blue skies, warm days and bright nights,
laughter and breath and skin and warm hands.
I didn’t know before. I didn’t know that life could be like this.
That something could feel so good.
We’ll be together forever, you said.
And we believed it at the time. That it could last forever.
It seems like such a long time ago. Everything has changed.
In reality, there was so little time left.
You know why I have to do this.
Thank you for helping me.
Your C