Chapter 3
The first morning at Ringpynten, Ella shook out the throw rugs on the lawn, spinning dust out into the crisp, salty breeze.
She really needed the cottage to shine to attract serious buyers and land a quick sale—and that critical infusion of cash.
As she draped the carpet over the stone wall, the waves slapped against the dock.
She remembered this sound, the steady beating of waves, from the night before, and how it had frightened her until she’d pulled the covers over her head to silence it.
Back home in Boulder, she’d used a different method to block out the sounds outside her window: She fell asleep with headphones clamped to her ears to mute the techno music that thumped from the dance bar on the lower level of her apartment building.
Located between a microbrewery and a sports outfitter, the bar was always packed on weekends, though she’d never been there herself.
Ella was never alone but often lonely. She supposed that cities could be like that—lots of people in close proximity who didn’t always connect with each other.
But she thought it might be something specific to her too.
She had felt for a long time that she had trouble bonding with people in her adopted city.
At the chophouse, she’d found her coworkers difficult to get to know.
Although she was there six nights a week, the staff was constantly turning over because it mostly consisted of college students and ski bums, who tended to come and go.
She had nothing in common with the customers at the bar either.
Most of them loved to hear themselves talk, so Ella listened when they cried over their beers about their latest breakups, and she laughed at their corny one-liners.
They could be so tiresome, though! She’d heard more than her share of chatter about some new technology her customers were calling the World Wide Web.
The boring ones were preferable, though, to the ones who were disrespectful, referring to her as “babe” or “hottie,” and snapping their fingers to get her attention or to signal for another round.
Ella sighed. Their tips covered her latte addiction, the lease on her moped, and fabric for her fashion line.
Not to mention the really big stuff, like her rent, which was past due.
Jeez, she owed so much money right now! She’d hired Petal to help with the soft launch of Little Bird and to oversee the renovations while she was in Norway.
Having no money for payroll yet, she’d promised to pay Petal in cash as soon as she sold the cottage, so she really had to unload the property ASAP.
Petal, for her part, needed the money because she was planning to move back to India.
She was going to star in her eldest brother’s debut Bollywood film.
Ella’s heart squeezed at the thought of her best friend moving to another country.
But she reminded herself that they didn’t really spend much time together anyway, since Petal was often caught up in the lives of her seven siblings.
Ella, an only child, couldn’t even imagine that; it sounded like a lot of work to her.
As money was never far from her mind these days, she sent up another prayer for a quick sale so that she could pay Petal, as well as her bills.
She laughed as she remembered what Petal said right before Ella left Boulder: “Don’t come home until you’ve landed a hot Viking dude! ”
Ha. She had no time for romance.
Little Bird was where she was placing her expectations for happiness—not in some guy. As she surveyed the cheery pink fairy roses surrounding the cottage, she let her mind wander toward her future plans.
She thought about all the customers she’d have once she had the store up and running.
Though she’d always suffered from impostor syndrome and doubts about her talent as a designer, she’d planned on the store grounding her in the local art scene.
Besides selling her own fashion designs, she wanted to support other local artists by carrying their handcrafted goods: beeswax candles, gemstone rings, watercolors of the Rocky Mountains.
She couldn’t wait to invite them to cozy gatherings in her store—opening receptions, special events, maybe even birthdays and holidays.
Ella was looking forward to creating for herself the sense of belonging that had always eluded her.
She imagined that, with time, these customers and local artisans might become the caring and supportive family that she had always wanted.
Ella brought herself back to the present and mentally checked her ever-growing to-do list. She noticed the loose shutter hanging from a window on the upper story.
It needed a new coat of paint. Come to think of it, so did the white clapboard on the house.
She added Find a handyman and Buy headphones (cheap) to her list. Her bank account was almost empty, but she couldn’t think about that right now.
Her watch read 9:00 a.m. According to the Lyng?r Grocery flyer she’d found on the kitchen counter, the store opened in an hour.
While she was in town, she thought she might as well ask around about her mom.
Seeing the painting and its inscription had really gotten under her skin.
She wondered once again about the date on the painting.
How could Ella’s mom have been alive when Hilda painted it?
That would mean she hadn’t died in childbirth, and it would be truly insane of her grandma to make up a story about her own daughter’s death.
Wouldn’t it? Ella could hardly imagine it.
And yet when Ella was a young girl, she’d begged Hilda to return to Norway so she could see where she was born.
Hilda had refused, saying there was nothing left in Norway to call home anyway.
She urged Ella to think of Boulder as home now, and not to be ungrateful or ask for too much.
The trip would cost a fortune, she’d said, and she was having trouble making ends meet as it was.
Hilda had said all that while owning and renting out a cottage all these years and putting aside a sizable nest egg.
Why had she lied about her finances? Why wouldn’t she return to Lyng?r?
And just as puzzling, Hilda had painted that stunning double portrait of mother and daughter, set at Frogner Park in Oslo, but Ella had never even seen her color in a coloring book.
So many of the things her grandma said and did were now questionable.
In light of all this, Ella was ready to believe that she might have lied about Sara’s death after all. But why?
Grief and anger over Hilda’s secrets prickled at the edge of Ella’s thoughts.
Ella did what she had always done when life got difficult: She turned to her art.
Her Olympus OM-4T lay next to her guitar on the stone wall.
She grabbed it and pointed the lens at the cottage, thinking that she’d like to hang pictures of both Ringpynten and Lyng?r in her store to inspire future clothing lines.
Maybe she could even save money on the property listing if she submitted her own photographs.
As she framed shots of the cottage, she found it hard to believe that this mysterious and beautiful little house belonged to her now.
It looked like something out of a fairy tale.
Even if she hadn’t had a family connection to the place, she couldn’t deny it was utterly enchanting.
Back in the cottage sitting room, Ella ran a damp rag over the dusty bookcase.
It was stuffed with tattered paperbacks and also, oddly enough, a framed, whimsical photograph of two pairs of shoes: men’s loafers and women’s ankle straps with bows.
The shoes lay side by side on a colorful blanket that was spread out on the ground.
The blanket was embroidered with bluebells and oystercatchers with spindly pink legs.
She wondered who had stitched the needlework—was it Sara’s or Hilda’s creation?
Maybe that was where Ella’s love of textiles and design came from.
She picked up the photograph, but before she could get a closer look, the dried-out wood frame fell apart in her hand.
The picture poked out between the glass and the cardboard backing.
Ella pried away the cardboard and eased out the photograph. On the back of it was a detailed, red-ink sketch of a woman’s face. Hearts surrounded her hair. Below the sketch was written, For Sara: G?sholmen med min kjaereste. Juli 1962. “G?sholmen with my sweetheart. July 1962.”
That was a year before Ella was born.
Her breath hitched in awe. This had to be a sketch of her mother.
Ella had never even seen an image of her until the night before, because Hilda hadn’t saved anything associated with Sara.
Knowing almost nothing about her mother had made it harder for Ella to deal with her absence, so she’d tried not to think about her at all.
That was certainly what Hilda had encouraged.
As Ella studied the artist’s rendering of Sara’s long, wavy locks, she pushed her own curls from her shoulders.
She didn’t realize tears were running down her cheeks until they pooled on her lips.
She remembered a time when she was five and bubble gum had gotten stuck in her hair, so Hilda marched her to the beautician.
Ella had sobbed, knowing what was coming.
She wiggled as her grandma plopped her into the booster seat at the salon.
Hilda bent down until her face was level with Ella’s. “Be still.” Hilda’s pickled-fish breath caught in Ella’s nose. “You look like a troll, with that messy mane of yours. Same as your mother’s.”
Hilda turned toward the beautician. “Cut it to her ears.”