I touched down in Helsinki later that night and booked a rental car and hotel room. I surfed Finnish channels until one in the morning, willing the next day to come, and when I couldn’t stand that anymore, I lay in bed with the lights on and stared at the ceiling.
If Wilder was there, what the hell would I say?
What would he say?
The whole situation, combined with my jet lag and lack of sleep, made the drive the next day feel dreamlike. It was like many road trips I’d taken before. With the rural setting and the pine trees, I could even get myself to believe I was back in Pennsylvania, driving home to visit my brother and hear about the progress he’d made on the guitar.
If I’d been wiser, I would have stayed another night in Oulu before driving out to the minuscule strip of land where I would catch the ferry to the island.
But by the time I drew close to the northern region at five o’clock, my momentum was too great to be stopped.
I bought coffee at the tiny roadside shop next to the ferry dock while I checked the schedule, and then in almost no time I was being carried toward Hailuoto, gazing at the vast expanse of water outside my car window and feeling not a little nauseous.
I was one of only a few passengers. I had no plan for how to go about finding the brother who had been estranged from me for four years.
But with a population under one thousand, I thought that someone on Hailuoto must know where he was.
The ferry deposited me on the island’s eastern shore, and I paused a moment, gripping the wheel of the rental car and wondering what to do next.
I hit the gas.
Hailuoto is a very rural and remote isle, not touristy or well traveled in any sense. I had expected some sort of town center, but tall pines lined every road, giving more of the feel of a campground than a seaside village.
At last I pulled up on a cluster of buildings and a shopping market with its lights bright in the gathering dusk. I parked and went inside, looking around the store with its few inhabitants and again feeling like I was losing my grip on reality.
“Hyvää iltaa,” called an elderly woman in a green grocer’s apron, smiling at me and nodding. I winced; I had meant to brush up onsome Finnish on the plane, but my brain had whirred at a million miles an hour the entire flight. I clumsily tried to repeat her greeting. Understanding my problem, she tried for English. “Can I help?”
“Ole hyvä,” I tried. “Please, I am looking for my brother.” I took out my phone and held up a photo of Wilder and me together.
In the moment that the woman adjusted her glasses and peered at the photo, my stomach churned. What if he wasn’t here, and I had come for nothing? What if he’d expected me to find the note right away, and had once been on Hailuoto, but left long ago? Where would I sleep if I could not find him tonight?
But then the woman’s face broke into a knowing smile.
“Ah!” she said. “Veljesi ja hänen pieni tyttönsä. Yes, yes. He is here.”
“Really?Kiitos. Kiitos!” I had learnedthank you, at least. “Where?”
The woman pursed her lips and shook her head. She held up a hand, and my heart sank a little again as she shook her head again and walked away.
But then she returned with a piece of paper and a pen.
“Here,” she said, and wrote down a collection of numbers and letters. She drew lines on the paper in a map and marked the shop where we stood with a star. Then she drew arrows down the road, left, right, straight—and another star.
His house. Maybe.
“Here,” she said again, smiling and pressing the paper into my hand.
“Kiitos,” I said again, then once more, and I took her hand in both of mine.
“Yes, yes,” she said.
I drove with both hands on the wheel and her map held under one thumb so I could track my direction. The night was getting darker as I turned off pavement and onto a gravel road, deeper and deeper into the forest. My headlights cut through the twilight around me, and a deer stared at me from the brush line along the road.
There, at last, was a cottage in a clearing. Pale yellow with cream trim and window boxes lining every sill. Curtains obscured the view inside.
A small garage was set to one side of the yard with a few other outbuildings behind it, so I couldn’t see any cars—not that I would recognize them, anyway.
But the home was occupied. Light glowed from the windows, and I could smell woodsmoke from the small brick chimney.
