Chapter 12
I’ve never enjoyed visiting Grandma Gerd. She lives on the south side of Haro, about a twenty-five-minute walk from us, and Mom brings her dinner every three days. Occasionally I can get out of joining her with excuses of homework, and Mom seems almost relieved when I do.
I don’t know why I have to go with her against my will, especially since she doesn’t really want me to go either.
But today I don’t have the energy to protest when she says it’s time to leave.
Instead, I just put on the knitted sweater my aunt brought me from Kiruna last fall.
It’s bitterly cold outside, much colder than is usual for this time of year, and I walk quickly to keep up, my chin buried in my scarf.
Grandma starts criticizing me as soon as I step through the door.
“Haven’t you grown at all, girl? Isn’t that the same sweater you wore last year?”
It sounds like an accusation, as if I’m short on purpose, just to annoy her. She and Mom are both tall and thin, but Grandma Gerd has short white hair, and her face is buried in a mess of wrinkles.
She has strong, brown-tinged teeth, with several missing up top. Once, after a few glasses of wine, Mom told me it was from all those tobacco pouches she puts on her gums.
“Hello,” Mom says and gives her mother a quick pat on the shoulder.
I take off my jacket. I wish Dad had come. It’s always easier with him here. But he got a last-minute job, some compost toilet that needed emptying, so he couldn’t join us this time.
It’s just me, Mom, and Grandma Gerd.
I’m not expected to give her a hug. She looks me up and down as I hang my jacket, and her gaze lingers on my neck.
“I heard about that Sundin boy,” she says.
Mom stiffens. “Yes,” she says blankly. “It’s terrible.”
Her face gives nothing away, but she is compulsively twisting her wedding ring around her finger.
“What do the police think happened?” Grandma asks, looking at me even though she is talking to Mom.
I wonder if Mom will tell her about the police questioning me at school or if Grandma knows about it already. Mom looks like she’s wondering the same thing.
“They’re still searching,” she says after a slightly too-long pause. “A search party was out all night. The police even sent out search and rescue dogs but had no luck. I really feel for his parents.”
Grandma Gerd nods, perching on the seat of her walker. She broke her hip a few years ago and has had difficulty walking ever since. She always wears the same clothes: rough blue jeans that look too big for her and knitted sweaters similar to the one I’m wearing.
“People are lost at sea,” she says to no one in particular. “It’s always happened around these parts, adults and children alike. Lost at sea, never to return.”
The air feels electric. I can’t tear my eyes away from Grandma’s inquisitive gaze, but from the corner of my eye, I can see that Mom has both hands clenched into fists.
“I’ll go and heat up the dinner,” Mom says, picking up the dish of pasta gratin Dad prepared. She leaves me with Grandma Gerd, and I feel a pang of discomfort.
Don’t leave me alone with her.
“So?” says Grandma. The word is loaded with far too many questions.
I don’t say anything. Then I realize I still have my boots on and quickly bend down to undo the laces.
Mom is rummaging about in the kitchen. I hear her turn on the microwave that Grandma got two years ago, when we moved farther north and Mom could no longer visit every day like she used to.
“Did you do it?” Grandma whispers.
I know she is keeping her voice down so that Mom doesn’t hear. This is just between us.
Her icy gray eyes bore into me.
“Do what?” I ask, trying to avoid eye contact.
“The Sundin boy.”
She isn’t even blinking. Just staring at me and waiting. A snake observing its prey.
“Of course I didn’t.”
My voice sounds weak and unconvincing.
Grandma Gerd sits up a little straighter and clasps her hands in her lap. She takes a deep accusatory breath. “If you say so.”
I try to act casual and take off my boots as slowly as possible. When Mom calls out, “Food’s ready!” I wait until Grandma Gerd has laboriously shuffled into the kitchen with her walker. Only then do I follow.
“This is good. Pass my compliments on to Peter,” says Grandma Gerd before she stuffs another forkful of pasta in her mouth.
“Will do.” Mom has taken only a small portion and left most of it untouched on her plate.
Dirty dishes are stacked on the counter. Mom usually takes care of them when we come over. A used tobacco pouch is lying in the sink.
“How are things with him?” asks Grandma. “Is he getting enough work?”
A little piece of green broccoli has gotten stuck between two of her brown teeth.
“He’s doing well.”
Mom pokes the pasta with her fork, and I take another bite even though I’ve never liked pasta.
Mom says I stopped breastfeeding immediately after the accident and refused to eat bread or rice as an infant.
The only thing I would accept was mashed salmon and tuna.
I’ve learned to eat most things now, but I’m still a picky eater.
Even the fish that Dad buys when he doesn’t have time to go fishing himself tastes strange to me. It has an earthy, metallic aftertaste.
I cut my food into teeny, tiny pieces and force them down one at a time. As I do so, I put my hand in my pocket and feel my cell phone. The metal is cold against my fingers.
I haven’t opened the message from Rasmus yet, but I saw what he wrote:
this is my number
It’s the first text I’ve ever gotten from anyone other than Mom and Dad. The only reason I have a phone is so they can get hold of me in an emergency.
There’s a dank smell coming from the cabinet under the sink.
“How’s she doing at school?” asks Grandma.
She isn’t asking me. She hardly ever talks directly to me when Mom is in the room.
“Very well,” says Mom. “Tuva gets good grades.”
Third best in the class, to be precise. But Grandma would just scoff if I said that.
I once asked Dad why she doesn’t like me. He insisted that she does like me, that she’s just old and old people can be weird sometimes.
A nonanswer. One that he didn’t believe himself. I’m sure of that.
“I always wondered about you when you were younger,” says Grandma Gerd. It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s actually talking to me this time. “Never thought we should expect too much from someone like you—”
“Mom!” Mom shouts, and leaps to her feet with so much force that the table wobbles.
The kitchen goes deadly silent.
I shrink back and stare at Mom. She looks furious. Grandma Gerd purses her lips. Her words are still ringing in my ears.
Mom stays standing for what must be a whole minute before she slowly resets her chair and sits down again.
Grandma Gerd resumes eating as if nothing has happened. She slurps the food into her mouth.
“I really hope,” she says after a long while, “that they find that Sundin boy very soon.”
She sounds perfectly calm, as if she were talking about any old thing. The weather, mushroom foraging.
“Before it’s too late.”
I know this last sentence is addressed directly to me.