Sigrid looks at the distant hills across the farmland, their tops shorn by time as with everything old. She had forgotten how good silence can sound in the company of others.
“It’s good to be home,” she says as she takes her place at the table across from her father. “I feel like I could stay forever.”
“That’s too bad,” her father says, after taking a long pull on his beer, “because you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have to go to America tomorrow. Late afternoon.”
Sigrid does not understand the joke but laughs anyway. “Why would I do that?”
“Because your brother is missing. And you’re going to find him.”
Que Sera, Sera
The beer is not enough, so her father places a bottle of aquavit on the table between two small decorative glasses that have served the same purpose for a century.
“Aquavit is for Christmas,” Sigrid objects.
“It’s also for Christmas,” he says, pouring a glass for each of them.
“Skål,” Sigrid says.
“Skål.”
They each drink the full measure.
After a pause Sigrid says, “Fine. Out with it.”
“As I said, Marcus is missing.”
“He’s in America teaching a couple of university courses as an adjunct on conservation or something. You’ve been corresponding.”
“That’s right,” Morten says.
Letter writing is an old-fashioned and obsolete form of communication they both prefer, he explains. Letters on paper are penned deliberately and read without interruption. Also, there is a timeless pleasure in walking to the mailbox in anticipation. The Romans did this, he says.
“And?” she asks, not yet interested.
“A slow and deliberate conversation was good for us.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I didn’t like something in the tone of his last letter,” Morten says. “And they stopped coming after that.”
“That’s the mail for you,” Sigrid says, pouring them each another drink. “I’m assuming you’ve called him.”
“His last letter was sent a week ago,” says Morten. “I received it only three days later. I called immediately. No answer on his home phone and his mobile has been disconnected. I called the university but he doesn’t teach during the summer, so they don’t know anything. I tried the hospitals, too. Nothing.”
“And the police?”
“I called you.”
“Again . . . not what I meant.”
“I want you to talk to the police. You’ll know what to say.”
“You’re a father concerned for his son. You provide his name and address and last working number. You explain where he might go and . . .”
Morten shifts in his chair.
“What?” she asks.
“I want you two to see each other.”
“Why?”
Sigrid and her father are close, but long speeches and discussions are typically rare. The simple pleasure of company has served as a worthy substitute for the words not spoken. Sometimes, though, words help.
“Pappa . . . why?”
“For a while it felt like Marcus was going to come home.”
“That’s wishful thinking, pappa. You’ve been saying that since he moved in with Aunt Ingeborg.”
Morten stands and leaves the room, returning soon after with a bundle of letters. He removes them from a shoebox that bears the name of a company long since out of business.
Her father places the small stack of white envelopes with their exotic American stamps in the center of the table. There are scenic vistas, national park scenes, famous citizens, and ducks.
“Ducks,” she says.
“Ducks are universal,” says Morten, untying the bundle. He takes the letter from the bottom of the pile and the letter from the top and places them on the table, facing Sigrid. Side by side they are identical aside from the stamps themselves and the dates they were franked by the U.S. Postal Service. They have the same addresses, to and from. The same handwriting.
Morten taps the oldest letter but does not open it.
“Seven months ago he wrote to me. I was surprised. I was worried when I found it in my mailbox. I assumed—I feared—it would contain startling news of some kind.”
“Like what?”
“Everything a parent worries about. An injury. A financial crisis. An unwanted pregnancy or child. A wanted one that something happened to. I came in and read the letter and I was indeed startled, but only because of how unexpected it was. He seemed happy. He had taken the position at the university—this ‘adjunct’ position you mentioned—and even though it lacked prestige or payment and any other obvious career path, he was putting that old master’s degree to use, as well as some thirty years of professional experience in agriculture. There was little personal in the letter, per se, nothing emotional, nothing too confessional, but it opened the door for casual conversation. And there was a mention of a woman’s presence in his life. Lydia. He didn’t say much. Only mentioned weekend trips to interesting spots. He shared some vivid memories of hiking and rock climbing. Nothing personal, though. Nothing about her. Nevertheless. It was a letter written by a fully living person. I was . . . delighted.”
Morten places his right hand, with his wedding ring, on top of the stack of letters.
“I knew you two were writing but I didn’t know much about it.”
“I suppose,” he says, “I wanted it to remain between Marcus and me for a while. I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret from you. I just felt . . .”—he stops for a moment to consider what feelings he might have had—“. . . that you and I have had so much time together, alone, that perhaps I owed it to Marcus to do something apart. Just the two of us.”
“It’s fine.”
“He’s forty-six.”
“I know,” she says.
“I can’t come to terms with all the time that’s passed.”
Morten drinks another aquavit. Sigrid refills both glasses.
As close as she and her father had become, there was little joy in the house. Intimacy and love, she learned, did not coincide necessarily with happiness or pleasure. The absence of her mother created a strangeness to the world, as if the palette of the sky had inexplicably shifted and the mind never became fully accepting of that new condition. Her father was not a successful guide, and together they treated what was lost as though it had merely been misplaced—as if, on some off-chance, Astrid might return. It did not startle Sigrid, as
