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“I don’t know yet.”

She covered her mother’s hands and replied, “I lost you once. I wouldn’t survive if I lost you again.”

Ronja pecked Ulla’s nose. “Okej,” she said lovingly, and then, “I have one more thing to ask of you.”

“What is it?”

“Do you remember the Dalahäst I gave you all those years ago, and I told you to keep it hidden for yourself only?”

Ulla flinched, but in the darkness, it didn’t seem Ronja noticed. “Make sure Peter never finds it.”

She nodded, confused at first, but the ache of Linnea tightened her chest, making it hard to breathe. What did Ulla care about that stupid horse anyway?

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Christmas Eve 1987

Ulla

For the next eight months, life returned to the one Ulla knew as a girl. Her parents, together. Laughing and flirtatious at times, but, what she could not see as a girl, she saw fully as a woman. Her mother was deceptive. She appeared to enjoy and even reciprocate Peter’s affections. But alone, Ulla saw her true face, the one steeped in resolve and single-mindedness.

After Ulla had graduated in May, they worked additional hours at Curlers’ to save money, and it afforded them plenty of alibis, telling Peter they had to go into the Cities to obtain car parts. When instead, they were filing the paperwork for new passports. When instead, they were walking into a travel agency to buy one-way plane tickets to Stockholm. The departure was the day after Ulla’s nineteenth birthday. Her new baby sister or brother would be a few weeks old. “Perfect for traveling,” Ronja had said. “All I have to do is nurse them the entire way.”

Her mother planned all this with such ease and agility. As if she’d done this before.

Their house currently smelled of spiced cider and evergreens. Last weekend Peter and Ulla had gone to a tree farm and chopped one down. She remembered his ruddy cheeks and laughing smile. He’d been so excited. And with each day that had passed since agreeing to this operation to leave Peter, she felt as if she were an accomplice to an act of cruelty. It left a steady, crushing grip on her heart.

Who do I believe? She hadn’t had the guts to ask Peter about his past crimes. And there seemed to be an unspoken rule that no one was allowed to talk about the past in general. Not unless it pertained to those memories that were innocent, like the soft coat of fresh snowflakes covering the dirty, days-old snow piled on the curbs.

Peter was gone now, working, but said he’d be home to celebrate Christmas Eve. He’d found a job six months ago, a position as a freight and stock laborer in a St. Cloud warehouse. It was still an hour from Mora, but second shift, and he could be home at night to help with the baby. When he’d said this, Ulla flung a look to her mother who stretched her mouth into a warm smile and kissed Peter.

It made Ulla ill. Her mother was growing a human inside of her, while Ulla was growing a lie, each day causing her more discomfort, a shift under her skin, with its own beating heart.

Ulla sat at the kitchen table finishing a letter to Curlers. They were going to deliver a box of homemade German teacakes to her before Peter was due home, and Ulla would sneak the letter inside. She and her mother had sat down with Curlers and explained they were leaving in six weeks. Ulla watched Ronja manufacture tears and describe Peter as a dangerous and abusive man, one they had to escape.

Curlers had tapped her cigarette in the ashtray and covered her mother’s hand in solidarity.

Ulla wrote:

December 24th, 1987

Dear Curlers,

Lexie is finished. She’s yours if you want. I can’t take her where I’m going, and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart even more to leave you. You’ve been so good to us. I’ll never forget you.

Love,

Ulla

Ulla began to fold the note, but her fingers went numb. All she had to do was cross out the name Curlers and replace it with Peter. And then she thought of Linnea. This was not how it was supposed to end. It was supposed to end with packed bags in the trunk of Lexie the day they graduated, with their matching John Lennon sunglasses, fighting over the music as they drove off. Madonna for Linnea, John Cougar Mellencamp for Ulla. Linnea, with her dark glossy hair blowing out the window and her fingers woven into Ulla’s, would lower the sunglasses and laugh, sail her hand outside the passenger window as they drove west.

Her mother, as if sensing Ulla’s grief, stroked her ponytail. She glanced at the note, skimming it, and then said quietly, “Min lilla älskling.”

“Why do you love cars so much?” Ulla asked. Though she’d asked her mother this countless times, she never tired of the answer.

Ronja rubbed her back and pressed her face into Ulla’s neck. “Oberoende,” she whispered in Swedish. “Freedom,” she repeated, but the word sounded as if it were cracked in two. She tapped the note and said, “Be sure to hide that well,” and retreated quickly.

Ulla watched her go, watched her walk past the Christmas tree decorated in cheap tinsel. The colored lights often went out, and Peter would spend up to an hour patiently sifting through each light, determined to find the culprit that was ruining it for the entire string.