Close to the Heel

by Norah McClintock

  “I want to show you something.” I pull my grandfather’s journal out of my pocket and hand it to her. She stares at it and then at me. She opens it and pages through it. When she looks at me again, she’s frowning.

  “Who is this?”

  “Do you recognize her?” I ask.

  “She looks a lot like my grandmother.” She’s still frowning. “Where did you get this?”

  I tell her everything I know about the journal and the woman whose face fills its pages. I show her the letter, but she has as hard a time reading it as I did.

  “I don’t understand,” she says. “Why didn’t Afi want me to see this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She peers at me and finally nods.

  “Come on,” she says.

  Sigurdur is propped up in bed. He looks better—even better than when I first arrived.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” he says.

  “And I’m sorry about Einar—and about everything.”

  “It is a good thing,” Sigurdur says. “The burden was getting heavier and heavier for Einar. And for me. It is good that there are no more secrets.”

  Brynja and I exchange glances. She hands the journal and the letter to Sigurdur.

  “There still are some, Afi,” she says.

  And so the old man begins to talk. He’s the oldest person I’ve ever met, and the story he tells is seventy years old, but his voice trembles as he tells it and tears fill his eyes. What it comes down to is he loved her. He loved Kerstin and, if you ask me, he never got over loving her. She worked for him when he was starting out as a young doctor. She kept his house and helped with his patients. He was going to ask her to marry him. But she fell in love with someone else—an air force pilot. She moved to Reykjavik to be closer to the base at Keflavik. She got pregnant. Her pilot boyfriend was sent on a mission, and the next thing she heard, he was missing and presumed dead. She went to the only place she knew to have her baby—back to Sigurdur. He looked after her. He delivered her baby. Then she heard from her boyfriend’s parents. They wanted the child. They were adamant their granddaughter was not going to be raised in a place as backward at Iceland.

  “They were very well off and extremely well connected. And they were American. She was terrified the government was going to let them have the child.” So they cooked up a scheme—Kerstin and Sigurdur. They were going to say the child had died. Sigurdur was prepared to fake a death certificate.

  “I thought if I did…” But his voice breaks off and tears spring to his eyes. Brynja squeezes his hand and says something softly in Icelandic.

  Then Kerstin got a message, forwarded to her from Reykjavik. Her boyfriend wasn’t dead after all. He was on his way back to Iceland. They would be reunited soon. Everything would be fine.

  Or it would have been if the plane, the one my grandfather was flying, hadn’t got caught in that blizzard and crash-landed—and if Kerstin’s boyfriend hadn’t died in my grandfather’s arms.

  The air force knew where it had lost track of the plane. Searchers were ready to go out as soon as the blizzard cleared. Kerstin was determined to go with them. But every minute that she waited put her more on edge. What had happened to the plane? Had it landed—or crashed? If it had crashed, was he alive? Hurt? Unable to move? Maybe freezing to death while the searchers were waiting?

  She knew the terrain—or thought she did. She set out to find the father of her child.

  She found my grandfather instead. After she made sure he was safe, she pressed on. She never made it back.

  “But why did you lie to my grandfather?” I asked. “Why did you tell him there was no woman?”

  “David was a friend of the baby’s father. The baby was at my house. I was afraid he would say something to the parents. Kerstin didn’t want her baby raised by strangers in America. She wanted her raised here among her own people. And”—he clutched Brynja’s hand tightly—“it was her baby. So I signed the death certificate and sent it to the baby’s American grandparents.”

  “The baby?” Brynja asked.

  “Your grandmother. A beautiful child. She looked so much like her mother.”

  Brynja looks down at the floor. “So you’re not really my afi?” she says finally.

  A few seconds pass before her eyes meet Sigurdur’s.

  “What I did was wrong,” he says. “But I raised your grandmother, and when she died, I raised your mother. If you’re angry with me, I understand.”

  “I’m only angry that you didn’t tell me. Or Mother. Or anyone.”

  “She—Kerstin—she wanted the baby to stay here. She didn’t want it to go to America.”

  “I love you, Afi,” Brynja says. “No matter what. But you should have told me. Then you wouldn’t have had to carry such a burden yourself. I’m glad you kept the baby. I’m glad you’re my afi.”

  A tear trickles down the old man’s face as Brynja leans in and kisses his cheek.

  Brynja turns to me.

  “Are you still planning to take the journal out there?”

  I glance at the old man, who says, “He should do what David wanted.”

  I look at his gnarled fingers clutching the journal. “I think if he had known the whole story, he would have wanted you to have it,” I say. “To remember her by.”

  When I finally leave the room, Brynja follows me.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for being so kind to him.”

  I tell her it’s nothing, and it’s true. It feels good to do something nice for the old man. He deserves it.

  Two days later, the Major and I are in the airport at Keflavik, waiting to board a plane home. I notice he keeps staring at me.

  “What?” I say finally, looking up from the magazine I’ve been reading.

  “You handled yourself well, Rennie,” the Major says. “Your mother would have been proud of you. I know I am.”

  I almost fall off my chair. The Major proud of me? I guess there really is a first time for everything.

  “And I’m surprised you let me come here in the first place,” I say—which reminds me. “What did Grandfather say in that letter that Mr. Devine gave you?”

  “That there was something you want to tell me but that you’re afraid to.”

  It’s true. I talked to Grandfather about it—about how I wanted to tell the whole story.

  “He said that you’re afraid of me,” the Major says. “Are you?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, sometimes. You can be one scary dude.”

  “Your mother was never afraid.”

  “She’s not like me. She was tough.”

  He smiles. “She was that. So are you. You’re a lot like her.” He stares out at the tarmac for a moment. “So, is there something you want to tell me?”

  I have a feeling it’s now or never.

  “It’s about Mom.”

  He nods.

  “It’s about what happened to her.”

  “Je t’aime, mon fils,” he said. “N’aie pas peur.”

  Don’t be afraid. And at that exact moment, sitting on a molded plastic chair beside him at the airport, I’m not. I start talking, really talking, to the Major—my dad—for the first time in a long time. It feels good.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A great big thank-you is owed to Eric Walters, who thought up the whole series and wrote the first book; to Andrew Wooldridge, who said yes; to Sarah Harvey, who kept track of all the fictional characters, all the authors, all the timelines and all the details; and to Shane Peacock, John Wilson, Ted Staunton, Sigmund Brouwer and Richard Scrimger, who wrote the other books in this series.

  NORAH MCCLINTOCK is a five-time winner of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Novel. Norah grew up in Montreal, Quebec, and now lives with her family in Toronto, Ontario. Visit www.web.net/~nmbooks for more information about Norah.

  www.seventheseries.com

  o the Heel