Fiddling with Fate

by Kathleen Ernst

  “That’s a good strategy,” the pastor said. “After Ellis Island opened in 1892, officials started collecting more detailed information about each passenger.”

  Chloe hoped that Rosemary Rossebo, Mom’s friend and a genealogist extraordinaire, could find evidence of Amalie’s departure from Norway. “I thought I could start searching church records during my visit, as time permits. Are the Utne records kept here?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Reverend Brandvold sounded grieved. “Parish records would include immigrant departures, but they’re kept at the regional archives in Bergen. I could have borrowed them if you’d let me know in advance.”

  Chloe twisted her mouth with frustration. “I should have thought that through.” Some researcher she was.

  “You were kinda busy,” Roelke observed. She gave him a grateful look.

  “It doesn’t mean I can’t help,” the older man assured them. “I’ve got friends in the city. Someone may have time to check church records for you. From 1867 to 1973, the Norwegian Police also kept emigration records. And pastors wrote recommendations for immigrants. I’ll look through my own files at home.”

  “This is all very kind of you,” Chloe said.

  He waved that away. “I’ve been collecting local items for years. Letters, account books—anything I can find. It’s become a … what do you say?”

  “A passion?” Chloe tried. “An addiction? An obsession?”

  “Yes!” Reverend Brandvold beamed. “An obsession.” Then his smile faded, and his eyes grew shadowed. “I care deeply about the people who live here now, and about their ancestors. It’s hard to read of tragedies and losses, even if they happened a century ago, maybe longer.”

  “But inspiring too?” Chloe guessed. She was often inspired by stories of people who had gone before.

  “They persevered,” the pastor agreed.

  “I often wonder,” Chloe said soberly, “if I would have done as well.”

  Thirteen

  Torhild—February 1866

  “Torhild! Torhild, wake up!”

  Torhild struggled groggily to wakefulness. She blinked at the flickering light of a candle. Her mother Lisbet stood by the bed. “What’s wrong?” Torhild mumbled, shoving hair back from her face. Halvor, her husband of six years, didn’t stir.

  Lisbet’s face was an anxious white oval in the shadows. “Your father is gone.”

  Torhild pushed herself upright. “He likely went out to check the animals.”

  “I waited for him to come back. It’s been too long.”

  Not good, Torhild thought. The night was bitterly cold. The howling wind knifed through cracks in the old house. Snow had been knee-deep when they’d all gone to bed, and surely it was drifted higher now.

  “We’ll go look. You build up the fire.” She turned and shook her husband’s shoulder. “Halvor, wake up. I need your help.”

  He rolled away from her. “Leave me be,” he grumbled.

  “Halvor!” Torhild yanked back the sheepskins and shook him harder. Honestly, sometimes her man was as shiftless as Edvin Brekke …

  She shivered, as she always did when thinking of her cousin Gjertrud’s disastrous relationship with the Bergen musician. Twelve years had passed since Gjertrud had thrown herself from the Utne Inn’s highest window. Not a day had gone by without Torhild remembering, grieving, struggling to cope with her anger.

  Halvor had seemed to be everything that Edvin Brekke was not. Her groom was a stolid farmer she’d met at a harvest party. When he’d asked for her hand four months later, she’d been willing. Torhild had worn the ancestral bridal crown for their wedding and covered her hands with the blackwork handaplagg her mother had received from her grandmother Gudrun. Halvor was a younger son with no land of his own, so he’d moved to Høiegård. Torhild’s father needed help, God knew, and she’d felt optimistic about the future. Best of all, Halvor was a good dancer.

  But Halvor was also a good drinker. Once they married he’d grown less careful, not bothering to pretend to be anything but stumbling drunk after an evening with friends. When he drank, he turned lazy and sharp-tongued. And he drank a lot.

  Now Halvor blinked, then winced. “What?” he grumbled.

  “My father went outside and hasn’t come back.” Torhild scrambled from bed, shivering. She glanced to the pallet where her two young sons slept peacefully, nestled between woolly sheepskins. At the hearth, Lisbet tossed kindling on the smoldering ashes and blew sparks into flames.

  Torhild and Halvor pulled on coats and cloaks and thick mittens. “We’ll find him,” Torhild promised her mother, as Halvor lit a lantern. “He’s probably waiting out the storm in the stable.”

  The night was a dark, whirling chaos of snow. Torhild staggered before the wind, head bent as tiny pellets lashed her cheeks. Halvor locked his arm through hers and they stumbled forward. Inside, the stable smelled comfortingly of cow manure and hay and the oily fleeces stored after the last shearing. It was a relief to escape the wind. But there was no sign of her father.

  “He must have lost his way in the storm,” Halvor muttered. “We’ll never find his tracks now.”

  Torhild couldn’t bear the image of her father limping through the storm, missing the house, confused and freezing. “Then we must search for him!”

  Halvor hesitated, then nodded. “Do not stray from me.” He found a length of rope, tied one end around his waist, and the other around hers. They pulled their scarves up over their noses and went back into the blizzard.

  It took much too long to find Lars. If he hadn’t worn a scarlet cap, they would have missed him altogether. He lay in the snow, well away from both stable and house. “Father?” Torhild cried, crouching beside him. His skin was white, his hair crusted with snow, his eyes closed. “Father!” His lips moved, but no words emerged.

  She turned to her husband. “Help me! We’ve got to get him inside.”

  Two weeks later, Torhild pulled a stool close to the bed and settled the bowl of sour cream porridge in her lap. “I’ve made rømmegrøt, Father,” she murmured. “I’ll help you.” She spooned a bit between her father’s lips, then used a cloth to wipe away what had spilled. Her father managed a lopsided smile.

  Somewhere behind her, Lisbet stifled a sob. Lars had suffered a high fever after getting lost in the storm. Even now he was too weak to leave his bed. His breath rattled in his chest. Lisbet’s tears were understandable if not, Torhild couldn’t help thinking, particularly helpful.

  At least Halvor was trying to be useful. A steady swish-swish sounded from the chipping stool as he stripped bark from elm and aspen branches. Fodder was running low with spring still just a promise.

  When someone knocked on the door, Torhild jumped, spilling the porridge. Høiegård was so difficult to reach that they rarely had visitors, especially in winter. As she mopped up the dribble, her mother went to greet their guest. Glancing over her shoulder, Torhild was surprised to see her father’s fiddling friend, Big Gunnar.

  He pulled off his hat. “I don’t mean to intrude,” he said respectfully to Lisbet. “But I heard about Lars. I thought to play him a few tunes. It might cheer him.”

  “Play a few tunes?” Lisbet sounded wary. “I don’t think …”

  “Yes,” Lars croaked. “Please.” He looked from his friend to his daughter.

  “What’s this?” Halvor murmured, one eyebrow raised speculatively.

  This is something that will cause trouble, Torhild thought, but she couldn’t deny her father’s request. “I’ll fetch the fiddle,” she said, avoiding her mother’s gaze. She retrieved the hardingfele from Lars’s cupboard.

  Lisbet gasped. “You dared have this in our home?”

  Torhild offered the instrument to the fiddler. He accepted it like a beloved companion and lifted it gently from the case, a smile softening his weathered face.

  “A
fter everything that has happened?” Lisbet’s voice climbed higher.

  Torhild stepped between Lisbet and the bed. This was not the moment to bring up their tragic wedding day. “Mother—”

  “What if someone hears?” Lisbet turned to her daughter.

  Torhild went to her mother’s side. “There’s no one to hear. Let him play for Father.”

  Big Gunnar played with eyes closed, his body dipping and swaying as the music soared through the dark room. He bowed some of the new lydarslåttars, pieces intended for listening, not dancing. Torhild wasn’t able to even tap her toes, for he often changed tempo and held notes longer than expected, making the music his own. Sometimes he sang along, sharing stories. How Great-Grandmother Gudrun would have loved this, Torhild thought.

  Halvor fetched a jug of ale and filled mugs for the fiddler and himself. Lisbet retreated to a far corner and watched with mouth pinched into a tight line, arms crossed over her chest. Please, Mother, Torhild thought. No one will know. Forget your fears, the bad memories, just for this night. And perhaps Lisbet did, for she made no more complaints.

  Lars closed his eyes. The muscles in his face—so often rigid with pain—relaxed. His lips curled into an easy smile. The eiderdown-filled quilt twitched, as if his body was sketching the movements of an old march or reel. He was a dancer, Torhild reminded herself. He’d won her mother’s hand and heart with his stamina and grace.

  Torhild’s throat grew thick, and her eyes blurred with hot tears. She didn’t know which hurt her heart more: that her mother was broken, that her father was dying, or that she’d never seen them dance.

  Fourteen

  As they left the Utne Church, Roelke could tell that Chloe had hoped for more encouragement about tracing Marit’s people. “Are you okay?”

  She twisted her mouth in a halfhearted smile. “Just wondering about my ancestors. Some of them might have attended church here, Roelke. Walked these roads. Listened to Hardanger fiddle tunes. Gone to dances. I just don’t know.”

  “You’re only getting started,” he reminded her.

  “I suppose. I just thought …” She heaved a sigh. “I was sure that coming to Norway and searching for ancestors was absolutely the right thing to do. Now … I don’t know.”

  Roelke reached for her hand, trying to anchor her. Chloe wasn’t a particularly practical person. She could be impulsive. She tended to plunge ahead when pursuing her passions without considering consequences. That was true when doing any historical research. Her mission here was intensely personal.

  Worse, he sensed that her quest was motivated by more than finding ancestral records. Chloe’s relationship with her mom had been strained. He suspected Chloe believed that learning about Marit’s birth might atone for that. But although finding some basic record of the mysterious Amalie might be possible, finding actual relatives during their short time in Norway seemed like a tall order.

  When Chloe tipped her head against his shoulder, his heart hitched. He was still amazed that she’d fallen in love with him. And in all honesty, he had to admit that Chloe’s impetuousness—and her vulnerability—were two things that had attracted him from the beginning.

  Those things also sometimes kept him awake at night.

  “Let’s head back to the hotel,” Chloe said. “I want to see how my dad’s doing and find out if Aunt Hilda has shown any improvement.”

  Back at the Utne Hotel, Chloe went in search of a phone. Roelke settled at a table on the front porch and stared over the fjord. The ferries coming and going didn’t detract from the village’s peaceful charm. Shadows shifted on the mountains, fragmenting the forested slopes and stone faces into geometric shapes. The water rippled restlessly at this junction between the Sørfjord and the Hardangerfjord.

  Roelke felt restless too. He’d never been to Norway before and dammit, he wanted to be a tourist. He wanted Chloe’s dreams to come true so she could relax and enjoy their visit. But neither of those things were going to happen before some problems got resolved. And frankly, to his mind, there were too many problems stacking up.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved the stack of index cards. On top was the one he’d labeled Klara Evenstad. The problems, though, hadn’t started with her death. He plucked a blank card from the pile and began to write.

  Trouble:

  Someone tried to snatch Chloe’s daypack at the Bergen airport

  Rock slide on the trail when I was hiking up the mountain

  Klara Evenstad murdered at the folk museum in Utne

  Roelke tried to find some link between the incidents. If there was one, he couldn’t see it. The attempted daypack snatch had happened what, eighty miles away? Something like that. And they’d only just met Klara Evenstad—

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  He jumped, startled to find Chloe standing beside him. “Just collecting my thoughts. Did you reach your dad?”

  “Yes, and he sounded glad to hear from me, but there’s been no change in Aunt Hilda’s condition. I had a fax waiting from Rosemary Rossebo, the genealogist who’s helping me, but so far she hasn’t found Amalie Sveinsdatter on a ship’s passenger list.”

  Roelke could tell that his beloved was more discouraged than ever. “Has Rosemary given up?”

  Chloe managed the ghost of a smile. “Heck, no. She’s tenacious.”

  “So maybe you’ll get better news next time.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged before leaning closer to peer at the index card. Her eyebrows went up. “Do you honestly think there’s some connection between those incidents?”

  “It seems unlikely. But …”

  “But what?” She slid into the chair across from him.

  He rested on his elbows. “Chloe, why would someone try to grab your pack at the airport? It would have been much easier to target some elderly woman with a dangling pocketbook.”

  She sucked in her lower lip as she thought that over. “Because my daypack was bigger? Possibly holding more stuff of value?”

  “I can’t help wondering if someone was after more than a tourist’s wallet. What if somebody wanted to steal that embroidered thing you found in Marit’s closet?”

  Chloe had set her yellow daypack on the ground by her chair. Now she pulled it protectively into her lap. “But who?”

  “I have no idea. But you did pull it out in the middle of a crowded café at the airport. Sonja Gullickson did talk in detail about how rare it was. I remember her saying that your piece with the black

  embroidery—what did she call it?”

  “It’s a handaplagg. A hand cloth.”

  “Right. She said it was probably made in the seventeen hundreds, and very valuable.” Roelke had been hanging around with Chloe for long enough to know that some people went nuts over antiques like that.

  Chloe’s gaze went distant. Finally she said, “It’s hard to imagine that by chance, someone eavesdropping from the next table in an airport café was the kind of person who’d try to make a grab for it.”

  “Unless Sonja Gullickson had set something up with an accomplice.”

  “Roelke!”

  “Sonja did come back from Stockholm early, too. She could have been back in Utne by the time Klara was attacked.”

  Chloe looked stricken. “Surely Sonja had nothing to do with Klara’s murder. Or with whoever tried to grab my daypack.”

  “I’m not accusing her.” He held up both hands. “But you have to admit, it’s possible.” He wrote Sonja Gullickson on a clean index card. “And when we talked to her before the concert, she never took off her sunglasses. Sometimes people do that if they have something to hide.”

  “Or if they like looking stylish. Which Sonja does.”

  Okay, further debate wouldn’t accomplish anything. “You’re probably right,” Roelke admitted. “What happened at the airport probably had nothing to do with Kl
ara’s death. Even so, I suggest we ask the innkeeper if there’s a safe where you can leave your heirlooms.”

  “But … they’re talismans.” Chloe patted her daypack. “I like having them with me.”

  He waited, giving her time. Telling Chloe what to do usually prompted her to do the exact opposite.

  “Oh, all right,” she conceded, sounding aggrieved. “The most important thing is to keep the doily and handaplagg safe.” But she still hesitated, nibbling her lower lip.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking about the conversation about Klara we had this morning. One thing strikes me as unusual. Why did she go from working full-time at the museum to working full-time as a maid and waitress at the hotel? There’s nothing wrong with hotel work, but based on the tour Klara gave us, she was a fantastic guide.”

  “Maybe she wanted to work with her friend.”

  “Maybe.” Chloe sounded doubtful.

  “Or maybe Klara wasn’t invited to return full-time this year.”

  Chloe’s brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Some conflict with Ellinor, maybe?”

  “But if that were the case, why would Ellinor bring her in at all?”

  “Because the museum ended up short-staffed?”

  “I think we’re drifting into pretty wild speculation.”

  Wild speculation can lead to unexpected answers, Roelke thought. But he sensed Chloe had done all the brainstorming she was going to do, just now. He wrapped a rubber band around his index cards and tucked them away. “How about we get some lunch,” he suggested, and was rewarded with a smile.

  After a meal of open-faced Norwegian sandwiches—Jarlsburg cheese for Chloe, roast pork for Roelke—they stopped at the hotel desk. Barbara-Eden answered the bell and, when Chloe explained what she wanted, summoned proprietress Ulrikke Moe.

  “I’d be glad to secure your things in our safe.” Ulrikke accepted the tissue-wrapped textiles from Chloe. “Barbara-Eden, I believe your help is needed in the kitchen.” When the younger woman had disappeared, Ulrikke turned back to her guests. “Is everything all right? Has Barbara-Eden said something inappropriate?”