Georgia Beaufort, a South Carolina transplant in her early sixties with hair the colour of pumpkin and skin the colour of coal, hustled us into Patricia Reynold’s office. She delivered cups of coffee as we waited for Patricia to arrive. This room was bright and high-ceilinged with curlicue crown molding and tall windows that looked out on a large expanse of snow-covered lawn and woods beyond. Patricia had an oak desk clear of work and framed prints of cottages on the walls. Georgia seated us in arm chairs upholstered in yellow and green flowered fabric that were positioned in a semicircle around a stone fireplace original to the building. A crackling fire completed the tranquil picture. Claire appeared to sink deeper into her chair as she sipped from her coffee cup and looked into the fire. It seemed best not to interrupt her reverie.
I remembered Patricia Reynolds as a scrawny ninth grade girl who had mousy brown hair and thick glasses. The boys had given her the nickname Flatsy Patsy and delighted in teasing her until she learned to make herself almost invisible. I heard the click of high heels on the hardwood floor and turned my head, preparing myself for an older version of the girl I remembered. My brain did a double take. The voluptuous platinum blonde who strode across the room towards us was as far from the flat-chested girl I remembered as Twiggy was from Jayne Mansfield. I stood, and as we shook hands, I studied Patricia’s face. Whoever had done her plastic surgery had done good work. Her nose was narrow and delicately flared at the nostrils, with red lips larger than humanly possible. Even her eyes were wide, with the lids pulled tight, and the glasses had probably been exchanged for laser surgery. Capped by a mane of tousled blonde hair, she looked more like a Barbie doll than the flat-chested, gawky girl I remembered in high school. For thirty-five, she was remarkably constructed, right down to her breast implants that in my view, were too large for her tiny frame. She kept her face expressionless, but I couldn’t miss the triumph in her eyes as she extended a cool hand for me to shake.
“Maja, so nice to see you after all these years. I’m sorry for your loss. Your father was a wonderful man.” She let her eyes slide surreptitiously up and down my body as she spoke. If she’d meant to make me feel self-conscious and unattractive, she had succeeded.
“You’re looking lovely, Patricia,” I said as she arranged herself in the chair across from us, crossing one stockinged leg over the other. My professional training had won out over my own insecurities. I was sure this expensively packaged Patsy still held scars from her years of childhood teasing. Nobody could care so much for their appearance unless they had a reason to be obsessed. I knew the signs from my patients, many of whom I sent to counselling before agreeing to operate on them. Some just found another surgeon, but that was outside my control.
“Thanks. You’re looking well too.” She tilted her head towards Claire. “Sorry I couldn’t make the funeral. I had a few urgencies to attend to.”
“That’s okay. You said there were changes to the will?” Claire wasn’t messing around with any niceties. She’d set her half-filled coffee cup on the end table and was leaning forward with her hands on her knees.
Patricia cleared her throat. I almost missed the look of dislike she shot Claire, because she just as quickly lowered her eyes to study her hands folded in her lap. “Yes. Peter was in, oh, a week or so before he died and asked that his house and land be left to Maja. He actually signed the new will straight out of the hospital.” Patricia raised her eyes, and she and Claire turned their heads as a unit to look at me.
“Me?” I asked, taking a second to register what she’d said. My father had signed a new will the day he’d died. “But that makes no sense. He always said he was leaving the house to Jonas.”
“This is ridiculous,” Claire snapped. “This isn’t a minor change to the will like you led me to believe. The house and land are a major part of the inheritance.”
“Peter said he would tell you when he was ready, and I had to respect that.” I could have sworn Patricia was smiling as she stood to get the folder with my father’s will. She sat back down and riffled through the pages. “Yes, he had eighty thousand in retirement savings that he’s left to Gunnar in a trust for when he reaches twenty-one. Jonas gets the new boat and the van. The remaining money in his checking account goes to the hospital, about twenty thousand dollars.”
Claire’s face had turned the colour of skim milk. Her grey eyes flashed anger. “This has to be some kind of joke. Jonas looked after his father’s house for all those years, and he deserves to inherit. Peter held it over his head like a damned carrot to keep him in line, and this is the thanks we get? A stinking boat and van?”
Patricia shrugged. “Peter made it very clear that this is what he wanted. He signed the new will, so that’s about as definite as it gets. He’d intended to tell you, but then he had the...accident.”
“Was Jonas’s name on the will to inherit the house before the change?” I asked.
“Yes, it was, but now you inherit the house and property.”
“I don’t understand. Why would my father change his will? It seems so contrary.” Maybe I’d just hit upon the truth. My father was a contrary man who liked to play God. It would have given him great pleasure to turn the tables on Claire and Jonas. Manipulating people was second nature to him.
Claire stood and looked down at us. Her breathing was so quick and shallow that she appeared close to panting. She spoke with difficulty. “I’ve got to pick up Gunnar. I’ll talk to you later, Patricia. I have to think this through.”
I watched Claire stride to the door then I turned back to Patricia and shrugged. “I have to say I’m shocked by this, but the house can’t be worth that much. It’s out in the middle of nowhere and not in the best of shape. There is a lot of land, but it’s just wilderness. I can’t imagine why Claire is so upset except for the principle, I guess.”
Patricia’s eyebrows rose. “You mean you really don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“That the land has been expropriated for the new four-lane highway that’s being built next year between the border and Duluth. The government had another piece of land they could have chosen, but your father put forward a case for his property, and they went for it. The government offered your father a tidy sum, and he’s signed the papers to sell.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Do I look like a woman who kids? I’m surprised your family didn’t tell you.”
“Was it common knowledge around Duved Cove that my father was selling the land?”
“No. We agreed to keep it quiet while negotiations were going on. Some people might have put up a fight over the whole idea of an interstate just outside of town.”
“People here don’t like change.”
“Especially that kind of change. Your father may not have been as well liked around here when the news broke, especially if they knew the lengths he went to so that his property would be picked. The other land was further out of town but swampy, and that was the clincher.”
I didn’t answer. I was too busy trying to sort out what this new information could mean. The list of people who would want to kill him had just grown exponentially. I couldn’t deny that Jonas and Claire were numbers one and two. Kevin Wilders was a close third, followed by every person in Duved Cove who cared about preserving their way of life.
I agreed to sign the necessary paperwork that Patricia laid out for me on the desk and fled her office, shoving my arms into my parka as I pushed my way out the front door. As I stood on the landing zipping up my jacket, I spotted Tobias Olsen with his back to me at a parking meter, locking the door of his police car. I all but leapt down the steps and darted across the street without him seeing me. From my position half-hidden behind a white van, I watched Tobias bound up the steps to the lawyers’ office that I had just left. He would soon know the contents of the will. It wasn’t going to look good for Jonas or Claire since they’d believed my father was leaving my father’s oh-so-valuable twenty acres to them. I had no doubt that the part of Pa
tricia that still held the Flatsy Patsy scars would gladly share that information with Tobias without qualm.
I pulled up the hood of my parka and started walking quickly towards the highway. I needed to find out more about what was going on if I was going to sort this out. My worry for Jonas was deepening. It far outweighed the fact that overnight, I’d become flush enough to change the direction of my future. My father had just left me enough money for a comfortable retirement, and for the life of me, I had no idea why.
THIRTEEN
Mrs. Lingstrom had aged considerably since I’d last seen her over twenty years before. She took a long time to answer my knock on her back door, but the smile of recognition on her face was enough to make me happy I’d made the visit.
“Maja Larson! My goodness. Oh. Oh. Oh.” She pulled me into an embrace with surprising strength. “I’m so sorry about your father. So sorry.”
She stepped back and drew me into the kitchen. A smell of cooked cabbage and tomato sauce hung in the air. I closed my eyes and I was twelve again, invited in for a cabbage roll supper.
“You will have some fresh coffee and cake, yah? Such a joy to see you after all these years. You are so pretty still.” She sat me in a chair and bustled about chattering all the while. Her back was rounded and she was tinier than I remembered, but she was dressed the same—a flowered house dress over beige knee-high stockings and sturdy brown shoes. “Katherine will be so sorry to have missed you,” she said at last as she set a brimming cream jug next to a sugar bowl on the table.
“I heard she was home...” I didn’t want to believe that I wouldn’t have a chance to see her. “Has she gone back to Madison?”
“No. No. She’s on a vacation.” Mrs. Lingstrom set a cup of coffee in front of me and a slice of homemade cinnamon bundt cake that she’d warmed in the microwave, but she would not meet my eyes. She settled herself in a seat across from me with a cup of black coffee. She rested her elbows on the table, holding her cup with arthritic hands. The knuckles were swollen and the fingers claw-like.
“Umm. This is so good,” I said, chewing slowly to savour every morsel. I felt like I’d gone back in time. In a moment, Katherine would come bounding into the kitchen, cheeks red and her blonde pigtails lopsided and half-undone. She’d been wholesomely solid with a square frame and sturdy limbs. Even when she’d grown to be a teenager, she’d radiated good health and a carelessness about her appearance. I felt a sadness for those days before my mother had died. For our lost friendship—it was like a death when you realized how someone you’d been so close to was out of your life.
Mrs. Lingstrom reached over and touched my hand. “Do you remember the time you and Katherine came home with that dirty old crow in a box? It was nearly dead, but you paraded it around like your new pet.”
“My father wouldn’t let me keep any animals. I was desperate.” I smiled. “Katherine named it Blacky. Not all that original, but an accurate name, nonetheless.”
“I thought for sure you were both going to pick up a disease. When it died and I threw it in the garbage, Katherine wouldn’t speak to me for three days.” Mrs. Lingstrom’s eyes were wet behind her glasses. “I had to buy her a kitten in the end.”
“Spooky.”
“Yah, Spooky. Katherine treated that cat like a baby.”
“Katherine and I used to put a dress on Spooks and push her around in the doll carriage. In hindsight, it’s unusual what that cat let us do to her.”
“Katherine so wanted a little sister or brother, and I couldn’t have any more children. I wonder if that would have made a difference.”
“A difference?”
“Oh, about the time Katherine turned fifteen, she became rebellious, and I couldn’t understand what to do with her. The more her father and I tried to discipline her, the worse it got. I don’t know. Maybe, we were too strict or maybe not strict enough. We’ve struggled with what we did wrong. If there’d been a brother or sister, maybe we’d have spoiled her less.”
“You were wonderful parents. I couldn’t have gotten through those years without your home to come to. This was my refuge.”
Mrs. Lingstrom shrugged. “Katherine left home first chance she got. She married and moved to Wisconsin and hardly ever comes to visit. They have two daughters. Lila is twenty-three and Maddy is twelve. I never see them.”
I did a quick calculation. Katherine must have married the year I’d gone away to college. I hadn’t kept in touch those years, I was so tortured by my mother’s death, I’d just shut everyone out. “It’s so hard to believe she hasn’t kept in better touch with you.”
“Yah. She couldn’t leave home fast enough.”
“I heard at my father’s wake that Katherine was having trouble in her marriage and that she came home.”
Mrs. Lingstrom took a drink of coffee then stared into her cup. “She was here, but she’s gone again.”
“Do you know how I can get in touch with her? I’d like to see her, if possible. I’ve let our friendship go for way too long.”
Mrs. Lingstrom stood and picked up my empty plate. “Katherine is on holiday,” she said with finality. “I’ll let her know you were asking for her next time I speak with her.” She set my plate on the counter and came back to sit down. She didn’t look as comfortable now, and I decided not to speak of Katherine again.
“My father,” I said, “had you seen him recently? I’m trying to understand what might have been going on before he died.”
Mrs. Lingstrom frowned. “It’s odd, Maja, you know? I saw Peter the morning before he fell. He’d come over in the morning to borrow some eggs for breakfast. It was odd, because he never came by. We did not speak much after your mother’s death.”
My mother and Mrs. Lingstrom had been friends, but I knew my mother had kept silent about the worst of what went on at home. Perhaps Mrs. Lingstrom had known more than I’d thought. When my mother killed herself, my father acted like the victim. Jonas and I kept up the façade, but I’d hated him then. It had taken many years before I could think of him without the rage making me nauseous. I pulled myself back. “Did my father seem out of sorts or was anything on his mind?”
“He was preoccupied. I remember that. Said something about going on a holiday soon. He wanted me to know.”
“Did he talk about anything else?”
“He seemed agitated, like he couldn’t sit still. After I gave him the eggs, he hesitated in the doorway there, as if he was going to say something. Then he seemed to change his mind and left. That’s the last time I saw him.”
I stood to leave. There was nothing more to learn here. “It has been good to see you again, Mrs. Lingstrom.” I reached for her hand and closed mine over her twisted fingers. “Please say hello to your husband for me.”
“Yah, I will, Maja dear,” she said. “He’s in Maple Lodge now. I visit him every Saturday. Sometimes he knows me and other times not. I’ll be sure to tell him you were by, though, if he’s having a good day.”
I felt a sinkhole of depression open under me as I walked slowly down the Lingstrom driveway to the road. I stopped at the edge of their property and looked back. Even the house had a forlorn aura about it, as if it had given up fighting against time. The siding had mottled from blue to grey, and the roof shingles were black and curled in places. The windows, original to the house, were now surrounded by peeling frames and dark streaks where rain had stained the paint. The swing set Katherine and I had played on stood abandoned in the side yard, rusted to a burnt sienna colour and tilted in the snow, as if it was having trouble standing. We used to ride together on the black strap swing, her sitting and me standing with my runners squished tight against her thighs. I could envision Katherine below me, her head back and her pigtails snapping in the wind as we pumped our legs to go higher. Her arms and legs, like mine, would have been a rich brown from days playing in the summer sun.
Katherine’s mother had liked to dress her in matching short sets, pastel pink or blue, and she wore them without
fuss, although I knew she preferred my denim pedal pushers and plaid shirts. My favourite of Katherine’s clothes had been her mint green outfit with a fisherman on the sleeveless top and the line of his fishing pole extending down her shorts to a fish on the pocket. A fringe of thread tassels rimmed the bottom of the shirt. Katherine had told me that the clothes were hand-me-downs from a rich cousin in California, and they’d assumed an exotic appeal beyond our tiny world in Duved Cove.
I’d forgotten that Katherine had become rebellious in her mid-teens. By then, I was thinking of nothing but Billy and devising ways to spend time with him without my father knowing. My second biggest preoccupation back then had been staying close to my mother to protect her from the days of sadness. Instinctively, Jonas and I had put ourselves between her and my father, and that had kept us close to home. Katherine and I had still hung out some, but not nearly as much as in grade school. When I remembered Katherine, it was from the younger years, before we’d found boys and started to grow apart. She’d run through a few boyfriends after she’d turned thirteen—boy crazy, my mother had said. It looked like boy crazy got you married at seventeen and separated at forty. I wondered if Katherine regretted settling for sex in the back seat of a car instead of pursuing her dreams. If she could go back and change those years, would she do it differently? Would any of us? I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. Bob Seger had gotten it right.
I turned towards the road and began walking towards Jonas’s. With any luck, he’d be back from the doctor’s. I hoped he hadn’t sunk into a depression that would keep him from telling me what he knew about the will.
As it turned out, the doctor decided to keep Jonas in the hospital overnight. He wanted to try a new medication and thought it best to observe Jonas’s reaction to the drug for at least the first day. Claire arrived home with the news mid-afternoon. We took glasses of wine left over from the wake into the living room and sat facing each other at either end of the green velvet couch. The fireplace remained unlit and the anemic sunlight sifting in through the windows made the room feel dreary and close. I felt a headache coming on and would have liked to soak in the tub then have a nap. I looked at Claire as she took a long swallow of wine. She appeared less agitated than the last time I’d seen her at the lawyer’s, one leg tucked under her as she leaned back into the pillows.
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