“What’s the breed?”
“An English mastiff. The best lapdog you could ever imagine.” The woman squints at me. “And what brings you here? It’s not often we see someone at Strandgården.”
I look around. “I was here on vacation once. A long time ago. I was driving by and I wondered if it looked like I remember it.”
“I’m afraid not, not anymore.” The woman holds her arms out to her surroundings. Then she laughs and pushes her hand in my direction. “But what am I thinking. My name is Elle-Marja. We live on the other side of the hill. I’ve lived there for more than forty years, Buster for the last eight.”
“Stella,” I say, and we shake hands. “It used to be so idyllic here. Flowers everywhere. Plants of every color, flower boxes and flower beds, shrubbery and trees trimmed to perfection.”
“When were you here?”
“Ninety-four. August.”
“It’s a shame how this place has been abandoned. Back in the day Strandgården was well cared for. And popular. Always buzzing with guests in the summer.”
“Why doesn’t anyone take care of it?” I wonder. “The land must be worth a fortune.”
“There have been developers who’ve been snooping around over the years. Everyone wants to get their hands on it. But here it stands, year after year.”
“How could that be?”
“Well, let’s see, you were here in ninety-four, you say?”
I join Elle-Marja and walk down the beach, listening to her. The sun is high, the sea glittering. Buster is on the loose again, running ahead of us, and rooting around in the driftwood and debris on the beach.
“Memory has a tendency to fail you in your later years, you’ll learn as much,” says Elle-Marja. “But some things you never forget. A little girl drowned here that summer. The family were guests. Those poor parents had to go home without their daughter. It was tragic. Lundin took it hard. He owned Strandgården and ran it pretty much on his own. It was his life’s work. He died soon after that. Very sudden. His daughter owns it now. But she doesn’t do anything with it. Haven’t seen her since then.”
We continue down the beach, past the main building, past the remnants of the mini–golf course. Elle-Marja snorts before continuing: “She moved here for a bit that year and then she disappeared again. She had a baby, and I guess this place was too much to take care of on her own.”
We arrive at the end of the sandy beach. In the distance a few seagulls circle in the air and caw. Buster lumbers away to inspect them.
“Are we already here?” I say. “I remember this beach as endless.”
“Memory plays tricks on you,” Elle-Marja says. “It’ll get worse. You live as long as me, and you’ll see.”
We continue down the path, through the tall grass that grows beside the rocky beach. I’m reminded we used to call it the Path of Problems.
“I remember this,” I say. “There were stations along this path where you could meditate.”
We stop in front of a ring made of large stones. In the middle of it lies a pile of smaller, fist-sized stones. Beside the ring, a sign sits leaning on its peg. Elle-Marja bends over, puts her hands on her back, and peers closely.
“If you have good enough eyes, you probably can read what it says. I don’t see one iota. Can’t remember, either.” She taps her forehead and chuckles.
“The Ring of Troubles,” I say.
I enter the ring. I pick up a rock and rub it. I think about what worries me, about the troubles I have. I release them by throwing the stone away from the ring. I do it with the utmost seriousness and feel my troubles ease. When I turn around, I see Daniel grinning at me.
“Maybe I should throw you out of the ring, Stella. You’ve only meant trouble since the day I met you.”
With a howl, I chased him along the path. We laughed and hugged, kissed in the grass. Unaware that our lives would be destroyed in a moment.
I stand in the ring. I pick up a rock and rub it. Throw it as far as I can. I feel no relief. Just bottomless agony. I fall down on my knees. I sob and scream until Daniel comes and carries me away from there.
I snap out of it when I feel Elle-Marja’s hand in mine. She squeezes it, takes me by the arm, and we move on.
After a bit the path continues up a steep hill. Just below us lies a gravel road. That’s where we separate. Elle-Marja and Buster are going to head home on the road because it’s quicker.
“Buster becomes difficult otherwise,” she says. “He’s prone to low blood sugar, you know.”
“I know how it is,” I say. “My husband is the same.”
Elle-Marja laughs, and we hug each other. I head up toward the hilltop. I reach a high cliff and see some trees to the left. Another building stands there, partly hidden behind the trees.
I continue in a different direction, toward a rocky cliff that faces the sea. I never came up here last time; we couldn’t take the stroller this far. From here you can see out across the Baltic Sea for miles. The cliff ends in a sharp drop. I walk closer and look over the edge. Far below the waves crash over large rocks.
A small stone deer stands in the bush beneath me. Always just about to flee, but frozen here forever. I sit down next to it and gaze out over the sea.
On my way back, I stop at the Ring of Troubles. I go inside and pick up a stone. I rub it in my hand. Then I throw it away, into the trees.
Isabelle
Isn’t it beautiful?” Johanna stretches out like a cat on the blanket next to me.
I close my eyes to the sunlight. “Wonderful.”
“That’s what I said, Dracula.”
It’s Saturday, and we’re at a class picnic in the Tantolunden park. I’m glad Johanna convinced me to come along. Stop obsessing, forget about all that for a while. I’ve decided to resume what minimal social life I had before Dad died.
I open my eyes when she tells me Axel’s arrived. She waves to her boyfriend, stands up and walks over to him. They hug and kiss.
My life could be like a movie. A feel-good movie about college life, giggling and girls’ nights out. If only I could relax; if only I could just go for it. If only there were more romance. Johanna, Susie, and Maryam share all the details of what they’ve done, what they’ve seen and heard. And it makes me realize how hopelessly inexperienced I am. I’ve made out with a few people. But never gone farther than that. It’s time to do something about it. I came close at the freshman party. I drank more wine that night than I’d drunk in my whole life leading up to then. I wore a tight black dress. I was talked into it. Although I was tugging at it all night, until the wine made me forget. But I didn’t miss a single glance I got because of it. And I do confess, the more wine I had, the more interesting those glances got.
Every time I think about that night, my whole body tingles. Now is no exception. Fredrik dragged me onto the dance floor. His hands on my waist. His hands on my hips. His hands on my buttocks. I pressed closer to him, could feel him getting hard. He took my hand, drew me away to an empty corridor. Nibbled on my throat, my ear, on the pointy one, which I have a bit of a complex about sometimes. He tickled my body as we kissed. If Mom only knew.
His fingers were on their way inside my dress when one of his friends shouted for him. He asked me to wait and left. My mistake was that I started thinking. Just the thought of Mom destroyed everything, so I went home.
I sit up on the blanket and see that more from our class are here now. Some are playing softball; some are just hanging out. One guy’s strumming a guitar.
Fredrik is here, too. He’s sitting a few feet away with a beer in his hand. When he leaves the group he’s talking to, I screw up my courage and wave.
“Hey.”
He looks at me and smiles.
“Ciao, Bella.”
“How’re you?” I say.
“Good, and yourself?”
> He flings himself down beside me and opens a new beer.
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” he says. “Want some?”
I take a drink and try not to grimace. I hand back the bottle. Fredrik takes it and lies down. After a while, I lie down as well.
“Did you have a good summer?” I can hear that I sound like Mom, dry and polite.
“I worked a lot for my dad,” he says. “Short trip to Berlin, then Saint-Tropez. You?”
“I worked the whole summer,” I answer. Such an interesting girl. Really.
“Back in Dalarna?”
“No, at a grocery store in Vällingby.”
“I didn’t see you at any of the barbecues.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Couldn’t come.”
“Too bad.”
He offers me the bottle again. I don’t really want any, but it feels so right to lie here together like this. Sharing a bottle of beer and pretending I mean something to him.
“Do you miss Borlänge?”
I think about his question.
“No,” I say. “Or, sometimes. Both yes and no. Mostly in the summer, I guess. Stockholm is lovely, too, but it’s cozier at home.”
“Are you crazy? What could beat the midnight sun in the archipelago? All those outdoor bars and restaurants? Sitting in Kungsträdgården eating ice cream, having a beer in the park, taking a stroll on Djurgården . . .”
“A stroll?” I tease. “Are you retired?”
He pokes me in the side. I laugh.
“Don’t forget having to squeeze into the subway with a bunch of sweaty passengers,” I remind him. “Usually with your nose pushed into someone’s armpit. Yuck. Blech.”
“Ha ha, funny. What’s so great about Borlänge then? Hillbilly cars? Folk costumes and screechy fiddles?”
“You don’t get it.”
“Explain it to me then.”
“The calm. The silence. The blue mountains. Magical summer nights on the meadow next to Grandma’s house.”
“Blue mountains and magical summer nights. Sounds poetic.”
“Imagine biking to the lake and feeling the wind in your hair. Wandering out into the woods and not running across another soul for hours. Hearing nothing but birdsong.”
“Imagine getting lost, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, and ending up hundreds of miles from civilization.”
“Don’t be silly. When you’re tired of the woods you can go to Leksand, or Noret along with all the corny tourists. Get a burger at Mitti. There’s swimming at the sandy beach next to Leksand’s Summerland—do you know how cold it is in Lake Siljan? Ice cold.”
“Sounds like a blast.”
Now I poke him in the side.
“Have you ever been to Tällberg? It’s gorgeous. Dad always drove through really slow so we could look at all the houses. And the road is narrow and curvy. Sometimes we drove down to Hjortnäs Bridge. Every time we went up to Vidablick, we ate ice cream and looked out over Lake Siljan. The view is incredible. We’d end our trip by walking out on the long pier in Rättvik. When I was little, it seemed like it never ended. We’d race back to the shore.”
I fall silent.
“What are you thinking about?” Fredrik wonders.
“My dad.”
“I heard. I’m really sorry. Or is that the right thing to say?”
“Thank you.”
“You should have said something.”
“Said what?”
“You should have told me what happened. You just disappeared. Said no to everything and nobody heard from you.”
“I know.”
He looks into my eyes. I want to stay here forever. With him. He asks me how I feel now, and I hadn’t planned on saying anything, but I confess that I’ve started going to therapy. He doesn’t seem to think that’s so strange. I don’t tell him everything, of course.
We lie in silence for a moment. Then I start telling him about how I went with Johanna and left a sample at the blood bus last spring. It feels good to give blood; not enough people do. Recently I received my first summons to donate.
I keep talking. I want to get the mood we just had back again, want to make him stay for as long as possible.
I say I’ll probably faint and fall over and split open my whole arm with the needle and my blood will spray all over the room and the nurse will start slipping around on it. Fredrik laughs out loud. He takes his phone from his pocket and scoots in close to me. He holds it above us and takes a picture. I protest and say I wasn’t ready. He takes one more.
“Better?” He hands the phone to me for my approval.
“Okay, a little better.”
“Come on, we look super hot, right?”
He gets a text, reads it, and sits up.
“In one of my weaker moments I promised to drive my sister to Ikea,” he says. “Gotta go. Unfortunately. But I’ll see you.”
I sit there smiling like an idiot. That is, until I realize there can never be anything between us. When he finds out who I am, I’ll disgust him. He’ll fear me.
I fear myself.
I’m afraid of what’s inside of me.
Stella
After more than eight hours behind the wheel, I’m home again. I fall asleep in a hot bath and wake up in cold water. I climb out and dry off. Thinking about Henrik.
I still don’t know how to tell him. Tell him Alice is alive, and I’ve met her. Tell him I didn’t stay home to rest, but went to Strandgården instead. That it’s for real this time.
His T-shirt is draped over the chair in the bedroom. I pull it on and lie on our bed. I open the diary.
The summer I was pregnant, 1993, the year it reached eighty degrees at the end of April—which ended up being the warmest day of the year. Otherwise the summer was long and cold and rainy. The next year, we had a heat wave, and Alice crawled around everywhere in just her diaper.
The apartment in Jordbro. We were able to get the lease because the landlord was a friend of Daniel’s father. The scent of honeysuckle outside the kitchen window, the dirty gray-striped wallpaper in the bedroom, full of holes. In the end, I papered over it with newspapers.
Daniel, my first real love. He was a year ahead of me in high school, and he ran around with all sorts of girls in his souped-up car. I showed him I was interested, but I didn’t chase him. Somehow I still managed to catch his attention. I lost my virginity in the backseat of that car.
Daniel was wild and restless, intense about anything he was interested in. He annoyed my big sister to no end. She thought he was a bad influence; he didn’t fit into Helena’s ordered worldview. We stayed out late, street racing, partying. We had a lot of sex in the backseat of his car.
Helena was always the reliable one of the two of us. I’m a dreamer, always have been. Spontaneous and impulsive, did whatever I wanted. My sister was responsible, did what she was supposed to. She grew up too early because our dad died.
When Mom ended up alone with us, she struggled to make ends meet. At night she mended clothes for extra money, sometimes she worked double shifts at her day job as a cleaner. I was only five, and Helena had to stay home and take care of me.
My sister and I grew apart as we got older. The fact that I got pregnant at seventeen didn’t help matters.
Daniel was overjoyed when he found out he was going to be a father. He did what his parents wanted him to do, finished high school, got his diploma. Then we moved in together. He got a job in a garage. We lived on minimum wage and stubbornness. Just the two of us and Alice.
I loved being home with our baby. Looking into her eyes while I nursed her, watching her mouth search for my breast, the happy sigh when she found it. I loved her scent, loved listening to the little sounds she made, her complete trust and the tenderness she evoked inside me.
Alice’s first year. I read entr
ies about how she learned to sit, how she started turning from stomach to back, the teeth that eventually came in. Her first birthday. When I baked her first cake, a balloon popped, and she started crying until Daniel made her laugh again.
Pernilla’s visit just before we went on our highly anticipated vacation.
I stop reading and put the diary on the nightstand. Not sure I can continue. I get up from bed and dry my hair. Pull on a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt. Pick up the diary again. Sit down on the edge of the bed. It comes back to me.
The beach, infinite, white. The sea, calm. Flowers of every color, everywhere. Oppressive heat. Trees swaying. Cabin number one.
Her red stroller, turned over in the sand.
Alice, where are you?
AUGUST 15, 1994
What did you do? Where were you?
Why weren’t you there? Why didn’t you hear anything?
Why didn’t you notice she was gone?
The same questions, over and over again.
I wasn’t away long. I wasn’t, was I? I was close by.
They think I hurt her. My own child, my baby daughter.
They think I injured her. That I killed her. I see it on them, in their faces, in the looks they give each other. I hear it in their voices.
I did something unforgivable. The worst sin a mother can commit. I didn’t take care of my child. I left her alone. I wasn’t there to protect her.
She was sleeping in her red stroller there among the trees. I went on a short walk just down the beach. Sat there for a while, just thinking. A few minutes.
They ask why I didn’t notice anything. They say it’s time for me to tell the truth. Tell it all, it will all come out in the end.
But I have told them, I have explained. Again and again and again.
She couldn’t have overturned that stroller by herself. And I would have heard if she woke up. I wasn’t away for long. I was close by. Someone must have taken her. But who takes someone else’s child? It’s impossible. People don’t steal children. She has to be here somewhere. Maybe someone is taking care of her. Because I didn’t. Her young, selfish, immature mother who went off by herself for a while.
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