Chapter 34
“Did Sara really drown?”
Ella inhaled a shaky breath and held it until her lungs burned, then released it with a long sigh.
She could feel Inger eyeing her as they walked together along the concrete path toward Inger’s boat.
Poor Mormor, the sea might’ve stolen her only child.
That could explain why her grandma regarded the water as the enemy, even leaving Ringpynten afterward.
“Leif should’ve told me!” Ella fumed as she ripped a clump of fireweed from the rocks on the side of the path.
“Yep,” Inger said, “if he actually knew. But it doesn’t sound like he did.” Cigarillo smoke curled around her finger.
The two women walked for a while in silence, squinting in the harsh morning light.
As they crossed the footbridge linking the two islands, Ella tore the pink petals from the fireweed and flung them over the railing, leaning to watch them fall to the water.
She wondered if they would sink or break apart in the swells and float out to sea. Her vision blurred again.
At the dock, Inger, bossy as ever, instructed Ella, “Come aboard, put on the life preserver, and for the love of Loki—don’t fall overboard.”
Ella untied the mooring line from the cleat, coiled up the rope, and stepped confidently onto the deck, looking as though she’d boarded boats her entire life.
“You’re learning,” Inger said with approval. “Soon people will think you almost know what you’re doing.”
“Leif showed me,” Ella said, sadly.
Inger slid the key into the ignition and observed, “Leif has kind of been your rock since you came to Lyng?r, hasn’t he?
Obviously he cares a lot about you. You shouldn’t stay angry at him.
I get angry easily,” Inger said with a shrug, “but holding on to anger is about as useful as holding your hands to a flame.”
Ella stared at her in surprise. She hadn’t expected Zen-like thoughts from Inger.
“What are you looking at?”
“I’m looking at you,” Ella said, smiling slightly. “It seems you’re a bit of a hippie chick yourself.”
“Don’t push your luck.” Inger smirked and backed the boat away from the dock.
· · ·
Even though Ella was getting used to boating, being out on rough waters still made her nervous. She gripped the railing on the skiff, her knuckles turning white as Inger quickly accelerated and steered through the waves. The water splashed and sprayed.
“Going fast out here is bloody fantastic!” Inger yelled over the motor.
Ella wanted to shout at her to slow down, but Inger stood proudly at the helm, a calm expression on her face.
Ella longed to be calm too. She shut her eyes to the horrible new image of Sara going under the same water.
More pieces of her childhood clicked, as she remembered how Mormor refused to let her attend a graduation party at Lake Estes.
Things like that made sense now, if Mormor did indeed blame the water for Sara’s death.
Ella raised her voice over the wind and the waves.
“Do you think my grandma knew how my mom died?”
“Surely Hilda already told you how your mother died, though, didn’t she?” Inger slowed the engine. “I don’t want to shout over the noise,” she explained and gave Ella a sympathetic look. “She would’ve surely told you the truth if she knew, wouldn’t she?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t until she died that I started learning about her many secrets. Maybe this was the reason she hated the water.”
Ella filled Inger in, even telling her about the portrait she’d discovered in the cottage bedroom.
She fiddled with the straps on her life preserver as she spoke.
“If I do learn the truth about Sara’s death and my grandma lied, I think I’ll forgive her.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for someone to lose their child.
She obviously never got over the pain, and that’s probably why she couldn’t talk to me about it even decades later.
After coming here, I’ve realized that Sara and I were very much alike .
. . I think maybe Mormor saw that too, and it made her worry more.
She was only trying to keep me out of trouble so that she wouldn’t lose me too. ”
Ella took a deep breath, realizing she’d been firing off her words like she couldn’t get them out fast enough. She laughed in a way that one does when using humor as a cushion from grief. She told Inger about the old man who insisted that Sara had disappeared one day.
“That could be.” Inger lit a cigarillo with one hand, keeping her other hand on the helm.
“Let’s just say hypothetically that Hilda knew.
Maybe she didn’t tell you because she was afraid that you’d ask questions, and she wanted to keep the past in the past. Certainly she had no intention of returning to Lyng?r.
Likely she couldn’t face any of it. But she did keep the cottage, so .
. . she must’ve wanted you to see it someday after she was gone.
” Inger throttled up the engine, then hollered over the thrumming, “I’m sorry you lost your mom though, and that you never got to spend time with her or with your family in Norway. ”
“I didn’t really lose my mom. I never knew her,” Ella shouted over the chugging motor. “Unfortunately, Leif and I have that in common. It’s awful that he lost his father too.”
“Yes!” Inger shouted back. “It’s awful. I don’t think Leif has ever forgiven his dad for driving drunk and killing himself and the others. It’s always been a huge burden for Leif.”
Inger slowed the engine again as they neared Ringpynten. “Erik was the only survivor, and guilt makes people do some very strange things.”
· · ·
Mia joined Ella and Inger at Ringpynten, and the three women snapped on rubber gloves and got to work.
They squirted cleaner onto surfaces, poured bleach into buckets, and did what needed to be done as they chatted.
Ella, who had thanked them profusely, glared at the flies circling the sink, which still contained traces of guts.
She wanted to shove Erik into a vat of rotten fish.
At one point Inger commented, “This smell reminds me of something . . . once a boyfriend cheated on me, so I stuffed his curtain rod full of shrimp before I left. It took him a good week to find the source of the smell. Not that I’m suggesting you should do that to Erik!”
The three laughed grimly. Ella thanked them again for being there, and she meant it, even though she was still hesitant to trust Inger.
“Why would Erik do this?” Mia said as she wiped the refrigerator.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Inger said. Dunking her rag in a bucket, she wrung it out with a hard twist. “Erik’s sick, if he’s guilty of this.”
“He definitely has issues,” Ella said and shooed away a fly.
Mia replied, “Yeah, but we can’t turn our backs on him.”
Ella heard that we and wondered if she were included.
It certainly sounded like it. She wondered what it would feel like to be a part of their group.
She didn’t know, but she was pretty sure that it would mean playing by their established rules, and one of those was giving Erik a lot of leeway, apparently.
She wasn’t sure she could do that, and she doubted if she could forgive him.
There was no question of forgiving Leif though, even if she was still a little pissed at him.
Yes, he’d withheld his theory, but only because she’d told him she didn’t want to hear it!
Ella almost wished she hadn’t chased the past either, because of the mental images she now had of Sara and that horrible accident.
She felt awful for the agony that Leif already carried because of his father’s actions.
If Bjorn were responsible for Sara’s death too—well, she could hardly bear to think what a burden that would be for Leif.
Mia continued, “Erik is broken and messed up, but he’s not evil. He’s never done anything like this. You heard what Oskar said about him—that he couldn’t believe Erik was capable of stealing, let alone vandalism.”
Ella noticed a fish tail poking out of the utensil drawer, so she slid it open, her eyes watering at the stench as she shoved the corpse into the trash bag.
As she scrubbed a soapy sponge over the drawer’s interior, it caught on the edge of the contact paper where it was covering a lump.
She pulled the drawer out farther and ran her fingers over the edge of the curled paper.
“It feels like there’s something stuck under here.” She picked at the corner and peeled it back, revealing a ring with three keys at the rear of the drawer. They were unmarked but appeared too small for the front door. Ella held them up. “Look—I found something!”
Mia and Inger came to her side to study them. “Hmm, clock keys maybe? Mia, what do you think? Clock?”
“Yep, my mormor owned a similar set,” Mia confirmed.
“The large skeleton key opens the front panel, the cylinder-shaped key winds the clock, and the smallest one unlocks a drawer inside. They must go with your grandfather clock in the sitting room. I’ve wondered where the keys were.
Hilda said they’d been lost long ago, but it didn’t matter because people have wristwatches. ”
The women laughed and moved to the sitting room to test the keys.
Dust motes floated in the soft light as Ella pulled a chair over to the grandfather clock and stood on the seat.
With Inger and Mia on either side of her, she did exactly what Mia had suggested; she opened the front panel with the skeleton key and used the cylinder key to wind the clock.
She nudged the pendulum, and it swung back and forth.
“Wow, it actually works! Now to find that compartment.” She stopped the pendulum and ran her hand up inside the clock tower and poked around the walls, finding nothing.
As she patted around the interior of the old clock, Ella wondered what family secrets it possibly held.
The thought was both thrilling and scary.
She might learn something deeply personal about her family, but not necessarily good news .
. . there was a chance she’d uncover something dark and ugly.
If that was the case, she’d rather keep it private from Inger and Mia.
Mia leaned close. “Run your hand farther up.” Ella did as Mia directed, but still didn’t find anything.
“Feel around for a latch,” Inger suggested with impatience, craning her neck to look inside the clock cavity.
Despite Ella’s mixed feelings, she pushed her arm higher into the dark chamber and paused as her knuckles brushed against what felt like a keyhole. “I think I found it.”
“Open it,” Inger demanded.
After three attempts, Ella fitted the small key into the hole and a drawer slid open.
There were two items inside: a wooden trinket and a piece of paper folded into squares.
She retrieved the trinket, leaving the paper to look at later, when she was alone.
She stepped down from the chair and balanced the little object in the palm of her hand: a tiny, hand-carved brown bear.
“It’s adorable,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Yes, it’s cute,” Inger said. She reached for the bear and brushed her fingers over the rotund body. “It looks like Erik’s work. Could be his carving, right, Mia?”
“It might be,” Mia agreed.
Ella slipped the bear into her pocket. “How would one of Erik’s carvings end up in the secret clock drawer at Ringpynten?
” She hoped that the paper might shed more light on this, but she could wait until the others left.
What if it was a love letter? Did you hide both those things in the clock and the keys in the drawer, Mormor? Or was it Sara?
“Let’s see what else is up there.” Inger moved to stand on the chair, but Ella placed her hand on her arm.
“No, that was it,” Ella said. “I’m quite sure.”
As the three of them got back to work cleaning the cottage, the minutes dragged by for Ella.
It took all her restraint not to hurry Inger and Mia out the door.
Finally the cottage was clean, and Inger and Mia shoved off from the dock.
Ella waved a casual goodbye as she gripped the small bear in her pocket.
She hurried back inside and to the clock; her fingers shook as she opened the hidden compartment and grasped the paper.
Sitting down on the sofa, she wiped her hands against her skirt and unfolded the pink paper.
It was an official form, in Norwegian, with a notary stamp. Her mouth went dry as her name, Ella Kari Nilsen, leaped out at her in neat cursive. It was her birth certificate. Her throat ached as she traced her fingers over her mother’s name, Sara Nilsen.
She was afraid to look at her father’s given name.
Mormor had different names for him: one-night stand, wandering traveler, worthless.
She swore that Sara hadn’t revealed his identity, but it was possible that Mormor had known and decided to keep the secret.
Ella finally allowed her eyes to keep moving slowly over the document, to the father’s name.
Erik Olsen.
No, it couldn’t be! She wished it was anyone else—anyone at all—but there was no arguing with the name clearly printed on the official document.
She slumped onto the sofa, slid to the floor, and rested her head on the coffee table, waiting to cry tears that didn’t come. She had nothing inside of her except anger and pain, for all the secrets and lies.