CH 8
Anna and Saga opened the doors of the communicating bathroom at the same time, still in their underwear.
Facing each other, Anna smiled and stepped back.
"You go first." Saga offered.
"No, I need to shower, I want to be clean for dad."
"We have to buy you something new to wear."
Anna had tried Astrid's jeans, too long and tight for her. Her frame was different from Astrid, shorter and fatter; Henrik said his mother and his brother weren't tall like him, so Anna could have inherited their genes.
"But I'm hungry, I want food."
"Good. Come downstairs with me when you're finished. Henrik needs to rest."
"Ok, Astrid wants to sleep."
They sat at a quiet table in a corner of the breakfast room, Anna trying to understand what the other guests were doing.
"I never stayed in a hotel before." Anna declared.
"It's a buffet, you can try everything." Saga had to explain what she had just learned and it felt strange and right at the same time. Adults teach children. Mothers help daughters.
Anna copied Saga, a glass of orange juice, a cup of tea, a plate with eggs and cheese. Anna stopped in front of the display of marmalade jars.
"Can I get marmalade instead of eggs?"
"You can get all tastes."
When they sat, Anna's plate was a display of coloured spoonfuls and Saga prompted her to copy her own bowl of milk with cereals and berries, good for a child's growth, she stated.
Anna wanted to eat and talk.
"Dad told me a lot about you. He said you're the best detective of Sweden."
"I have a good rate of case solved."
"I want you to catch those people here and Frank, too. I'm sure he killed my mom, I can't prove it but I'm sure!"
"If responsible, Frank deserves punishment."
"He kept me in a silos before I come here. I tried to count the days, made signs on the walls. I'll show everything, I got a good memory. "
"Like your father. "
Anna indeed was more similar to Henrik than Astrid.
Her resourcefulness, her photographic memory, her strength to survive two years alone.
A brief thought, could her baby have been similar to Anna?
Another girl, with hers and Henrik's combined detective skills and Henrik's empathy and social appeal?
That baby was gone, replaced by two teens.
Henrik had declared his intentions to continue their relationship. Saga was ok with that.
Steps approaching, Henrik in a green cardigan, looking relaxed.
"Good morning."
"Dad!"
He was fast in giving Anna a caress, then he kissed her head and smiled at Saga.
"What do you want to eat?" Anna asked, "I'll get you, sit now. I know how to use buffet." She cast a glance of complicity at Saga.
"Thanks, Anna. Astrid is coming soon."
He told her his requests for breakfast and sat where Anna wanted him, at Saga's side.
His hands rested on the table and Saga by impulse covered one with hers. When Anna returned with Henrik's food and tea Saga retracted it, but a thumb caressing her palm meant Henrik appreciated the gesture.
Henrik was happy. He had understood the real meaning of the daily healing prayer.
God has listened his pleas and had mercy on him, reuniting his family.
Mads approached their table with a big cup of coffee and asked them to get ready in half an hour to drive to Umea together.
We're in a town called Umea.
Mads offers us the apartment over his garage, the one used by his daughter when visiting. He wants us to feel family and an hotel is too impersonal for us.
Me and Astrid have a lovely bedroom, soft beds, warm duvets and I can't sleep.
It is too beautiful. Mads' house is huge, he says this apartment is small, for me it 's a palace worth of a princess.
My sister sleeps in the other bed, I see how scared she is for a lot of things, her right leg sometimes hurts, she often uses a crutch, I saw the holes of the bullet that pierced her.
She was stronger than me at the village with Frank and now she is so fragile. So thin. She refused food since I died, she tells me.,
Yes, I died, Frank told her so. Liar, impostor, assassin.
How I hate him, with all my heart. He destroyed everything, my mother, my sisterhood, my family. He could have destroyed my father, too.
Yes, my father, I have a father again.
Today we talk a lot, we go deeper than the night in the car. Saga and Astrid are in the big house, Saga has to print reports, I think it's an excuse to leave us alone.
I explain him my life during the last two years, how terrified I was to be touched by Ole and the other men, to be sold like a piece of meat.
He listens to me, my small hand in his larger warm one.
I think in just two days he has more wrinkles on his face and his eyes shine with a dark light,
but he tells me he's happy, incredibly happy compared with how much he suffered since we disappeared.
The drugs, the sleeping pills, the meaningless women, the loneliness. He says I deserve to know his life, like I describe him mine.
And I've got a mother, well sort of, not my birth mother, whose memory is too blurred for now, I need photos and videos and our home to remember her.
Another mother, a woman dad loves in his own way, his soul mate he says, who's been with him to hell and back.
She'll tell me her own story when she'll be ready, for now dad is very honest about their bond, because it was Saga who found Astrid, after she aborted my unborn sibling.
For dad it is still a painful memory, I see in his face.
For me that's a surprise. Never I imagined I could return home to find a little sister or brother. I've thought dad's life frozen for eight years, but he lived, somehow, and met Saga and he clang to that baby when he thought we were dead. He asks me to forgive him when he was tempted to give up our search, thinking that baby was his only future.
Because it was Saga's, not the result of a one night stand.
He treasures her and his eyes shine when he talks about her.
Dad searched for eight years, such a long time for me, I'm just 13, it seems an eternity of pain.
He is still incredulous I'm real, like I am an illusion that'll vanish. He cries, silent tears at the corners of his eyes.
"I don't know, he told me you were dead. I went for two years on your grave."
"You are the oldest, can't you remember Denmark and all the people we knew there? Why we ended up in Sweden and had to learn another language? You never wondered?"
"Frank said mom and dad were dead!"
"When I was locked he was angry with me. Once I pretended to be asleep and he spoke about mom. He said she was an algid bitch. He wanted her for himself, wanted mom to divorce."
Their argument reached the sitting room where Saga was talking with Linn on the phone. Henrik was in a videoconference with Mads and Lillian at the station.
Anna was angry, her fists clenched, her body tense.
Astrid sat on the bed, shocked. She did not recognized her little sister, it was someone else speaking, telling stories she wanted to erase from her mind.
Anna was merciless, she insisted in telling her everything that happened since Frank parted them.
Astrid started crying and Anna left the room, marching into the living area and throwing fists at the cushions on the couch. Saga closed her call, texting Henrik to return soon and stared at Anna.
When the fit of rage subsided the girl sat heavily on the couch.
"She doesn't believe me."
"About what?"
"Frank. I try to tell her how evil he is but she does not want to speak about him. I never trusted Frank like she did. He told me that he wanted to get rid of me because Astrid would never betray him."
Saga took note of what Anna was saying to report later to Henrik. She feared his reaction at the knowledge Frank wanted to play life or death for his daughters, but he had to know the truth.
"Astrid has difficulties in accepting her past, she prefers to erase it."
"She's stupid!"
"She suffered since you've been taken away from her."
"I suffered too!"
"She regressed in a world of her own, her way to escape is different from yours. She dresses up with costumes."
"How is it possible?"
"People deals with traumas in different ways."
"What is a trauma?"
"A severe shock or upsetting experience, which may cause psychological damage."
"How do you know all these things?"
"I read a lot."
"I want to learn, too. Can you help me?"
Henrik arrived to find Saga and Astrid on internet reading about psychology.
"The girls need to settle their visions about Frank. You get Astrid better than me, go to her."
Saga called David about Anna's story, how she felt ill shortly before Frank sent her north.
She asked him a medical explanation, quoting all the detail she collected form both girls. A few hours later David produced a possible theory, poisoning with the soup, whose flavour could well conceal dangerous substances, and later recovery when changed food.
The symptoms of some mushrooms poisoning could be similar to appendicitis, he said, but he could not give a punctual answer without proofs and after such a long time.
Probably the ultimate abduction was helped by sleeping drops in Anna's water, administered by Frank.
Saga decided to ask Linn a deeper psychiatric evaluation of Frank after she'd see David's report. Every word Frank told Henrik in their long confrontation wasn't true.
Mads and his assistant, a woman around forty, were ready to receive Anna's declaration at the presence of Henrik and Saga.
Anna was very detailed about people and thing she saw and heard, including the Russians and the few others travellers that used the cabins as a meeting point.
When she spoke about the two young women bounded anfd forced toi leave on a truck , her voice broke.
Henrik asked for a pause, but Anna looked at him, eyes wet and voice strong.
"We have to stop them, dad, or they'll got other girls. I cannot accept it, I'm safe and somebody else will suffer."
Mads and the detectives exchanged a long look.
Henrik turned to Saga, who had listened in silence.
"What do you think?"
"She can explain us the place and identify people."
"It is dangerous." He was afraid to put his family at risk again, .
"Not if we arrived organized and armed. You and the girls will be safe in Burmol and arrive only when all is over." Mads decided to call the special team commander and plan the operation.
Back at the apartment Saga was strangely quiet, Henrik lead her into the kitchen and closed the door.
"What's troubling you?
"Anna."
"Why?"
"She wants us to stop those men. Stubborn and determinate."
"Yes, I cant believe it. She 's so different from Astrid."
"Were they similar as kids?"
"They are less than two years apart, so at five and seven it was hard to predict the development. But Anna was more mine than Alice's. I thought because Astrid was the oldest and so more used to have Alice for her only."
"Anna is so like you. Impressive the resemblance. Astrid is your portrait. Anna is you. Eight years apart and she's so similar. The environment has deep effects in the upbringing of a child, often stronger than genes. In this case she's the exception to the general rule."
"That's why you two are going so well? Like you and me?" He added with a tender voice, wanting reassurance now and again that they were an item.
"It never happened to me with a kid. She'll adapt better than Astrid to her new life."
"I hope so. Astrid 's dressing up will be difficult to explain, won't it?"
"Not to explain, to understand for her. It's a disorder, she's not aware. You must get professional help for her."
"I'll do as soon as we 're home."
"And Anna could break, too, now she's back. Being no more in danger can cause a sudden awareness all she suffered before. I told you how badly Frank treated her."
"He told me he never hurt them."
"He has complex psychological issues, he sure is a psychopath, we cannot trust his words, never."
The stay in this place is longer than I imagined, I'd like to be home soon, my true home.
Astrid shows me photos of the house.
I want to see it again. She met some friends we had before, now all grown up, a few have moved.
Maria is still living three houses from ours, I remember her, we were together at preschool, we played every day in her garden.
I wonder how it will be to be back, dad says he'll make changes, we need two desks to study in front of the windows, he'll buy everything.
He's planning other changes, asking our advice. Saga's, too
He wants her to live with us, to be a family.
I think about it before going to bed. Saga's strange and funny and clever at the same time. But she misses jokes and seldom laughs. My mother had a beautiful laugh, she was always smiling with us and with people.
Astrid tells me she smiled less with dad, because dad was seldom home.
I miss my mom now I got my father back.
Frank's eyes had a sparkle I was never comfortable with. I had the confirmation when he kept me prisoner. He wanted my mother for himself and she refused. He was angry with her and wanted to punish dad keeping us with him.
We've lost too much, me, Astrid and dad, all the things children do with their parents, the places we could have seen, the holidays we could have had, the games we could have played together.