Dark and Stormy

by Traci Tyne Hilton

  I rubbed my arms and smiled. I was used to the snow. “I rushed out. Silly, I know.”

  Dr. Hoffen frowned. “Why the rush?”

  I took a deep breath. This was, of course, exactly what I had wanted to avoid, but at the risk of being an accessory to another crime, I had to tell the truth. “We’ve had a problem in the kitchen. I thought maybe Isaac could help us.”

  “Isaac doesn’t have time to help in the kitchen right now.” He nodded at Isaac, dismissing him. “But I’m free, I’ll follow you in.”

  I looked at Isaac, who shrugged but smiled. “See you later.” He trudged off to the back door of the boys’ dorm.

  THREE

  Isaac Daniels

  My instinct was to stay as far away from the problem with the fish as possible. My current pressing goal was to earn back Dr. Hoffen’s trust, and I hadn’t quite done that yet. It had, after all, only been a month and a half since the trouble with Drew Honeywell.

  But Dr. Hoffen saw this new problem as an opportunity for me to show what I was made of, so, as he had instructed, I called an after dinner meeting of all hands. We used the student lounge, which was my first mistake.

  The students who had remained behind for Christmas were altogether too comfortable in their lounge. Dani was snuggled in the corner of the overstuffed couch, her feet tucked under her knees. Si and Xavier were at the card table, playing war while they waited for everyone to show up. Xavier’s sister Bel sat on the edge of the loft, feet dangling, and texting.

  Nick and Nea, from the kitchen looked uncomfortable. They sat on hard chairs pulled up close to the fireplace, their bodies stiff. Nea stared at the students with her lips pursed.

  Gretchen and Garret stumbled in, laughing and stamping snow from their boots, ten minutes after the meeting time.

  Johanna came in behind them. She pushed her way past Gretchen and Garret—the last two kids I expected to have had anything to do with the fish -- and joined me in front of the hearth.

  Troy and Cadence hadn’t shown up yet. Since their jobs depended on them not doing things like making Jell-O salad out of hundreds of dollars’ worth of salmon, I decided we would not wait for them.

  “We are undertaking a historic event here at Tillgiven. In just two weeks we’ll be hosting our thirtieth anniversary Julbord. What you all don’t realize is Queen Sylvia’s second cousin was in our first class ever, and she has RSVP’d to the party.”

  “How jolly.” Bel’s voice sounded anything but impressed.

  “Why don’t you come down here and join us?” My smile was tense. I lifted an eyebrow at our newest student.

  She continued typing on her phone.

  “This event was meant to inspire the local families to encourage their children to come to our school.” Johanna’s face flushed, and she raised her voice—something I had never heard a Swede do before. She looked from face to face. “Who ruined my gravlax?” Johanna crossed her arms over her ample chest. “Tell me now. This isn’t a game, and you aren’t children.”

  I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Hold on, just a moment.”

  She jerked away from me. “I will not hold on, Isaac. We have a budget and a schedule and this was not a little joke, but a significant act of vandalism.”

  Gretchen blushed. I still thought it was highly unlikely that Si’s unworldly little cousin had done the deed, but her pink face made her look guilty.

  “I will count to tre—”

  “No, Johanna, that’s not how we are going to handle this right now.” I interrupted her, my voice louder than I had meant it to be.

  Johanna took a deep breath.

  “Listen guys, this is a big deal on a million levels. We want to equip the next generation of Christian Swedes so they can be Godly leaders, but the culture here is such that it would be ridiculous for them to come to a school they have to pay for. We want this Julbord to go off perfectly to draw some interest from the locals. We can’t serve lime Jell-O salmon. I’m sure you guys meant no harm, but this went too far.” I put my foot up on the hearth and leaned on my knee, trying to keep myself at their level.

  “No harm?” Johanna sniffed. “They made giant pans of this American limefrukt-flavored gelatin, you understand? Dyed the fish a terrible color and flavored it. It is ruined. We cannot even save it to cook for the students. We lost thirty-five kilos of salmon.” Her words were directed to me. “That’s fifteen nice big fish. And it’s gone.” She stared down each student, one by one. “That is almost 2000 kronar. Do you understand?”

  Nick sucked in a breath. Nea blanched. The kids from America stared blankly. For myself, I was sick. I would not get 2000 kronar for living expenses this month.

  “That’s like, two hundred and fifty dollars, you idiots.” Nick spoke through a clenched jaw.

  He was right, and I was hit again with how far I had been degraded when they fired me, but let me stay on as a volunteer. I could only be thankful that room and board were included.

  I gauged each face as carefully as I could. Garret, Dani, Si, Gretchen, and Xavier all looked sufficiently abashed. Bel was still texting.

  “Bel, is there something you need to say to the rest of us?”

  Bel looked up from her phone. Her eyes were bored. “No.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing.” She shrugged. Since the day she had arrived, Bel had seemed disconnected. She was Si’s friend from home, the one that had changed his entire outlook on life in Sweden, but as far as I could tell she didn’t return the sentiment. She gave him exactly as much enthusiastic attention as she gave this meeting. Part of me immediately assumed she was behind the damaged food. But the rest of me couldn’t imagine her drumming up the energy to get the job done.

  But if not her, who? Xavier was Bel’s older brother. At twenty-two he was my age. He wouldn’t have been the only post college student, but he had only come here to deliver his sister, and stay for Christmas.

  I didn’t see the motive for Xavier.

  Gretchen didn’t have it in her, and Dani would never.

  Si and Garret, on the other hand, were boys. Si wouldn’t turn 18 for another two months, and Garret was only just 18 himself. They were also bored now that we weren’t holding soccer practice. I preferred to have them confess, so I decided not to call them out on it—yet.

  “We all have work to do, the kitchen crew especially. Here’s what I want to see.”

  Bel yawned.

  “You all will go back to your duties and get some serious work done. I am going to find each of you tomorrow and we can talk. Just, say, five minutes each. We’re going to put an end to this right away.” I cleared my throat. “The saft was one thing—cheap, mostly harmless. But this was seriously expensive. Not on the same level at all.” I looked from face to face. Only Dani registered any emotion, and she looked mad, not guilty, obviously. “Otherwise we’ll have to call all of your parents and discuss the matter.” Pulling the parent card was my least favorite option, but that threat was the one Steve cared most about. And since he was my boss, I had to say it.

  Gretchen raised her hand.

  “Yes?” I tried not to sound impatient.

  “What if no one ever confesses?” Her lips trembled as she spoke.

  “When we talk, I will learn all of our alibis. No one will take the fall for something they didn’t do.”

  She didn’t look comforted. Probably because she spent so much time alone, reading.

  “Let’s go shut the place down for the night. We’ll discuss this more tomorrow.” I left the lounge frustrated. My tiny office was just around the corner, so I shut myself in it to pray. While I thought it was overreacting to call the juice and cup prank stealing, there was no denying wasting two hundred fifty dollars’ worth of fish was a big deal.

  In the middle of my petition to God, there was a soft knock on the door.

  “Come in.” I raked my hand through my hair. I didn’t really want to be interrupted.

  The door opened a crack and Dani
peeked in. “Got a minute?’

  I let out a slow breath. For Dani? Always. “Sure.”

  I rolled my chair away from the desk. She perched on the back of a folding chair. “I’m worried about Gretchen.”

  “Don’t. I know she didn’t do it.”

  “It’s not that.” Dani chewed her bottom lip.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a new crisis. “What is it, then?”

  “She’s been really sick, every morning.”

  I think my heart stopped. “What? No.” I refused to believe what she was implying.

  “I know. It sounds impossible. But it’s true. It’s just the four of us in the dorm right now. I’ve been hearing someone puke every morning for the last five days, and this morning, while I was in the hall putting my coat on, Bel went into her room for something, Cadence came out of her room, and the person in the bathroom puked. Then, a half a minute later, Gretchen came out.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but there were no words.

  “I know I should probably talk about this with Cadence, but shouldn’t she have noticed it by now? Maybe she has, you know? Maybe she has it under control. But I had to tell someone.” She ran her slender fingers through her shiny brown hair, then flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I just thought maybe you could talk it over with me, figure out what’s going on.”

  “I should talk to Cadence.” I did not want to talk to Cadence about this.

  “Yeah…” She didn’t look convinced.

  The tiny office, heated by a large radiator was suddenly unbearable. “I need some air. Let’s go walk.” I grabbed her hand and led her outside. If I was going to work for room and board and about two hundred dollars a month, I was going to take full advantage of the rule that said volunteers and students could fraternize. Outside, I wrapped my arm around her waist. “I don’t like the idea that Gretchen could be…in trouble.”

  “Neither do I.”

  We whispered, in part because the topic was so delicate, but also because the night was so perfect. The black sky was hung with a million stars like a thick net of lights suspended for our entertainment. The old snow crunched under our feet as light airy flakes fell around us. They were too thin and too sparse to add inches to the ground, but there would be a thin layer of feathery perfection when we woke up in the morning.

  I led Dani down the gravel path that wove its way through the campus, going from building to building.

  “She’s too young and innocent to have chosen this, you know?”

  Dani shivered. “I know. If it’s what I think it is, someone has hurt her.”

  “She has seemed really shaken up the last few weeks. And is spending more time alone lately.”

  “I wonder how long ago it would have had to happen to make her sick right now.” Dani leaned into my shoulder. It was a weird conversation to be having with the girl I loved.

  Loved.

  Well, I suspected I was in love with her, but only time would tell for sure. “I wouldn’t even have a clue.” This was something that Megan, who was both Dr. Hoffen’s wife and a nurse, or Cadence would have to figure out. “I don’t think it’s something I can do anything about.”

  Dani wiped her eyes with her finger. “I guess I knew that. But I just feel so, so bad for her.”

  I snatched up her hand and wrapped it in mine. It was freezing cold, and damp from her tears. I pulled it to my mouth and breathed on it, then kissed it. First the back, then the fingertips, then her palm.

  She stared at me, her huge green eyes liquid with more unshed tears.

  “If it happened while she was at school…” I pressed Dani’s hand to my heart. “The boy will not live to see spring.”

  FOUR

  Dani Honeywell

  I had painted a pretty bleak picture for Isaac—one I hoped wasn’t true. But for now, it seemed better for us to view our sweet, little Gretchen with sympathy.

  Gretchen really was a sweet little thing. It wasn’t that she was literally small, being just a couple inches shorter than me, and she wasn’t super skinny or anything either. She had a soft, round figure, not overweight, but maybe tending towards that, but she was kind of pretty, very young looking, and very shy. It was her shyness that made her seem so little. Her voice was low and quiet. Her gestures, when she spoke with her hands, were small, and close to her body. She didn’t always make eye contact, preferring to look somewhere just below your eyes. And her clothes were subdued, quiet colors. She was like the anti-Dani. I liked her.

  But I didn’t like the way she snuck around with boys. Originally I thought she was after Si, but obviously, since he was her cousin, that wasn’t the case. But she was definitely sneaking around with Garret, which really irritated me. Guy’s like Garret were never actually interested in girls like Gretchen. How could she not see that?

  I worked in the kitchen, and Gretchen did the housecleaning. Her job over break was huge—usually all of us students worked together with the RAs and Megan Hoffen to keep the school put together. But over Christmas it was just Gretchen, Cadence, and Megan. The three women were never in the same building at the same time, but Gretchen and Garret were often in the boys' dorm together. I had watched them from the dining room as I set the tables for lunch. First she’d go in with her big cart of housecleaning stuff, then he’d go in. Like clockwork, three minutes after her. All of the men and boys on campus were on maintenance during break, which kind of seemed like a cheat, but at the same time, none of the buildings were younger than 100 years old, so I guess maybe they did a lot of work while the students were away just to maintain the place. Keeping the wood-burning boilers lit was a full time job in itself. Maybe Garret had actual work to do in the boy’s dorm every day.

  But maybe not.

  And of course there was a chance I was wrong, but how many reasons were there that a girl would be puking every morning?

  Isaac would talk to Cadence and I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. That was something.

  I pushed a pan of cinnamon rolls into the oven. They weren’t the traditional cardamom rolls we ate with our coffee fika every afternoon, but the kind my mom made. Dense and rich with a syrupy sauce. They were for breakfast tomorrow. Johanna was at the market replacing the fish, and Nea said I could make whatever I wanted. I wanted this.

  It was another cold snowy day. It made me feel like I was at home, but also a little homesick. Mom’s cinnamon rolls would help. Last night the snow had fallen much harder than we predicted, Isaac and I, as we had walked under the stars.

  I rested my chin on my hand and sighed. The professor and I, holding hands, walking under the stars. It had been a perfect evening.

  “You. Get to work.” Nick whipped me with a towel as he walked past.

  I laughed. “Sorry. Stars in my eyes.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Who do you think wrecked all the fish?”

  Nick shrugged. “Someone who won’t be back until January.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “We cleaned the fish the day before we were going to cure it. Anyone could have snuck in that night and wrecked it. Who all was still here?”

  “Half of us, I figure.”

  “It was a boy, for sure.”

  I considered that. “No, not for sure. A few of the girls are kinda wild.”

  “Were any of the wild ones still here on the right night?”

  “Sophie was.”

  “Well, there you go. It was Sophie.” He tossed a bucketful of oatmeal on the giant frying pan thing. Then he poured molasses all over it.

  I laughed. “Easy peasy. Glad you solved the mystery. What else do you want for the granola?”

  “If it wasn’t Sophie then it was one of the guys who left at the last minute.”

  “So Carter, Ben, or Brandon.”

  “Or Sophie.”

  “But you’re sure it wasn’t one of us on Christmas crew?”

  “I highly doubt any of you are stupid enough to pull a stunt like
that and stick around to watch it.”

  “Good point.” I poured a bowl full of chopped hazelnuts into the granola.

  Nick shook a quarter cup of cinnamon on top. I was glad I had left some for him. My recipe was fairly cinnamon heavy. “The good news,” he said, “is that the idiot is gone and the rest of our food is safe.”

  “Amen.”

  Johanna got back about the same time the cinnamon rolls were done. I pulled them out and set them to cool near the window. “We’ve got the fish. I had them clean it for me, now we just cure it.”

  I nodded. After the green mess yesterday, this fresh salmon looked almost appetizing. I could easily eat a plate full of this gravlax. Johanna set up the curing station with all of the ingredients.

  While we lightly sprinkled vodka over the fish, Dr. Hoffen joined us. “Johanna, I appreciate you for handling this so well.”

  I swallowed a laugh. Obviously he hadn’t been at the meeting last night.

  “I want you to know that we increased your budget by 6000 krona. You don’t have to spend that much, but it is there, in case anything else should happen again.”

  “Don’t worry Dr. Hoffen. It won’t.” I was reasonably sure that Nick’s logic was right. Our prankster was gone for the next few weeks.

  The doctor turned and gave me a penetrating look. I hated it when he did that. “Do you have something you need to share with me?”

  “Nick and I figured it out. It was either Sophie, Carter, Ben or Brandon, because they were all here the night before we found it and then left the next day. No one who stuck around for break would have done it.”

  “Why only them?”

  “They’re the wildest ones.”

  Dr. Hoffen nodded. “I see.” He drummed his fingers on the counter. “Just remember, Dani, still waters run deep. People have the unlimited ability to surprise, and sometimes the ones who get the least attention act out the most. Okay gang, I’m headed out. We’ve got some roof issues to sort out. We underestimated last night’s storm, to our disappointment.” He helped himself to a cookie from the jar by Johanna’s office. “And Nick, add some chocolate chips to that granola, will you?”