Dandelion Girl

by Isa Hansen

  “You killed Günther,” Celia said.

  Now Petter turned his gaze outward toward the harbor. “You know, Weber used to make these comments about the girls in gym class, but that was just an act. He wasn’t interested in them. It was the boys he wanted.” Petter gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I always thought it was strange he went for me and not Hans. Hans was the pretty one; I was an awkward and homely child. But then maybe it had nothing to do with the way we looked and everything to do with what he could get away with. Hans had parents he could go to. I didn’t have a support network at home.”

  Celia looked down, scraped at some ice with her heel.

  “So yes, I killed him. I forced him to take poison. I told him he’d die either way, and the poison would be the easier way to go. Hans was there.”

  “And Lottis?”

  “She heard about it. The problem with Lottis is you forget that she’s there. She overheard the conversation Hans and I had afterwards. Hans was scared shitless after the fact. Never realized he was going to be an accomplice into someone’s murder. I told him we were just going to do one last break-in, for old-times’ sake. He didn’t see that one coming.”

  “And Liv? Did you know what happened to her?”

  “I knew,” Petter said curtly. “Not that she was murdered but about the sexual abuse.”

  Celia nodded. That’s what she had expected.

  “She didn’t tell me, she didn’t have to. I saw it on her face. I knew that expression. That expression of shame and guilt that comes from having been forced upon by an adult. I knew what it was like to be forced down in terror and kept down through shame.”

  Petter pushed his hands into his coat pockets. “But instead of feeling sympathetic, I was annoyed. Because she reminded me of myself. Of my own weakness, of my own suffering. It’s something I regret now. That I wasn’t sympathetic toward her. That I did nothing to help her. Günther Weber, killing him, that I don’t regret. I’d do that over and over again. But Liv deserved better. She and I had more in common then I ever wanted to admit.”

  Petter cast a glance at Celia.

  “But she did irritate me—always had, I guess. She had that sort of careful personality that got on my nerves. And then you came around and you irritated me. When Hans told me you were here and that he spoke to you about Liv, I couldn’t believe his stupidity.” Petter jerked his head, vexed. “Hans was never the brightest among us. I had to remind him that any curiosity you had about Liv’s past could very well bring you to our past.”

  “And it did in the end,” Celia said. “I was actually sidelined into believing that Liv and Günther were linked, because Günther Weber’s death record was in Liv’s medical file.”

  Petter cocked his head. “It was?”

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “Huh,” he said. “That must have been me”

  “You?”

  “Yes. I wanted to know what had been written about me, from the school counselor and anyone else for that matter. I also wanted to know what was in Weber’s file. And just for the hell of it, I also checked out Hans, Katja, and Liv. I had a mate round up the files for me: I must have put the Weber documents back in the wrong file.” Petter straightened his cuff. “I’m usually not that sloppy.” He raised a brow at Celia. “Hang on. How did you get to Liv’s medical file?”

  Celia shrugged. “You have your ways, I have mine,” she said, sounding more cheeky than she had intended.

  Petter shook his head at her with an indiscernible expression.

  Celia locked her eyes on Petter. There was one last thing she needed to know.

  “You won’t hurt her will you?”

  “Who?”

  “The school counselor. The old lady who knows about what happened to you.”

  Petter snorted. “Of course not. She was in the business of helping children, not hurting them. I wouldn’t hurt an innocent person.”

  When Celia gave him a skeptical look, he said, “I was never going to hurt you either. I just needed you to believe it, to get you out of my hair. When Hans told me you were going to the police about Vi fem and you were being secretive about it, I decided to pull a favor from someone who owes me down at the station, so we could have a chat.” He shook his head. “You’re an annoying little bugger, you know that?”

  He said that, almost with warmth, Celia thought.

  “Should I take that as a compliment?”

  He laughed, one laugh, it sounded like a fox bark. “Take it as you wish,” he said. Then he nodded adieu. “Take care of yourself, Celia Lindberg.”

  CHAPTER 48

  Spring break was coming up quickly. In a fortnight, Celia would go home to Seattle. She had been cleared by her school to take an extra couple of weeks off. She still didn’t feel ready, but she knew going home would be good for her.

  Well, she didn’t know, but her therapist thought so. She was going to sessions twice a week, and they’d been helping. So Celia decided to trust the therapist on the going home assessment.

  She meant to talk to Oskar before leaving. They had talked, all along, naturally, but always with an element of skirting and deflecting. There was a silence that hung between them. Words that were left unspoken.

  He must have felt it, too, because a text message had come from Oskar:

  Can we talk?

  Then with a troubled look in his eyes, he’d stood at her door.

  They’d sat down, in the living room.

  Erik and Anette were out for the day, so they were afforded the privacy to sit there and talk.

  She said, waiting for the inevitable: “So … how are things going?”

  “My father’s not mad at me any more. So that’s good, I guess.” Oskar’s face was cloudy, staring down at the floor.

  “He’s been angry?”

  “No, not angry, really. Disappointed. That I didn’t come to him when things were getting bad. And anyway, he was never as upset with me as I was with myself.”

  Celia asked, “Your mom? Does she know anything?”

  Oskar cringed. “No, I don’t ever tell her anything that risks her spiraling out of control. It’s not worth it.”

  She nodded. “So…” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “So, I know we started to get involved, and things happened between us…” He inhaled, deep. “But I don’t think I can continue with it.”

  He tucked his hands into the fold of the sofa, head down, voice subdued: “I will always want to be your friend.”

  She saw it coming, and deep down she knew that this was what she needed, too. She needed to heal and find solid ground, not entangle herself in romance. And yet that didn’t stop her heart from twisting into a million little shards that cut straight through her.

  It hurt all the more, knowing they were sitting in the exact same spot where only some weeks ago, they’d cuddled down together. How could that be so near and yet so very far away?

  She swallowed the stone in her throat.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she said.

  “I’ll be here,” he said. “I’m not going away.”

  He quieted, swaying to and fro in his spot. “But I can’t let it go. That you almost died, and I did nothing to stop it.” He ducked his head down. “I can’t sleep at night, and when I do, I have the same dream. That I’m running somewhere, running and running, and I’m always too late.” There was a catch to his breath. “It’s like the dreams I had when I was a child, after Lukas died.”

  He hid his face in his hands.

  After a moment his body was shaking.

  That day it was Oskar who broke down.

  Celia brought herself up on her knees and hooked her arms around him.

  There comes a time in every young person’s life when they begin to realize, more clearly than before, that the world does not revolve around them. Sometimes it happens gradually and other times it hits like lightning. That was a lightning moment for Celia, with Oskar burrowing into her arms, dampening her shirt. That’s
when it became explicitly clear to her that he had his own side of everything that went down; he had his own motivations, his own baggage, his own fears.

  And there were her other friends, with their own stories.

  Everything that happened didn’t just affect her.

  It was a sobering realization, that everything a person does or doesn’t do has its set of consequences, not just for oneself, but for all of those around. Sometimes even for years to come, like rings in the water, creating generations of new rings.

  After Oskar cried, they sat and talked until there were few things left to say. When they finally got to their feet, they hugged. She curved her head against his chest and said: “I’m so sorry, Oskar. I really am.” And then they stood, holding on to each other, for a very long time.

  ***

  Oskar wasn’t the only one with dreams.

  Celia had them, too. Nightmares. Some of them lucid and sharp, others abstract while still leaving a stone of terror deep within that she couldn’t shake when she woke. She was always close to dying in her dreams but never did.

  Did one ever die in dreams? she wondered.

  In one of her counseling sessions, Celia’s therapist suggested gardening. She said it was grounding and hopeful, to plant seeds. So Celia went home and did just that.

  She started in the back garden, toiling in the cool, new earth.

  Anette said Celia was also welcome to work on the flower boxes at the front of the house. She’d been thinking about a new look for them anyway. One afternoon, Celia was going at them. With a gardening spade in one hand, she was creating little trenches in the rich soil.

  All around she could sense the newness in the air, that damp smell of spring before the arrival of the buds and the bulbs, when a voice murmured at her neck: “You want to know why I did it.”

  With a startled gasp, Celia whipped around.

  “You scared me!” she snapped, spade pointed toward Alex.

  Wouldn’t be the first time, she thought. But she wasn’t actually scared. Not this time. She lowered the spade.

  “Why I did it. The question could be alluding to a few different things.” Alex’s tone was casual though his posture was tight and brittle. “But we can talk, if you want.”

  He’d lost weight from his already small frame, and his face looked ashen and tired. Long gone was the bouncy swagger and the crooked flashing smile from when they first met.

  She set down her gardening tool and brushed the dirt off her hands to fully set her attention to him. She had wanted this, to learn his side of the story. Despite everything, she wanted to understand. “That day when I came to Rosenlunden,” she said, “when I stood in the driveway. She saw me, didn’t she, Yvonne?”

  Alex shook his head. “Not Yvonne. My father.”

  He shifted from one foot to another. “You completely freaked him out. I saw him staring out toward the alley with his face twisted up in a haunted expression, and I came to see what it was … it was you. The girl I met at the café. The carefree girl I hung out with at the beach party. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew it had to be something big. Right after we saw you, he locked himself into a room with my mother. Their conversation was quick and muffled, and soon after that, he was on the phone. I checked his mobile when he wasn’t looking, he’d called Yvonne.”

  Alex cut into his story with a dry laugh. “I thought you were a spy or something. Someone who’d come to take down the family business. Seems ridiculous now, but I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I remember how you seemed so different that first day of school,” Celia said. “That didn’t make sense until the very end.”

  “Well, you scared the living shit out of them: my father and Yvonne. Showing up where Yvonne killed Liv. They must have been desperate to know what you were doing in Sweden.”

  “Did they talk about me, to you?” she asked.

  “No,” Alex replied. “They kept it to themselves. And I knew talking to my father or Yvonne would be fruitless. They would just feed me lies, so I started my own probe. After I realized the doppelgänger aspect, so much more started to make sense. Now I just had to find the connection between Liv and my family. Then we found out that Liv had a swimming teacher.” Alex stared off into the distance. “Yvonne liked teaching. Who knows why. Maybe to live vicariously through others when her own athletic career began to wane.”

  He shrugged.

  “I dug up all the information that I could find on Liv as well as my own family. I went through files, storage areas, anything I could come over. Then one evening, I looked through the storage closets down by the swimming pool. And stuffed deep into the darkest corner, I found the dress. And a schoolbag with some things…”

  “And then you knew,” Celia said.

  Alex nodded. “It was confirmed when I saw the old newspaper report. I recognized the dress from one of them. That was all I needed. Then I knew.”

  Celia noticed herself getting dizzy. That would happen sometimes. Her therapist told her to move around when she felt that way. To focus on something, like a tree, or a calming sound. She set her eyes on the bushed hedge.

  Alex must have noticed her unsteadiness. “You all right?”

  When she responded with a dip of her head, he continued: “I had to keep track of you, and my family, always staying steps ahead of both. It was a mess.”

  Here Celia lifted her gaze. “But Nattvakten,” she said. “Why? Why did you do all that?”

  “I wanted you to leave Sweden.”

  She blinked. “That’s why?”

  “I was upset with you, that I’ll admit. But I didn’t want you hurt. I for sure didn’t want you dead. So I tried to scare you. I was desperately trying to get you to go home. I just needed you gone so that we could all go back to normal, whatever that is.”

  Alex looked angry, as though he were reliving the tension all over again. “I had to keep raising the stakes, hoping that this time it would stick. But God, you were so much more brave, stubborn, and stupid than I possibly could have imagined. I thought for sure that the dress would have you packing.” He stopped and glared at Celia. “Of course it didn’t. And then … on New Year’s Eve, when I realized they had invited you, well, I knew things had just become dire.”

  “And you shot Yvonne,” Celia said quietly.

  Alex was staring away from her, she wasn’t sure at what. “And then I shot Yvonne.”

  Celia looked down at her hands. “The trial,” she said. “It’s coming up…” It was something she hated to think about. The Rosensköld trial. She’d have to testify, there was no way around it. She barely had it in her to think about it.

  Apparently Alex didn’t either, because he said: “I’d rather not talk about that.”

  Celia nodded.

  A tiny bird fluttered into view. It perched itself on a tree branch near them. Following her therapist’s advice, she focused on it; there was something calming and steadying about watching it.

  After a silence, she said: “It didn’t dawn on me until the very end that you were related to Yvonne. I didn’t make the Sten connection. I guess I’d have never thought that someone married into a rich family would be placed in such a modest home like the Willow Warbler.”

  “No doubt Yvonne’s way of punishing Sten for all the crap he did.” Alex gave a strained laugh. “We’re a charming lot. I’m sure you’ve gathered that about us by now.”

  Celia said, “But there’s something I still don’t understand. How did they find out that I knew? Like, what gave me away to the point where they had to get rid of me?”

  “I have no idea,” Alex said.

  A mere three months ago, Celia wouldn’t have caught it. She wouldn’t have seen it on him; the flicker of his eyelashes, the ever so slight strain around his jaw.

  “You’re lying.”

  He averted and she waited. Finally he raised his eyes to meet hers.

  “All right. I messed up.”

  She kept her eyes on him.
<
br />   He sighed. “I left one of your texts up on my iPad. I think my father saw it. The text you’d written to Ebba about there being a connection between Sten and Liv.”

  “You were reading my texts?”

  “I placed spyware on your phone so I could track your location and read your texts.

  “That you were tracking me I knew, but I didn’t know you could also see my texts—”

  “I installed two apps. I figured you might detect that your phone was bugged, so I left one of the apps traceable, so if you went looking for it you’d think that the tracking was the only infiltration…”

  Silence between them.

  “You were mad at me?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I cared about you. You didn’t give a damn about me, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from caring … I actually liked the way you made me feel. You brought out my good side.”

  Celia eyes widened. “That was your good side?” A hiccupy laugh escaped her. “Lord, I’d hate to be one who comes up against your sneaky side.”

  Alex shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand, that’s fine. But you made me care, and I can’t remember the last time I cared about anyone.”

  She nodded slowly. He was probably right. She might never understand. “Do you have another minute?” she asked. “I have something of yours.”

  “I have a minute.”

  He waited outside while she ran into the house and came back soon after.

  In her hand she held the stone carving of the shield and the knight. “That night you came into the house…” she said. “Did you see us? Oskar and me, together?”

  “I didn’t see you, not until you’d both fallen asleep and I left.”

  “But you heard us?”

  “Sort of. I was under the bed and you were in the other room. But I caught most of it. Not that the two of you did anything interesting to make it worth my time.”

  Celia gave him a sharp glare. Apparently he hadn’t lost all his Alexander-ness after all.