Dandelion Girl

by Isa Hansen

  “I was talking to someone who knew her. They thought her death might not have been an accident.”

  “Who were you talking to?” Katja’s tone sharpened. “And how do you know we were friends? What is this about anyway?”

  “I talked to Hans.”

  Katja jutted out her jaw. “Hans Nordholm?”

  “You know him?”

  “We were friends. He was Liv’s boyfriend.”

  Celia thought she saw Katja’s eyes narrow, just a bit. “Oh?” she said, making an effort to sound vaguely surprised, although by now she was certain that Hans and Liv had been together.

  “They were going out for six or seven months, I think.”

  “Was it a good relationship?”

  This time Katja’s eyes narrowed markedly.

  Katja didn’t share Hans’s willingness to talk, which wasn’t surprising. Celia had sought Katja out, not the other way around.

  “How do you know Hans?”

  “He’s a teacher at my school.”

  Katja didn’t respond, but those harsh eyes were on her like razors.

  “Sorry for intruding,” Celia murmured, “I’m just sad I never got to know my aunt. I hope you’re OK talking about her. I mean, I hope it’s not too painful.”

  “It’s fine,” Katja said noncommittally.

  Celia wanted to go back to nice and light, get Katja less on edge. “So, what kind of stuff did you do together?” she asked.

  Katja lifted her coffee cup and took a sip before responding. “All the usual things that girls did back then. We’d go dancing. In the warmer seasons we did a lot of sunbathing and swimming. We liked to spend time at her father’s summer house. It was a good place for us to be without any adults around.”

  Celia’s muscles tightened against her seat.

  Liv had spent time at the summer house?

  That contradicted what Erik told her; he’d said there was no relationship between father and daughter. She asked, “Did Liv’s father give her the key?”

  “I presume so,” Katja said, giving Celia a strange look. “It’s not like she would have stolen it.”

  “I guess, all I mean … do you know if they were close?”

  “He was in America for the most part,” Katja said. “That’s why it was kind of like Liv had her own place. Back then, that was pretty cool.” Katja took another sip. “I don’t know how close they were. I don’t think she saw him very often.”

  Celia bit her lip, thinking. “Did you ever meet Lars … Liv’s father?” she asked.

  “Briefly,” Katja said. She stopped and peered at Celia with a look on her face that made Celia uncomfortable. “He’s your grandfather?”

  “Yes.”

  The feeling of dread was back, fraying against her mind. Celia thought back to her grandmother at the nursing home. The image of Maj-Britt flickered before her: the look of sadness and guilt on her face when she called out to Liv. She was so clearly in agony over something. Had she discouraged a relationship between her ex-husband and his daughter and was now feeling guilt over that?

  Or was there something else there, something worse?

  Celia’s face must have betrayed her because Katja lifted her chin slightly, a hard, cold glimmer in her eye. “You’re worried that he did something? That’s why you’re here asking questions. You’re worried Liv’s father hurt her.”

  “No, of course not,” Celia said, shifting uncomfortably. She’d stopped herself just in time. She almost asked: did he?

  Her head screamed no at the insinuation. Katja was obviously leading her on. She couldn’t imagine that her grandfather was involved in Liv’s death in any shape or form. The thought was inconceivable.

  And yet. In the deepest, darkest part of Celia’s mind she was wondering things that she barely allowed herself to think, even less say out loud.

  Katja’s face was scanning Celia’s for information. She didn’t like the hold that Katja had on the conversation.

  “I know my grandfather,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “He would never have done anything to hurt Liv, but I can’t help but wonder if someone else did. Do you agree with Hans that Liv’s death might not have been accidental?”

  “She was afraid of someone,” Katja said, her voice flighty.

  Celia leaned forward. “Who?”

  Katja went back to her cup, stirred her coffee with a spoon. “She never actually admitted to being afraid. But I could tell by the way she moved, the way she talked. She was jumpy, and she changed, those weeks before her death. She acted like someone was after her.”

  “But you don’t know who it was?”

  “Could have been anyone.” Katja gave Celia a sideways glance. “Could’ve been your teacher, Hans.”

  The word Hans slipped out into the room and dissolved into silence.

  Celia watched Katja intently.

  “You think it was?”

  “Not necessarily, but could’ve been.” Katja’s answer was short, her face indecipherable.

  Celia pressed: “But can you think of any possible motive, why Hans would want to have Liv killed?”

  Katja shrugged.

  “What about you, what’s your story?” Katja asked.

  “I grew up in the States,” Celia said, adding: “Thank you, I won’t take up any more of your time.” If Katja was done talking, then so was she.

  She got to her feet, pushing in the chair.

  Katja had risen as well.

  Before Celia left, she asked. “Do you stay in touch with Lottis?”

  Katja shook her head. “No. I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing,” she said. “Though if I had to guess…” Katja’s lips twisted into a smirk: “I’d say she’s living in some small hole of a town, has three kids, no career, and a man who cheats on her, but she’s happy as long as he doesn’t leave her.”

  Celia stared at Katja. She didn’t know how to respond to that, so she didn’t. She went out into the hall to the front door, slipped on her shoes and let herself out.

  The air was cool and the sky bright when she stepped out into Katja’s front yard. She was relieved to be back out in the open air. Inside the little kitchen she’d felt stifled by Katja’s inquiring face and her own stilted fears.

  There were more questions she’d liked to have asked Katja, but she was past the point of getting anything useful out of her.

  When she closed the wooden gate, she looked over her shoulder into the window. Katja hadn’t left the kitchen; she was still standing there, holding her coffee cup in her hands. Maybe it was just the shadows across her face, but her expression looked like it held deep contempt.

  ***

  “This just keeps getting more complicated,” Ebba said as she drew her sanding block over the door trim with quick measured movements.

  “Are you talking about the house reno or the Liv story?” Oskar asked.

  “Liv.” Ebba’s sandpaper made a scratching sound and a flurry of sawdust floated around her like an aura.

  Oskar and Ebba were with Celia at the cottage. It was later in the afternoon and they were taking advantage of the sunny and relatively warm day to get started with the renovation. They were working in the living room, the last of the afternoon rays fading against the wood floor.

  Celia was crouched, one leg tucked under her, reaching down to the base board. She worked her sanding block against the wood. “Katja seems kind of evil—you should hear the way she talks about other people—but I do believe that someone was after Liv. I don’t trust a lot of what Katja said, but that part rang true.”

  “That fits with Hans’s story,” Oskar said.

  “Yeah, except Hans conveniently left out the fact that he was Liv’s boyfriend,” Ebba said.

  “He didn’t say he wasn’t, though,” Celia commented. “Maybe that was too personal.”

  Ebba made a face. “He totally beeps my creep radar.”

  “You think the boyfriend did it?” Oskar said.

  “Maybe.”

/>   “But why would Hans tell us he was suspicious of murder if he was the one who did the killing?” Celia asked.

  Neither Ebba nor Oskar had an answer for that.

  “What about Katja?” Ebba asked.

  “If she killed Liv?” Celia thought for a moment. “She seems evil, but I’m not sure she’s that kind of evil.”

  With that, Celia fell silent. Somewhere along the way she’d gone from wondering who the dandelion child was to wondering who killed her. She was actively seeking out a killer. The thought set her on edge.

  She got up, needing to move. Her leg had fallen asleep under her. She hobbled into the hallway. While trying to kick her leg back to life, it occurred to her that there could be more to find from Liv’s days at the cottage. Now that she knew Liv used to spend time at the house, it was worth doing another search.

  Celia was then reminded of her talk with Erik and how he said he regretted not removing everything Liv-related from the house. Wasn’t that just like her uncle and his anal need for everything to be in order? Keep it clean, keep it sterile. Everything orderly; nothing out of place.

  She slowly limped to a halt.

  If Erik truly believed there was no relationship between his father and Liv, then what would there have been to remove? She kicked her leg again—it was waking up and starting to shoot tingles up into her body.

  Had she caught Erik in a lie?

  A discreet, tiny, little lie?

  She leaned against the wall, examining the thought. It didn’t have to be the case, that he lied. Maybe he was just speaking generally. After all, she did find the photo there. Maybe that was all he was referring to.

  Either way, it was time for another search. She began looking, not sure what she was actually looking for. Just anything out of the ordinary. Anything she could have passed by.

  She had gone through all the rooms and was about to give up when her eye stopped on a book on the shelf in the bedroom. She nearly missed it, standing among a stack of other books of no particular importance.

  This one, though. This was an old school book. She pulled the book from the shelf.

  It was a math book, had that vintage workbook look to it.

  One of Liv’s old books from school?

  Celia flipped through the pages.

  Something slipped out and fell to the floor. A newspaper clipping.

  She knelt down to pick it up and gave a gasp at the sight of the photograph that accompanied the article. A building consumed by flames. Seemingly at night from the graininess and darkness of the photo.

  She scanned the newspaper article—read the headline, then brought it with her into the living room. Quickly striding toward them, she said to Ebba and Oskar: “I found an old school book and thought it might be Liv’s.”

  Oskar stopped what he was doing; Ebba still had one eye on the trim.

  Celia held up the newspaper clipping. “This fell out.”

  “Whoa,” Oskar said, and now Ebba’s attention was on the article as well.

  “Lindhultsskolan,” she said, reading the headline. Her eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, yeah, I know about that: a junior high school that burned down years ago.” She nodded toward Oskar. “We went to the new school that was built after that. But our school was built in a different spot with a different name.”

  “It burned down on August 5 … 1984.” Oskar leaned over Ebba’s shoulder, snapping up details from the article. “It says the police don’t know who did it but believe the fire to have been set…”

  “Arson,” Celia said, nodding at him.

  “Uh oh,” Ebba said.

  Oskar glanced at the progress they’d made. “Go to the pub and keep talking about it? It’ll be dark soon.”

  “Actually, I can’t,” Celia said. “I’m going over to Alex’s place for a study date.”

  “Alex the prick?” Ebba asked.

  “I don’t think he’s a prick, but yeah.”

  Ebba crossed her arms. “I thought he was upset with you.”

  “He’s thawed. We’re fine now. I think he knows I wasn’t trying to blow him off the other evening.”

  She was admittedly surprised at how quickly Alex bounced back. She was certain he wouldn’t talk to her for weeks from the way he responded to her at Göken. But then there he was soon after, by her locker: talking and joking as if nothing had happened. Celia didn’t want to screw things up with him again, so when he asked if they could get together that evening, she immediately said yes.

  Ebba cleared her throat. “He’s not inviting you over because he wants to study with you … you do know that?”

  “No—?” Celia bristled. “What does he want then?”

  Oskar turned his face away. He leaned down and busied himself with gathering their work tools.

  Ebba threw a glance at Celia with raised brows.

  Celia responded to the look. “I’m not going to sleep with him, geesh. I don’t think that’s what he has in mind either. We’re just friends.”

  She felt like she was saying that a lot lately.

  “You do what you want,” Ebba said simply. “Just be aware that Alex is trouble.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Back home, Celia had about 45 minutes to kill before Alex would be over to pick her up. She had just enough time to squeeze in a video chat with her dad. He’d been asking if they could get together for another talk.

  At first she’d hesitated.

  Just the mere thought of talking with her dad made her feel guilty. She felt like she was betraying him for not telling him about everything he so clearly was in blissful ignorance of. Her first reaction was to avoid him, but her longing to see his face and hear his voice was too strong.

  She wanted for things to feel normal and safe again. Even if only for a brief moment.

  While she waited for her dad to log on, she typed Lindhultsskolan into the internet browser. She’d only had time to scroll through the first page of results when her dad’s image showed up on her screen.

  “So, you getting into any trouble?” he asked once they were connected. He was joking, although Celia sensed he also wanted to know.

  She closed the browser window. “I tried snus,” she offered.

  Her dad mimed mock horror. He put his hand over his mouth, but his eyes held a crinkly smile.

  Celia laughed at his expression. “Don’t tell Mom.”

  She didn’t know why she said that. Maybe because with her parents, it was easy to revert back to being a kid. She and her dad had a secret tradition from when she was little: Don’t tell Mom. It was always small stuff. Harmless things, like ice cream before dinner or staying up after bedtime, accompanied by a wink and a smile: “Just don’t tell Mom.” Her mom knew all about it, she found out later in life, which didn’t actually make their tradition feel any less special.

  “How was it? The snus?” Jonesy asked.

  “It made me dizzy, I felt sick,” Celia said.

  The smile faded from his eyes.

  “But I’m fine,” Celia added quickly. “No biggie.”

  “Hey kiddo, remember to be careful, OK?” her dad said. “You’ve always been smart and handled yourself really well—you’ve made good choices. Now that you’re at the beginning of adulthood, remember to keep making those good choices.”

  “Choices,” Celia said.

  The word stuck in her throat, made her feel tired and heavy. Like the choice to tell her dad right now about the sister he never knew. Or tell him how his own father had kept secrets and done things to tear the family apart. This was all so far away from the innocence of their ‘don’t tell Mom’ moments.

  She swallowed. “I’ll try.”

  “Good.” He seemed happy with her response. “All we can do is try.”

  Celia said, “Dad…?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever get the sense that things were more complicated with your family than you knew about, that like, I don’t know … there was stuff going on that wasn’t talked a
bout?”

  Her dad went quiet, his brow creased with thought.

  “Well, our family wasn’t traditional,” he said eventually. “The way we split up shocked a lot of people. And it was difficult. There were some really hard times. So probably, yes. I’m sure there were feelings that were suppressed by everyone.”

  Celia took that in. It was the first time she heard her dad mention the difficulty of leaving Sweden. It was different, talking to him as an adult.

  “Is everything OK? Everything going well with Erik and Anette?” Jonesy asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Celia said, trying to sound assuring. “They’re great.”

  She kept the rest of the conversation light and breezy. After logging off, she just sat—for several minutes, staring into space—pondering.

  Erik and Anette were great. So wonderfully hospitable.

  And yet, there was something. She wasn’t able to put her finger on what it was exactly, but there was something with Erik that just didn’t seem right.

  Her dad and uncle had experienced their childhood in vastly different ways, that much was clear. Her dad admitted it had been hard, but he didn’t seem to carry the heavy burden that Erik did. With Erik—she thought back to how he’d talked about his family, and just his demeanor in general—it was as if he’d been burned.

  She couldn’t help but feel that her dad had missed something. Something significant that was there, dark, brooding, just out of sight, hiding below the surface.

  ***

  It was dark out by the time Alex picked up Celia.

  “So what do you think our topic should be?” she asked once they’d been driving for a few minutes. Alex had turned the car to the right and was following the country road away from Björkby.

  Celia was glad Alex asked her to team up with him for the group project in their global culture class. More than anything, she was relieved that the two of them were on good terms again. She didn’t like not getting along with people. She was now certain that the fish in her locker hadn’t been Alex’s doing. She felt a little embarrassed that she’d ever suspected him of doing that.