Her Father's Secret

by Sara Blaedel

  Flemming saved her. Though it did take time. They’d been living together over a year when his youngest son from his first marriage was to be confirmed. Ilka had been invited, and Flemming was looking forward to the rest of his family meeting her. For a long time, he saved up for the confirmation party, including the food and his son’s confirmation gift. He kept the money in a hand-carved wooden box in his desk drawer. She only meant to borrow it; she was still working at the grocery, and she would of course put it back when she got paid. The thing was, harness racing season had just begun. It was a month before the confirmation.

  She won in the first race, but it went downhill after that. Several in the group she was with that day had known her father, and everyone, including Ilka, was buying rounds of beer and schnapps. The drinking was part of the scene, especially early in the season when it was hard to stay warm if you stood outside to watch the races.

  That morning, on his way to lunch with his mother, Flemming had inexplicably sensed something was wrong. He’d gone straight home after lunch and discovered his wooden box was empty, so he drove out to the track. At first she didn’t recognize him when he grabbed her. She threw a fit when he asked her to leave with him, but soon after she broke down. And since that day Ilka hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol or been at a track. She hadn’t even been near a horse or stable, at least until she’d driven out to Fletcher’s ranch.

  Ilka went along to the bank when Flemming borrowed the money for the confirmation. Back when they’d moved in together, she had told him about her father and how she missed him, but it was only after her breakdown at the track that she told him the whole story. After the confirmation party, she quit her job at the grocery and began working with him. Flemming was her soul mate, her best friend. And her world fell apart the day he collapsed on the kitchen floor.

  Ilka understood exactly what her father had run away from. He’d allowed that inner demon to grow, until at last it was too big to handle. He realized what it could do, he’d seen that with his own eyes. And he’d left before it happened, because he loved her and her mother.

  She cried all night and into the morning, when Artie came up and sat on the edge of the bed. Finally she stopped shaking when he lay down beside her and held her. They lay without moving or speaking a word, until eventually Ilka slowly turned to him. No hands stirred, though; no lips searched each other out. His eyes were filled with sorrow, and that was enough, he didn’t have to comfort her, she thought. But now he knew her secret, that there was a darkness inside her that must never be allowed to come out.

  They heard Sister Eileen arrive downstairs and walk around, shut a door. Ilka was familiar now with the nun’s routine: turn on the coffee machine, go out to pick up the paper, wait for the mail. But today wouldn’t be business as usual. Margaret Graham’s daughter was coming to view her mother before the cremation, and that was it for the day.

  Ilka pulled herself up onto her elbows and whispered thank you to Artie. She swept the gray hair from his face and for a moment her hand rested against his rough chin. “Thanks,” she repeated. Then she sat up, folded her arms around her knees, and rested her head back against the wall.

  Artie got up. “Stay here and rest.”

  She shook her head. “Please,” she said, her voice hoarse now, “would you call Dorothy and ask if she could cremate Maggie for us? She’s the only place we can go.”

  Artie nodded and said he’d go down and call her while Ilka took a shower.

  After her shower, she changed the bed and opened the window wide. Artie had coffee and bread from the bakery waiting for her when she came downstairs. Her eyes were swollen, and her head hurt from too little sleep and too many tears.

  She hugged him long enough to feel the warmth of his body before sitting down and buttering a roll. “I just don’t know what to do with all this.” She threw her hand up in resignation. “I don’t even know what to do with myself.”

  She smiled sadly, feeling like she had to explain, but it was too soon for her to put it into words; she needed more time to think it over. And the first person who deserved to hear from her was her mother. As soon as she settled down, she needed to call and tell her what Frank Conaway had said. And explain to her how helpless she felt at the idea that she couldn’t stop something inside her from taking control.

  “I couldn’t get ahold of Dorothy,” Artie said. “But you can just drive out there. Graham’s daughter has already been here and gone, and the hearse is loaded up and ready.”

  “Are you coming along?”

  He shook his head. “I think you ought to go out there alone. Dorothy was close to Paul; it would be good for both of you to have a talk.”

  Ilka almost said she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure she could stand more heart-to-heart talk.

  This time Ilka was sure no one was following her. The road was deserted, and she flew over the hilly landscape, fields stretching out on both sides like shallow waves. She slowed down when she spotted the tall crematorium chimney and turned onto the gravel driveway. The old hearse protested at every pothole until she finally had mercy on it—and Maggie in back—by slowing to a crawl on the final stretch. Dorothy Cane was definitely not spending her under-the-table income from them on driveway repair, Ilka thought, as she pulled up in front.

  Officially the crematorium was not in use. It stood behind Dorothy’s red-brick house, and the chimney seemed enormous to Ilka when she got out and noticed the wispy smoke snaking up into the blue sky.

  Dorothy was a potter and artist. She’d bought the place to use the enormous furnace for her work, and as far as Ilka knew she made a living at it. But no more than that. She’d helped Ilka’s father with several cremations when a deceased’s family couldn’t afford it. Artie had mentioned many times how Paul insisted that every dead body be treated with dignity, including those without the money to cover expenses.

  Ilka wasn’t sure what she thought about the furnace being used for cremations even though the crematorium had been closed down when Dorothy moved in. But right now, she felt fortunate to be able to get Maggie cremated without having to drive out of state. And Dorothy could use the money to keep the furnace going, Artie had explained the first time they’d been there.

  Wisconsin law stated that if Dorothy had a valid license, and the cremation was performed by a certified undertaker, it was all legal. Artie would be coming out to pick up Maggie’s ashes to help satisfy the latter requirement. Maybe it wasn’t strictly legal, but at least it came close.

  Ilka was still staring at the smoke when Dorothy walked up to her. The middle-aged woman was wearing dark-blue coveralls, with a scarf around her longish gray hair. She wasn’t smiling, but she did hold out her hand and say hello. It wasn’t often that six-foot Ilka met another woman her height, but Dorothy might even have been half an inch taller. They eyed each other a moment before Dorothy said that Artie had called and told her Ilka was on her way.

  “Should I back up to the door?” Ilka was hoping for help in wrestling the coffin inside. She wasn’t experienced enough to manage it alone. “I have four hundred dollars for you,” she added as they lifted the coffin onto the small wheeled cart Dorothy brought out.

  It took some work to balance the coffin on the cart, then they pushed it to the room at the end of the tiled hallway. On Ilka’s first visit, two open coffins had been lying around, as if two people inside had simply stood up and walked off, but the coffins were gone now. The room was warm and clean; over by the wall stood a lathe and a table with two beautiful floor vases waiting to be finished. A radio was playing, and the air smelled of clay.

  “You don’t need to pay,” Dorothy said. “This one’s on the house, a gift to Paul.”

  She parked the coffin to the side and locked the cart’s wheels as she explained they would have to wait for the oven to warm up to around eighteen hundred degrees, which might take some time. “Come on inside, let’s have a cup of coffee.”

  “Artie probably told you I’m broke.” Il
ka’s sense of dignity flew out the window. She searched in panic for some excuse to wait out in the hearse, anything to not have to keep the conversation going.

  Dorothy nodded. “It’s okay. I want to help.”

  The warmth in her voice puzzled Ilka. She seemed completely different from when they’d met, when she’d demanded to be paid even before unloading the coffin. Ilka followed her over to the house, politely taking off her shoes in the entryway.

  The living room was comfortable, and Dorothy’s knitting lay on the coffee table beside an empty cup. The yarn reminded Ilka of her mother, who after retiring had started an online business selling yarn and teaching knitting classes over the Internet. She’d even written a small book with knitting patterns and instructions that she sold on her site. Her mother was practically the epitome of Danish hygge; several popular bloggers had also recommended her knitting classes.

  Ilka was about to comment on the knitting to break the ice, but when she turned to the kitchen she noticed the photo on the shelf. Of her own father, smiling and holding hands with Dorothy.

  Dorothy came in and saw what Ilka was looking at. She pointed at the sofa and told her to have a seat, then sat in an armchair facing her. The tall woman’s coveralls tightened across her thighs when she tucked her feet under her. “Your dad and I had a relationship.”

  For a moment she gazed at her hands folded on her lap, and when she looked up, the tenderness in her eyes reached across the coffee table to warm Ilka.

  Ilka fidgeted a bit, but she didn’t respond.

  “I can understand if you think that’s sleazy and wrong, but we were happy. Paul and Mary Ann had an open marriage, you know.”

  Ilka could hardly believe her ears.

  “They agreed on that from the start. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but they were forced to get married.”

  It took a moment for Ilka to realize she was sitting with her mouth agape. Slowly she shook her head and pulled her legs underneath her as she settled into the corner of the sofa.

  Dorothy looked as if she didn’t know where to begin. She went out to the kitchen for the coffee, and while she was gone Ilka looked back at the framed photo beside a vase filled with flowers.

  Dorothy carried the coffeepot into the living room. “I miss him. Every single day. We only saw each other a few times a month, but we talked on the phone almost daily. Just to say hi, how are you doing.”

  She placed two cups on the table and went back for the milk. Ilka took the opportunity to compose herself.

  “What do you mean, forced to get married?” she said after Dorothy sat back down. Forced marriages were something she associated with the Muslim world.

  “They screwed up. Both of them did, but separately. They had no choice, or at least your dad didn’t. Mary Ann might have been able to get out of it, but she didn’t dare. She toed the line and did what she was told.”

  Ilka looked questioningly at her.

  Dorothy poured milk in both their cups. “She got pregnant with a guy who wasn’t good enough for her. At least according to Raymond Fletcher.”

  “So my father was good enough?”

  Dorothy shook her head. “Not in the long run, no. But back then he was a better option than the boyfriend. Paul was a stranger from Scandinavia, and the papers wrote about how he’d been headhunted to take harness racing here in Wisconsin to the top. He was the state’s great hope. And people who represent hope are always an attractive asset.” Dorothy handed her one of the cups.

  “But then he screwed up,” Ilka said.

  “Did he ever. But no one found out about it. Fletcher covered for him. He replaced the money Paul gambled away.”

  Ilka thought of what Karen had said about her father losing all the money he’d won just before leaving Denmark. The money he was going to put into Fletcher’s new stable. The money behind the job offer he’d been given.

  “Paul lost every cent. But the worst was that the investors would have lost all faith in him if it came out. That was the scandal Fletcher saved him from. So they held on to the investors, but Paul would never be able to pay that much money back. Not even a tenth of it. Fletcher forgave the debt when he married Mary Ann. It was the only way out of the mess he got himself into.”

  “Was it because he was afraid of going to prison?” Ilka thought about the insanely long sentences in the US compared with Denmark. “I mean, if what he did ever came out?”

  Dorothy shrugged as she gazed at the steam rising from her cup. “I don’t think so. No, he wasn’t scared of that.”

  Ilka waited, but Dorothy didn’t go on. “So where did he meet Mary Ann?”

  “At the stable. But Mary Ann wasn’t interested at all in your dad, she was in love with her boyfriend. Paul told me he’d only seen her a few times before the day he was hauled into Fletcher’s office. They’d hardly even talked before Fletcher gave him the ultimatum.”

  “But if my father wasn’t afraid of prison, why did he agree to the marriage?”

  Dorothy bit her lip and thought for a moment, then took a deep breath. “He was afraid for you and your mother. If he didn’t accept Fletcher’s offer and marry his daughter, they would have gone after you two. They would have taken everything from you.”

  Ilka shook her head. “That’s absurd. We didn’t own anything.”

  Dorothy nodded. “Fletcher showed your dad photos of you on the way to school, playing with your friends. And they followed you when you visited your grandparents. They knew everything about you, and it terrified Paul. He knew Fletcher was serious when he said he’d go after your mom and have you taken away from her, unless he played along. Fletcher would do practically anything to save his stable and his reputation, it was all he cared about. Even if it meant deciding his own daughter’s future.”

  Ilka covered herself with a blanket.

  “Your dad didn’t have a choice, not really. He accepted the deal, and that included cutting off all contact with you and your mother and his former life in Denmark. Fletcher told Paul that if he ever got back in touch with you, and Fletcher found out, he’d come after you. And they reminded him of it over the years.”

  Finally, everything began falling into place for Ilka. “Fletcher used me to threaten my father. Also, to make sure he wouldn’t leave his new family here.”

  Ilka was slumped in the corner of the sofa now, cold and miserable. She wiped her tears off with the back of her hand.

  “Fletcher had photos taken of you now and then to show Paul. There was nothing your dad could do.”

  “So he got married,” Ilka mumbled. “But what about the baby?”

  “They were married before she was born.”

  “Leslie.”

  Dorothy nodded. “Leslie isn’t your dad’s biological daughter, obviously.” She set her cup down on the coffee table. “He could hardly talk about it, he was so unhappy. He never forgave himself for putting you and your mother in danger.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault that Mary Ann let her father push her around and decide for her.”

  “It was the only way she could keep the baby,” Dorothy said. “Fletcher told her he’d have it removed either surgically or by adoption, if she chose to give birth.”

  Ilka drew her knees up to her chin. “But he couldn’t force her to do that! Why did she let him?”

  “She had no choice either, when it came down to it.”

  “Everybody has a choice.”

  Dorothy shook her head. “Mary Ann didn’t, if she wanted to see her child grow up.”

  “She could have run away with her boyfriend.”

  “Fletcher would’ve found her and dragged her back. Paul asked her about it back then, and Mary Ann said she wouldn’t live the rest of her life running from her father. So she gave up and did what she thought best for herself and the child.”

  “Then what about Amber?” Ilka said, her voice low now. “She’s not my father’s child either?”

  “Yes, she is.” It had been part of the de
al, Dorothy explained. “The idea was that they were supposed to be a family, with more than one child. But Paul never regretted that, he loved Amber, adored her. He never had quite the same feelings toward Leslie, but they made it work as a family. And I have a great deal of respect for that.”

  “Respect! What’s there to respect?”

  Dorothy shrugged. “I can understand you blaming him, but he blamed himself even more. He had to come to terms with the situation he’d put himself in.”

  “What about Leslie’s biological father? Did they threaten him to keep him away from Leslie?”

  “They never told him Mary Ann was pregnant. He didn’t know he had a daughter.”

  Ilka buried her face in her hands and began rocking while waiting for her rage and pain to ease off. Finally she looked up and said, “Did anyone ever tell Leslie she’s not my father’s biological daughter?”

  Dorothy shook her head slowly.

  Silence.

  “It was so many years ago. Leslie and Amber are adults now,” Ilka said. “Why didn’t he and Mary Ann get a divorce?”

  “After the accident your dad didn’t feel it was right to leave her, when she was confined to a wheelchair.”

  Ilka nodded. That he was driving the car probably played a part in his decision too. He did have some sense of responsibility.

  Dorothy cleared her throat. “I think over the years they also relied on each other. They were each other’s fate, so to speak. They built something up together. Not a marriage in the traditional sense of the word, if there even is much left of the traditional nowadays, when two people choose to live together. I’ve never been married, I really shouldn’t be talking. But they were there for each other, they were loyal to each other. They had an alliance, you might say.”

  While Dorothy was talking, Ilka slowly realized that the rage roiling inside her was actually sorrow. And it literally took her breath away.