§ § § -- January 7, 2006

Mrs. Appleton returned cradling a black box in her hands; this she presented to Leslie. "I think I'd better give this to you to keep, dear," she said, settling back into her chair with slow effort. "I expect Ingunna would have wanted you to have it."

"What's this?" Leslie asked, gingerly examining the box.

"Just an ordinary little tin box. Scorched from the fire. You'd think it would've melted from the heat—there, you can see it's a bit warped in the back of the lid there. But that's all. Made me wonder, and I wondered even more when I saw what was inside."

Leslie set the box on the table and lifted the lid; inside was a thick, rubber-banded stack of letters, browned on the edges but otherwise intact. She read the top envelope, which was addressed in elegant script to Ingunna at this address. When she saw the return address, she gasped softly, making Christian sit up and stare intently at her. The name written in the corner of the envelope was Gefjun Liljefors.

"Mormor knew someone in the Liljefors family!" Leslie breathed, and saw Christian's eyes slowly widen with amazement. He leaned over to peer at the letters.

"Herregud," he murmured. "The story of how they met must be extraordinary, if only we knew someone who could tell it to us."

Mrs. Appleton was watching him. "I always wondered about that. We met the lady on a trip to Sweden." That made Christian look up sharply, and though she registered the provenance of the movement, she continued speaking. "We were touring Ingunna's birthplace, you know. And there she was, very lovely lady, sitting at a little café waiting for us. They jabbered away in Swedish, or something anyway, for a few minutes, and then Ingunna introduced us. Said that it was her friend's first-ever trip outside Lilla Jordsö and it was a momentous occasion for her. For some reason she made that sound significant, but the way she said it, seemed to me I was just supposed to know and accept that it was unusual. So I held my tongue, but oh, the questions I wanted to ask." She met Christian's gaze. "I don't suppose you could shed a little light, after all these years."

Christian smiled. "I can't tell you much, because the Liljefors clan has always been very secretive. But I know this. They've been unjustly persecuted for most of their history, and only in the last decade or so have they begun to emerge from their shell. Even now they have a long way to go, but some members have made unusual strides. One of Leslie's friends belongs to the clan, and my nephew is married to another member."

"Why were they persecuted?" Mrs. Appleton asked.

Christian frowned and settled back in his chair. "It's a very long story. As I said, they are very secretive, and they don't open up much to outsiders." He considered the question, while Leslie watched him, and then looked up at Mrs. Appleton again. Carefully he said, "You could say that the reasons are quasi-religious."

To their relief, Mrs. Appleton accepted this. "Oh, I see. Such a shame that people who profess to fear the same god so often refuse to see eye to eye on how to fear that god." She sighed gently and raised her cocoa mug. "At any rate, Ingunna's friend was delightful. We had such a lovely lunch together. Ingunna was thrilled to be meeting the lady, and I seem to remember that they'd been corresponding for years already at that point…"

"When was that?" Leslie asked.

Mrs. Appleton thought back. "Oh, let me see now…hmm, that must've been back in the early sixties. Your mother and father had just reconciled after an affair the man had had. Shannon told us about it. She was afraid there'd never be children." She snapped her fingers. "Yes, I remember now. Michael's parents had just recently been killed in a house fire up in Chelsea where they lived, and Shannon had been hoping to have a baby to carry on the family now that Michael was the last one left. Michael had gone off and had an affair the year before, and their reconciliation was slow going. Seemed like they'd finally gotten things patched up, and Ingunna thought it would be all right to go ahead and take that Scandinavian trip we'd been planning. That's when we met her friend." She squinted at the envelopes that Leslie had lifted out of the box. "I can't even begin to pronounce her name, no idea what it's supposed to be. I keep wishing her name had been something like Anna or Ingrid, but it had to be that strange amalgamation."

Christian laughed softly. "It's pronounced 'YEF-yoon'. It's a very old jordisk name, going back to Norse mythology. Gefjun was an attendant of the goddess Frigg, Odin's mother. This attendant is supposed to have slept with the king of Sweden and carved out what is now Lake Mälaren there. I think it means something like 'giver of wealth'."

"Ah." Mrs. Appleton grinned. "This is turning out to be very educational."

Christian and Leslie laughed. "You're not the only one," Leslie admitted, hesitantly thumbing through the letters. "I never actually knew all that much about mormor, to be honest. I guess I was too young to have many questions about her past. You know how it is when you're a little kid. Grandparents exist to spoil you and take your side when your parents seem to be against you."

They all laughed at that, and Mrs. Appleton nodded. "Seems so, yes. Well, as I said, dear, you keep those letters, take them along home with you."

"Was mormor's friend around her age, do you think?" Leslie wondered.

Mrs. Appleton thought back again. "Hard to say," she mused at some length. "She was so pretty, as I said. A heart-shaped face, blue eyes, silky blonde hair—yes, it was a lovely golden shade. She looked younger than either Ingunna or I, but she was one of those women whose age is impossible to even guess at. I suppose it's possible she's still alive."

Christian and Leslie traded a quick glance that said they'd talk this one out later. "It could be," Christian agreed. "Could we see the other scrapbooks?"

They passed another hour or so looking at the travel scrapbooks, but the box of letters seemed to be burning holes in Leslie's palms, and Christian could see her increasing restlessness. Some of it was alleviated when Mrs. Appleton took them on a tour of the house, but even when Leslie paused to mentally juxtapose the original blueprint with the current one, she still wanted to get away, to examine this new piece of her grandmother's history. It occurred to her, standing here, that while she would always be a native of this place, it was part of her past now, and there was no place for it in her present. The revelation was surprising, yet not; she understood that she had somehow, unknowingly, come to this conclusion long before, so quietly that she couldn't pin down a possible time that it might have happened.

Finally Christian came up with an excuse to go, and Mrs. Appleton wished him well in his new business venture. It wasn't till their chauffeur had gotten them back on I-84 east that he spoke. "Your brain was going like a rocket in there, wasn't it?"

She grinned at that. "Yeah, it was. But it wasn't all about these letters." She explained her realization that Connecticut was a piece of history for her now, and he nodded slowly, glancing out the back window in the direction of Plainville as if he could see through the numerous hills that had already swallowed it from view.

"Do you think you'll ever go back, then?" he asked.

The question made her train of thought stop cold, and she too stared back towards her birthplace; but she already knew what her answer would be. "No," she finally said, so softly that in her peripheral vision she saw him lean forward in order to hear her better. "I don't think I'll ever see it again."

"But you were born here," said Christian, astonished.

"I know." Leslie frowned, finally turned to look at him. "But…I don't know how to explain this. It's just that…whatever I took away from here, it's not like I'm going to lose it if I don't come back and replenish or replace it. My family isn't here anymore, not even mormor now that she's…here." She carefully patted the urn at her side. "Even my ancestors are buried somewhere else. Michael's parents are buried in a Chelsea cemetery, and when my grandfather Jeremiah Reed died, Mom and mormor were living in Mystic. I think that's where his grave is. I never knew them anyway, so when I think about them, it's in terms of history books rather than memories."

"What did you take away, then?" he queried gently.

"My…my sense of self, I think. I was old enough when we left to have a certain outlook on life and a certain way of thinking of things. That's all I really need from here. I don't have to have refrigerator magnets or souvenir T-shirts or old color snapshots. I have what my mother taught me here, and that's the most important thing."

Christian hiked a brow and noted, "But Mr. Roarke still teases you about being that stubborn New Englander."

She laughed and agreed, "I know, because once in a while some weird little cultural bubble boils up to the surface of my mind, and I usually have to explain it as a piece of my New England roots. Ancestrally and by birth, yes, I'm a New Englander. But insofar as my sense of belonging to someplace, and feeling at home there, is concerned, I think I'm really a Fantasy Islander. I've planted roots there too, after all."

He nodded. "Seems to me you're more at home there than anywhere else. Maybe you don't think I notice very much around me—especially when I'm involved in something to do with computers—" At this he grinned and she let out a laugh. "But the fact is, I guess I'm very attuned to you. I could sense a certain tension in you all through our stay in Plainville: in the cemetery office, during our visit with Mrs. Appleton, even in transit between the two and on the way to town in the first place. This may be your birthplace, but that's the only tie you feel you have to the area any longer."

"You noticed that?" she asked, amazed.

Christian shrugged. "Ask Mr. Roarke if you don't believe me, but he hasn't seen you anywhere except Fantasy Island—not that that matters since he knows things no one else knows, things he shouldn't know at all. Anyway, it's not just here that you have that tension. I sense it in you when we visit Lilla Jordsö too."

Leslie felt her face heat with embarrassment. "Oh no," she mumbled.

Laughing a little, he said, "Oh, don't worry about it. I tense up as well, generally en route to see the family. There must be some subconscious reflex in me that still hasn't figured out that Father and Arnulf are both dead and unable to harass me anymore. Though I do relax once I'm around my brother and sister and all their assorted descendants. Now if we could knock the self-righteous, judgmental streaks out of Kristina and Anna-Laura…"

She joined in his laughter. "Don't bet on it, my love. So I guess what you're saying is that I totally relax only on Fantasy Island, which means I think of it as home, both consciously and subconsciously."

"Exactly so. I've often thought it's too bad your mother didn't extend her stay when she visited. You should have been a native."

"There are times I've wished she did," Leslie admitted, half shrugging. "For that matter, she probably should have. The doctor attending her through her pregnancy with me must have been some sort of quack if he didn't at least recommend she stay put till I'd been born. On the other hand, Mom and Michael would've had to buy me a plane ticket to get back to Connecticut if she had stayed." This she said with a wry grin, and Christian burst into laughter.

"I suppose that's one argument for her departure before your birth." He settled back in his seat while his chuckles died out. "So I presume you're going to ask me at some point to translate those letters your grandmother got from Gefjun Liljefors."

"Maybe so," Leslie said. "I can read some jordiska now, you know. But you can expect a holler from me when I come across words I don't know."

"I'll take that as fair warning. I suppose in the meantime I'd better start going through applications. After all, you did say something about hoping we could all be home in time for our anniversary."

"So I did. Well, then, happy hunting." He grinned at her; she grinned back, and watched the snow-clad New England countryside slide past while he extracted a sheaf of papers from the briefcase he'd brought along and began to sift through them.

When they reached the hotel, they were distracted for a while by the triplets, who were wide awake and delighted to see their parents. Christian took time out from sorting through the applications to play with them alongside Leslie; when the children began yawning in mid-afternoon, they put them down for naps. They then retreated to their adjoining suite, where Christian paused to watch Leslie sit at a table beside the window, contemplating the contents of the box before slowly lifting out the bundle of letters. Then he got out the laptop he always took with him, which was outfitted with electrical plug adapters so that he could operate it in both Lilla Jordsö and Fantasy Island, and set it up, shortly signing into the castle e-mail address he still kept.

Leslie finally noticed what he was doing. "What're you up to?"

"I'm going to contact Gerhard and ask him to have Liselotta e-mail me. With any luck, Liselotta will remember your grandmother's pen pal. The time difference is less, it's only five hours between here and Lilla Jordsö, so we might hear something before bedtime." He winked at her surprised smile, then located his nephew's address in the e-mail address book and began typing in that lightning-fast way of his.

"I hope she knows something," Leslie mumbled.

"If not," Christian suggested, "you might try contacting your friend Frida and asking her if she—or more likely her mother—might happen to know anything about Gefjun. If she and your grandmother were corresponding, there's good reason to believe either of them would have some knowledge of the lady. You might then find out how they met, among other things."

Leslie nodded, and Christian sent his message before going back to the stack of applications he had been perusing in the car. Curiosity made her start looking for postmarks on the envelopes; the most recent one, on the top, was smudged, but legible enough for Leslie to make out the year 1972 on it. "What year was Liselotta born?" she asked.

Christian looked up, then frowned in thought. "I think it was 1973," he said. "Why?"

"The latest postmark on these is from 1972. If Liselotta knows anything about Gefjun, it'll only be hearsay. Our best bet might be Frida's mother."

"Well, we'll wait till we hear from Gerhard and Liselotta first. You may not even have to go to Frida. Let's just try to—" The ringing phone interrupted him and he sighed with mild frustration. "I'll never get through these at this rate. Christian Enstad speaking." He looked over his shoulder at Leslie as he said, "Oh, yes, hello, Ben. Tomorrow? Well enough, then, what time? Oh, I see. No, I don't think so, it's better we not have them with us. Yes, actually, I've chosen three candidates for interviews already—too many more to go through, I'd better get back to that. No, no, I think it's time to stop taking applications, or we'll never get people hired and the office up and running. You have how many?" Christian rolled his eyes and pointed at the phone, then lifted the same finger to his temple and rotated it, making Leslie slap a hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh. "All right, just drop them off at the front desk sometime this afternoon if you can, and tell the front desk to let me know they're here. No, there's no need. I appreciate your efforts, but I daresay I need all the time I can find to sort through the ones I have and set aside those I want to speak with. No, don't worry about that, spend the weekend with your family. I'll call you tomorrow evening and have you set up appointments with the people I've chosen. Yes, yes, thank you…yes, you too. Goodbye." He hung up with a too-quick movement and sighed, letting his head fall back for a moment or two. "That man can talk!"

Leslie laughed aloud this time. "So I hear. What's he been up to?"

"Collecting applications and making telephone calls, as far as I can ascertain. He has an interview set up with a PBS television programmer for Monday morning at ten, and says that the station wants both of us to be present. I was willing enough to agree to that, pending your approval, but then he tried to push for including the triplets, and I told him no. He has two hundred more applications for me, and I'm terrified that by the time he gets around to leaving them here for me to pick up, there'll actually be more than that. I decided it was time to stop taking any more." He sighed. "I knew this place was filled with institutes of higher education and thousands of graduates therefrom, but I didn't realize so many of them would be computer specialists. I already have more than a hundred and fifty applications with me, and he wants to double that. I don't know how I'll ever get through this and not miss our anniversary."

"Oh." Leslie winced, disappointment sluicing through her.

Christian grinned and came to sit opposite her at the table. "I didn't say I wouldn't give it my best attempt, I just said I don't know how I'll do it. He offered to help, but I've already told him my hiring methods, and I'd prefer he stick to the technical and mechanical aspects of getting the place off the ground. I'd bring in Jörgen as I did in Santi Arcuros, but I'm afraid the notice is too short, and he informed me the Sundborg office is quite busy now in any case."

"I'd volunteer if I thought I could do it," Leslie said a little wistfully, meeting his surprised gaze. "But I've never seen you actually interviewing and hiring people, so I'm afraid I don't qualify. Maybe I'd better just stick to waiting to hear from Liselotta."

Christian chuckled and grasped her hand across the table. "I appreciate your willingness, believe me. Oh, I don't know. Perhaps that's my only solution—to bring in Jörgen. I think I'll give him a call." He squeezed her hand and arose to make the call; in the meantime, Leslie finally opened the 1972 envelope she'd been studying and withdrew a slightly charred sheet of paper, filled with the same elegant handwriting that graced the envelope. As she'd suspected, it was in jordiska; but she was able to read some of it, to her delight.

Dearest Ingunna, she read. I am glad you are happy about your new living arrangements. Yes, even though it is a sign of things to come. I shall truly miss you, my friend. It has been a… Here Leslie had to stop, confronted with a word she didn't know. She sighed and reread the first three sentences over again; only then did the impact of their meaning register with her. She stared at the gracefully formed letters of the jordiska words, feeling as though all the blood in her head had made a slalom run for her feet. She knew! Mormor must have told her what Mom found out from Father, and that's what Gefjun's referring to in this letter! I've got to get Christian's help with this one.

"Are you all right, my Rose?" she heard Christian's concerned voice across from her, and looked up sharply; she hadn't even realized he'd come to sit with her again.

"I just started reading this last letter. I got hung up on an unfamiliar word, but I could understand enough to read between the lines. Here." She thrust the letter at him. "Please, my love, read that out loud to me."

Christian shrugged slightly and peered at the letter for a moment before clearing his throat. " 'Dearest Ingunna, I'm glad you're happy about your new living arrangements. Yes, even though it's a sign of things to come. I shall truly miss you, my friend. It has been a privilege to have your friendship all these years.

" 'I think your knowledge will be tempered with the happiness of living under the same roof with your daughter and your precious granddaughters. It should be a happy year for you, and it will give little Leslie happy memories to keep after that sad day when…' " Christian stopped and lifted his horrified gaze to hers. "Herregud, Leslie, does this refer to what I think it does?"

She nodded, feeling a small hillock arrowing up in her throat. "Mormor told Gefjun about Mom's visit to Fantasy Island and what she found out from Father. That's the only answer. Mormor must have written to Gefjun right after she moved in with us, and Gefjun knew what it meant. This must have been their last correspondence. I wonder if mormor answered this. I'd…I'd have thought they'd keep on writing right up till…till the day of the fire." She paused to try to flatten out the lump, then drew in a breath and looked at him. "It makes me wonder…I mean, just being a Liljefors would've been enough for most people to understand how she could know and accept that kind of information, if those people knew about the clan. What I'm wondering is whether Gefjun knew about Fantasy Island because of mormor's telling her about Mom's trip, or…"

"Or," Christian filled in when she couldn't, "if it was Gefjun herself who told your grandmother about the island." She nodded again, and he smiled a little. "We might never be able to find out the answer to that, my darling, but I think it's entirely possible that Gefjun might have told her." He paused a moment, thinking, worrying a corner of the page with one finger; then he focused on her again. "I know you were only eight when your grandmother died, and that you admitted to Mrs. Appleton that you didn't know much about her life before you were born. But…what do you know? Especially now, with the clarity of adult sight—what do you remember that might give you some idea as to what your grandmother knew on her own? I suppose I'm asking whether she was the sort of person who was already disposed to believing in the things that most people dismiss as myth and superstition nowadays."

Leslie closed her eyes. "I'm not sure," she murmured at length, her voice trailing away as she cast back. She dredged up every memory she could reach that involved Ingunna in some way, trying to recall conversations, observations, overheard remarks… Finally she sighed and opened her eyes. "All I remember now is one conversation I had with her just after she'd moved in with us. I was helping her go through her things, and there was an old brochure that talked about Fantasy Island. I don't know how far back it went, but it was getting yellow with age, I remember that. I asked her about it, and she told me it was a magical place. I was at the age where you still believe in everything, from Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny to flying carpets and mermaids. She was very solemn when she told me about it. Well, not really solemn, but absolutely certain of what she was talking about—she had the conviction of her own beliefs. She had a dreamy look about her when she told me about it, and I was enchanted. It sounded like a fairy tale come to life, and I was so busy coming up with all the fantastical things I thought must happen there that I never pursued the issue with her. If I'd been older, I could've asked where she got that brochure and why, and whether she'd ever planned to go there, and so forth."

Christian nodded understanding. "You were what, seven then? We're not much for mystery-solving at that age…we prefer to dwell on the magical, as you said." He grinned. "Of course, you found out much later that all those fantastical things you dreamed up truly do happen there."

"Yeah," she agreed and laughed. "Anyway, it sort of lends some credence to the idea that mormor already believed in these things, but that still doesn't answer the question of whether this was entirely on her own, or if she was influenced by Gefjun. It all depends on when they met each other. That, and what Gefjun might have chosen to reveal about herself and her family to mormor."

"A definite mystery," Christian said and smiled. "Well, if we're very lucky, we'll get at least partial answers. And perhaps Mr. Roarke knows something as well." He turned to the laptop and checked his e-mail, then grinned. "Aha—there's a message from Liselotta here." He opened the message and read it aloud, translating it for her. " 'Hello, Gerhard told me you have something to ask me about. I'll try to the best of my ability to answer your questions. I'll be awake late this evening, I am looking at seed catalogs for spring. So I'll watch for your question. Love, Liselotta.' " He winked at her again, something Leslie found oddly reassuring, and swiftly typed out a message to Liselotta, pausing a couple of times to think about his wording.

"Sounds like a long message," Leslie ventured.

"Somewhat. Here, listen to this and tell me if you think it's all right. 'Hello, Liselotta. Leslie has just received a packet of letters written to her grandmother by someone who is probably related to you. It seems they knew each other for many years. Leslie's grandmother's name was Ingunna Hansson Reed, and her pen pal was Gefjun Liljefors. Do you know what relationship she has to you? Did you know her? Is she still living? We would truly appreciate any information you may have. If you don't know or you're not certain, that's quite all right. Leslie can check with her friend Frida in Sweden. Love, Christian.' Do you think that's enough?"

"That's perfect," said Leslie. "Go ahead and send it." She bit her lip as Christian sent the message, then grinned a little, feeling curiously hopeful. "I feel a little bit like Nancy Drew or somebody like that."

"I suppose that makes me one of the Hardy Boys," Christian quipped, and her grin got wider. "This is becoming a truly intriguing mystery. I almost hate to tear myself away from it and look through those bulldozer-loads of applications, but duty calls, like it or not."

"Did you talk Jörgen into coming here?" she asked.

"Mm-hmm. I told him to get the first possible flights and to use company funds, and to call me when he arrives here in Boston. With his help, we stand a chance of saving our anniversary." They both laughed, and he brought back a stack of applications to go through while they waited for a reply from Liselotta.