by Isa Hansen
“Not that I’m aware of.” He scooted back, out of the light from the lantern, his eyes now dark in the shadows of the dim booth. “Why?”
“Just wondering,” Ebba said and gave him a small, innocent shrug.
“I should go.” Hans pulled the school yearbook away from Celia. “I just thought you deserved to know,” he said to her. “Since clearly you’ve been experiencing the presence of Liv.” He shoved the yearbook into his bag and gulped down his whiskey. He nodded to the girls while rising from the booth and took quick strides to the door.
Celia and Ebba stared at each other. After Hans pushed his way through the pub door and the bell clanged his departure, Celia said, “There’s something about a fire.”
Ebba nodded knowingly. “Mm. He took off real fast after I mentioned that.”
There was a beep. It was Ebba’s phone. She looked down at it. “Oskar’s over at Göken. Wonders if we want to meet him there?”
“Yeah, sure,” Celia said. She brought out her own phone and pressed stop on the recording.
They left the restaurant soon after.
Back outside, Celia stopped briefly, focusing on the line of parked cars on the street. The car she saw earlier was gone.
She and Ebba linked arms, following along the river channel to get to the pub at the other end of Handelsgatan.
Göken had a much younger crowd than Ming House and was far busier.
Oskar met them at the door. “I’ll get you something to drink,” he offered.
“Stor stark,” Ebba said. Celia had learned that “stor stark” literally meant “large strong” and was a request for a glass of the house beer.
“I’ll have the same,” Celia said.
Oskar disappeared into the crowd and Celia said to Ebba: “Just going to the restroom.” She beelined for the WC sign at the back of the room.
She slipped into the bathroom that was claustrophobically small. A square window was slanted out to the back courtyard, letting in a chilly draft. She sat down on the cold toilet seat, trying to navigate through her scattered thoughts.
Liv Sörensson.
Sörensson.
Not Lindberg.
So, what did that mean, that Liv had been put up for adoption?
Her dad knew nothing of her.
What about Erik? Who’d actually stayed in Sweden. Would he be any more in the know? Celia rested her head in her hands. Her eyes took in the pattern of the tiled floor while her thoughts drifted. Her meeting with Hans gave a few answers but left her with a whole set of new questions.
Pounding on the door. An impatient female voice swore in Swedish.
Celia got up and washed her hands and splashed water on her face. Upon leaving, two teenaged girls elbowed past her.
Back in the main room of the pub, she found Oskar and Ebba at a corner table. She joined them and understood from their conversation that Ebba had filled in Oskar on the details from their meeting with Hans.
Oskar pushed a beer in her direction.
“Thanks,” Celia said. She slid into her chair and took a foamy sip. The beer was sharp and aromatic with a citrusy aftertaste. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” Oskar replied. “We’re good.”
“I’ll buy next time.”
She took another sip of her drink, a dark thought dawning. She said: “What if it wasn’t Liv who did anything with a fire?” She traced her finger around the ice cold beer—leaving a snakelike pattern along the glass. “What if it was someone else and Liv actually died in the fire?”
“And Hans’s story of Liv drowning was all made up?” Oskar asked.
“That would be a really stupid lie,” Ebba countered. “It didn’t happen so long ago that we can’t verify what happened to her. Also, she was the one with the key to the storage locker and the gasoline tank.”
“Although other people could have had keys,” Celia said.
“That’s true,” Oskar agreed. “You can always make copies. Someone else could have put it in there, maybe even after she died.”
“Let’s find out what happened to her.” Ebba typed the name Liv Sörensson into her phone. Oskar and Celia leaned over to view the screen. They waited for the search to load.
“You know, just because she was a dandelion child doesn’t mean she was necessarily doing well all around,” Oskar said. “It’s possible her accident was self-inflicted.”
“What, is dandelion child a reference to something?” Celia asked
Ebba nodded, her eyes on her phone.
“Oh.” Celia had thought that was a random note her grandfather wrote on the back of the photo that meant something only to him. “I had no idea that was actually a thing.”
“It’s a thing,” Oskar said, watching as Ebba scrolled through the search results. “It means a child who doesn’t have good circumstances at home but somehow manages to cope with their situation.”
“It’s a romanticized way of saying a child of alcoholics,” Ebba added. “My friend Lina’s dad’s a drunk and she says ‘just call us what we are instead—alcokids.’”
Ebba’s attention was getting more focused. “Here, I found something. There’s an article on drowning and swimming accidents. Statistics from the last 40 years. Liv is mentioned.”
Oskar and Celia huddled close to Ebba, the three of them scanning the screen.
“She died on October 2nd, 1984,” Ebba said. “She suffered from a cramp and drowned. That means Hans’s story checks out.”
Celia thought about it. “Isn’t it weird that she’d go swimming in a lake so late in the year? I mean, who goes swimming in October?”
Ebba shrugged. “Most wouldn’t, but it’s not that strange. If she was a serious swimmer she could have tried to get one last outdoor swim in for the season. There are crazy people who even do it in the winter. Ice swimming.”
The door to the pub opened and a group of teens drifted in. Celia recognized some of them; kids from school. There was movement and the next time she looked up she saw Alex. He was passing along with the group—staring at her with a scowl. When their eyes met, he swiftly turned his head away.
“Be back in a sec,” she said to Ebba and Oskar.
She nudged her way through the crowded room to the bar where Alex was retrieving a debit card from his wallet.
“Hey,” she said.
“Busy studying I see.” He waved his card to where Oskar and Ebba were sitting.
“No, it’s not like that.”
She could hardly believe that it was just earlier that day that Alex had asked if she wanted to hang out. It had been a long crazy day to say the least.
“Why don’t you just go back to your friends and have a nice life,” Alex said, shifting away from her.
“No, wait,” Celia said. “I can explain.”
But Alex had turned to the girl standing next to him, a girl with bouncy blond locks and a bouncy bust. He said something to the girl that made her laugh and bounce all the more.
He was making it clear to Celia that he was done with her.
***
Over the weekend, Celia was under the weather with a cold and stayed home.
She wanted to take advantage of the down time to catch up on schoolwork and attempted to put Liv out of her head. But every time she tried to study she saw Liv smiling up at her from the class photo—with that face that was so eerily like her own.
Little sound bites from her conversation with Hans kept popping into her head: I’m not sure her death was an accident … She pushed herself to the extreme; she was aiming for the Olympics … It wasn’t her death that was strange, it was how she disappeared.
Meanwhile, Celia’s own questions kept churning and expanding. The central question being: How did Liv fit into her family? There had to have been family ties that for some reason were kept under wraps.
Erik would be home from his trip on Monday.
Whatever doubts Celia had had about talking to him were now completely gone.
The m
ore she thought about it, the more she felt that Erik had to have known about Liv. She would speak to him the very moment he got home. She had to find out if he knew anything about the girl. She was no longer in hesitation mode: she wanted answers.
***
By Sunday night, Celia decided she was feeling well enough to go to school on Monday. Although she was still more tired than usual and the next morning she overslept. She’d made the mistake of setting her alarm for PM instead of AM, and she’d been so out of it that she didn’t wake up on her own. There were definite advantages to the Swedish 24 hour time format, she had to admit.
She gathered her things in a flurry.
There would be no time for a shower. She had already missed her first class, but if she hurried she might be on time for the next one. She grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt that were slung over an armchair, hoping they were clean. Screw it if they weren’t.
Minutes later she was running to the bus.
She arrived at school sweaty, out of breath, and late for class.
She was so caught up in her own tardiness—she hated being late—that at first she didn’t pay attention to the off-putting smell in the hall. Suddenly the stink was overpowering. What was that?
Opening her locker door, she nearly gagged. The putrid waft of rotting eggs and death was coming from her locker.
With horror, she noticed her summer coat hanging from its hook. She’d left it there over the weekend. The coat pockets were dirty and greasy and bulged out like something was in them. She poked at the closest pocket, quickly retracting.
The pockets were filled with fish. Disgusting, scaly, slimy little fish.
“Whoaa!” Ebba’s voice from down the hall.
She walked toward Celia with her hand pinching her nose. “What just happened?”
“Stinking rotten fish—” Celia grimaced toward her locker. “In my my coat.”
She stepped aside so Ebba could take a look. “That’s surströmming,” Ebba said, her face still scrunched up.
“Sur-what?”
“Just the most disgusting food available for consumption.”
“People eat this?”
Ebba nodded. “They don’t usually decorate lockers with it, though. Nicole must have given a hand job to someone in the janitor’s department.”
Celia jerked her head toward Ebba. “You think Nicole did this?”
“You have any other enemies?”
Alexander’s angry face at the pub flashed before her. “No,” she said with some hesitation. “Not that I know of.”
“Well, if you care about this coat you should get it washed right away.“
“I do,” Celia screeched. “I love this coat.”
It had been a ‘just cause’ present from her mom. Julie had this knack for gift giving. She always seemed to find the right thing to give at the right time. Celia had instantly adored the fitted celery green coat with its cute buttons and oversized belt.
Celia exhaled. “OK, I guess I’m going home.” She reached in and looped the coat with one finger, holding it as far away from herself as possible. Soon she was leaving school and headed toward the bus stop. Before boarding, she found a roadside stick and mucked out as much fish and grime as she could.
On the bus, two younger teenagers made faces and moved away from where Celia was sitting with her coat bundled up into a tight ball.
She gritted her teeth. Was this Nicole’s doing?
A small nagging feeling made her think of Alex. And yet Celia couldn’t imagine him doing such a thing. Just because she blew him off? That didn’t seem possible. It had to have been Nicole.
When Celia got home, Erik’s car was parked in the driveway.
She slowed at the sight of it, then hurried into the house.
First things first. She tossed the coat into the washing machine and started the cycle. Then she cleaned up as quickly as she could, scrubbing her hands. She’d gotten some fish slime on herself earlier when she tried to scrape out the coat.
While swinging herself into a clean shirt, she rifled through her desk drawer for the picture of Liv. With the photo in hand, she creaked up the stairs and down the hall toward Erik’s office. She tapped on the door.
“Kom in,” she heard Erik say from the other side of it.
She stepped in. Erik was sitting behind his desk, hunched over a document.
“Celia?” he said, surprised. “I thought you were in school.” He wrinkled his nose. “Is that funny smell coming from you?”
“Long story,” Celia said curtly. “Erik, I have to ask you something.”
“Yes?” He seemed taken aback by her serious demeanor.
She approached his desk and set down the photo in front of him.
“What do you know about this girl?”
CHAPTER 10
Erik looked at the photo for a long time.
Celia turned it over to show the inscription.
“Where did you find this?”
“It was at farfar’s house.”
Erik was quiet, but he nodded a response.
Celia pulled a chair toward herself and sat down on the opposite side of his desk. Behind him stood rows of bookshelves with books all in pristine shape, organized by category and size. Erik’s office was the epitome of tidiness and order. Everything was in neat stacks and perfectly positioned, not so much as a pen was lying haphazardly. The space was immaculate: looked more like an Ikea showroom than an actual workspace.
“I know who she was,” Celia began. “Or, kind of … I found out that her name was Liv and that she died at a young age. But I don’t know how she’s connected to us. Nobody seems to know that.” Celia spoke quickly with a sense of urgency and demand.
“Who’s been talking about Liv?” Erik’s voice was filled with caution.
“Farmor, for one,” Celia said. “When I went over to the nursing home, she thought I was Liv.”
A furrow appeared between Erik’s brows. “What did she say?”
“I didn’t understand everything she was saying, but she seemed to be sorry about something.”
Erik pursed his lips and pulled a pen from its holder, twirling the pen between his fingers. “Liv was your grandfather’s child,” he finally said. “She was my half sister … she was the product of an affair. An affair that split up my parents.”
He put the pen down, leaning his elbows on the desk.
Celia absorbed what Erik had just said. She had quietly wondered if Liv’s connection to them could have been something like this, yet it didn’t feel real. When she didn’t say anything, he went on:
“After the divorce, as you know, your grandfather and your dad moved to the States. And it was just me and my mother left in Sweden. We didn’t have anything to do with Liv. I was never told about her, not until after she died.”
“You never knew you had a sister?”
“I had no idea. Liv was seven years younger than me. We were never at the same school; we didn’t move in similar circles.”
“But farmor recognized me as Liv.” Celia tilted forward. “She talked to me as though they’d known each other—like they’d had a relationship of some kind. Why would she have talked like that?”
Erik looked flustered. “I don’t know why. I can’t answer that.”
“What about farfar? He must have stayed in touch with Liv and her mother?”
Erik shook his head. “Staying in touch wasn’t something he was ever good at. Once he was gone, he was gone. He’d leave and absence would take over.” Erik hesitated before he continued, his eyes on some abstract spot on the wall.
“Lars and Jonas were supposed to come back to Sweden after two years. We weren’t meant to all be away from each other for so long. But my father received another assignment in America. Apparently something too good to give up. Jonas had adapted and was doing well, and so they stayed. They never moved back.”
Celia sat with that for a moment.
“I never knew that’s how it happened. I mean
, with you and my dad.” She’d always thought it was odd how her dad and uncle had grown up in different countries, but now it hit her just how much she’d been protected from the harshness of their situation.
“What were they thinking when they separated the two of you?”
Erik responded, stone-faced: “It was unusual for a woman to file for a divorce the way my mother did. I suppose that gave my father emotional bargaining power … as to how they split us up, I can only imagine my father chose his favorite.”
“That’s horrible,” Celia said quietly. The picture she had of her grandfather didn’t line up with this new image that was emerging.
“Liv was your grandfather’s biggest regret,” Erik said. “That he abandoned her. Liv’s mother was a troubled alcoholic. The girl’s life couldn’t have been easy. He must have struggled with what he’d done to her: that he just left her like that. I suspect he spent a fair amount of time thinking of her, even though he didn’t know her.”
There was a hint of bitterness in Erik’s voice, like there was some meaning beyond the words he was saying, but Celia was too busy focusing on his actual words: Lars and Liv didn’t know each other.
Then why did he have her diary and her clothes?
“Farfar talked about Liv?” Celia asked.
“Rarely. But the only time I saw my father cry was after her death. He was crying for her.”
Celia repositioned the photo, tapping on it. “But what about this picture? If they didn’t know each other, then how did he have this?”
Erik shifted his eyes away and gave his shoulders a rigid shrug. “He may have stayed in touch with Liv’s mother those first years. Maybe the mother gave the photograph to him. I don’t know.”
“I see,” Celia said, but she felt there was more to it. Something they were brushing by. Something he wasn’t telling her. “What about my dad?” she pushed. “How does he not know about her?”
Fidgeting, Erik responded, “We’ve never been good at talking about difficult things in this family. It’s just…” he returned the pen to its penholder and re-stacked a bundle of papers that were already in perfect order. “We don’t talk about things like that. We don’t know each other like that.”
