The Body in the Fjord

She didn’t want any more to drink. Maybe a little lunch, but she knew her duty. She had to call Sam—and Faith. Maybe Faith first.

It had not been easy explaining to her husband that she had once again been in danger. Or that she had found another body. The police were keeping the Melling/Eriksen case open, but Marcussen had told them that the authorities were increasingly sure it had been a tragic accident.

Pix had calculated her calling time carefully and knew that Sam would be hastening out the door to drop Danny at school before going on to work. It wasn’t that she wanted to keep anything from her husband; she simply didn’t want to go into detail.

As it was, he went from total disbelief, to fear, to anger, to grudging acceptance in the space of two minutes. His comments were telegraphic. “Kari is alive and well. You and Ursula are safe. Those are the main things. We’ll talk when you get home. You know I love you, Pix—and you love me, so why do you do these things to me?”

“I don’t mean to,” Pix had protested. It wasn’t as if she had planned her own abduction or decided to find a corpse. She was a bit miffed. Love had nothing to do with any of this.

Her husband’s heavy sigh was clearly audible across the transatlantic cable, satellite, or whatever was carrying their conversation. “I know, I know. Got to run. We’ll talk.”

There it was again—“We’ll talk.” More like a talking-to. Now she did feel tired.

The call to Faith went much better. Tom took Ben and Amy to day care and nursery school, so Pix knew Faith would be sitting in the kitchen at her big round table, perhaps with another cup of coffee, savoring the silence. Most mothers Pix knew did this. Five minutes peace. An empty house—granted, the beds weren’t made, laundry done, or dishes washed—but you were the only one there.

Faith had listened attentively, asking a question every now and then and making many sympathetic murmurs.

“Obviously you have to stay another week.”

“I can’t. I’ve been gone too long already.”

“Nonsense. They’ve been doing fine without you. No one is indispensable, although you come pretty close. Samantha and I can get Danny’s camp stuff ready. He won’t be leaving until after you’re back, in any case. The big wedding we’re catering is not for two weeks, so there’s no reason on earth why you can’t have some time for yourself. It sounds as if you’ve earned it.”

There they were, those magic words: “time for yourself.”

Throughout the trip, Pix had found herself treasuring the anonymity, the time free from domestic responsibilities—the time for herself. And this in spite of the stress of

Kari’s disappearance and two corpses. What would it be like without these complications?

A gift from the gods—that’s what. She could spend some more time on the fjords. Take some walks. Go to Oslo, maybe Bergen. Visit museums. Eat whatever she wanted—alone.

“I’ll talk to Sam this morning.” Faith was already making a list. “Plan on it. You can come back the day before Samantha graduates. She’s so busy saying good-bye that she barely knows you’re gone. And believe me, you don’t want to be around.”

Which is how Pix found herself a week later sitting on the terrace of Marit Hansen’s house in Tonsberg, eating more reker and mayonnaise, drinking white wine. It was Midsummer Eve, St. Hans-aften, and they were waiting for the bonfires to be lighted. Kari had gone off with a group of her friends to Notteroy, one of the nearby islands, for a picnic. They would stay by their bonfire, singing and telling jokes until morning.

Marit’s Midsummer Eve celebration had transformed a huge mound of shrimp in a large green glass bowl into a heap of shells in another. Shrimp and white wine—there was nothing better. The Dahl sisters, who had stayed on in Oslo, came down to Tonsberg by train for this farewell celebration. Ursula had been particularly insistent about inviting the sisters. It had proved a congenial group and they lingered long over the meal.

“They should be lighting the bonfires soon,” Louise said. “It’s getting quite dark.”

Dark for the time of year. Pix had become used to the long, bright nights that made time stretch lazily forward. It was going to be hard to go to sleep at a decent hour.

Marit stood up. “Could you make some room for dessert? Kari baked some pepperkaker and we have multer, unless you’re tired of them. We also have ice cream.”

Tired of cloudberries? Not likely. Just the sound of the word whetted an appetite.

“Let me help you,” Pix said, taking the tray from Marit’s hands.

“Coffee for everyone, too?” Marit’s voice went up, but it was a statement.

The Hansens had built a new house after the war—in Kaldnes, across the canal from the main part of Tonsberg, the oldest town in Norway. The house was perched high, looking in one direction across the water to the town itself, distinguished by the spire of the domkirken and the thirteenth-century citadel high on the hill at Slottsfjellet. Straight in front of the house, dominating the rocky ridge, high above the trees, was an enormous arrow, an iron weather vane, a landmark for miles around. It was Svend Foyn’s weather vane—the man who had invented the harpoon gun and revolutionized early whaling, a well-beloved native son. He had erected it on this hill so he could look up from his house on the other shore and always know which way the wind was blowing. The arrow pointed due west at the moment and Pix thought wistfully of flying in that direction in the morning. It was time. Time to go home. Sam had called earlier to verify the flight. “I miss you terribly, darling. And we really need you.” Pix focused on the first part of his statement and let the rest, with its implications of travail, lie for the moment. She missed them, too. She went into the house with the tray, lingering at the door to look back at her mother and the two Dahl sisters, comfortably ensconced around the table, Marit’s deep purple pansies tumbling out of the planters, soft velvet in the increasing dark.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Erna said after Pix and Marit left. “Sometimes I wish we could stay in Norway permanently, except we have so many friends in Virginia—and our jobs.”

Erna was a hairdresser and Louise a legal secretary, Ursula recalled. But the words Mrs. Rowe spoke had little to do with the twins’ vocations or place of residence.

“Why did you do it? Were you born at the home? Were you Lebensborn babies? Was that it?”

Erna clutched her throat and turned to her sister, whose expression had not changed at all. No one said a word.

Louise looked up at the iron arrow, which was moving ever so slightly. The sky was Prussian blue and a few bonfires dotted the shore far below. The light hit the water in pools, creating islands where none existed.

“When we were little, Mother would wake up screaming. She seldom slept a night through—ever. But for a time, the nightmares stopped. We weren’t Lebensborn children, but her first child was. We were born just after the war. Our father was Norwegian, but his family made him leave her when they discovered her past. She tried to find our sister—the baby had been a girl, but it was too late. She hadn’t wanted to give her up, go into the home, but she had no choice. Her family had turned on her. The village shaved her head. We would hear her cry out, ‘Nazi whore,’ and we knew that was what she had been called.”

“People can be horrible,” Erna said. There were tears in her eyes.

Louise continued. “She took us to the United States as soon as she saved the money. She wanted to go someplace where she didn’t know anyone and where there wasn’t a Scandinavian community, but she was always homesick. Our house could have been here. We ate Norwegian food, spoke Norwegian, and kept all the customs. It made her feel better. I saw an ad for Scandinavian foods by mail from a town in New Jersey and sent for the catalog. She looked forward to getting it each month and would plan for days what to order.”

“She was a seamstress and supported us. We grew up and supported her. It was a kind of life. Not happy, not sad. We knew about our sister, and when we got older, we offered to try to find her, but my mother was afraid of disturbing the child’s life—she was always to be a child. ‘She might not know and I could destroy her happiness. I’ve made enough mistakes,’ Mother said.

“Then in one issue of the food catalog the conceited fool Melling put a picture of himself as a young man in

bunad, our national dress. It was to celebrate Constitution Day, the seventeenth of May. Our mor looked at the picture, whispered, ‘It’s him,’ and fainted.”

Erna was wringing her plump hands. “We didn’t know what had happened. She was never strong, and she wouldn’t talk about it. Norwegians are very good at keeping their mouths shut,” she added. “It went on for months.