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The knocking continued, relentless. Linnea followed Everett, both fascinated and frightened at what awaited on the other side. It had to be some awful emergency on a holiday evening.

He opened the door, ushering in the frosted wind. Linnea hugged her arms, her thick sweater still failing to keep it from stinging.

Ronja stood with her coat hung open, clearly distraught. And clearly pregnant. Linnea’s eyes drew toward their matching bellies. Ulla’s mother had always been a paragon of cool, but her face was twisted in panic, and her untamed eyes attacked Linnea with her tears. “Linney, thank God! Oh, thank God you’re here!”

Everett stepped aside but remained at the doorway with a guarded look. His mother’s voice sounded behind them. “Ronja Bergstrom is that you? Goodness, you’re pregnant!”

Ronja ignored them and focused on Linnea. “The horse. I need the horse. The one Ulla gave you. I’m so sorry, but I need it. Please.”

Beskyddaren. The memory came to her vivid and real: Ulla’s simple and pure act of love. He’ll bring us back together.

Everett’s mother brushed past Linnea, who felt the weight of the earth sucking her under. “Ronja, honey,” his mother said, “why don’t you come in and have a glass with me? A little bit won’t hurt the baby.”

Linnea stuttered, “I—It’s⁠—”

“The Dala horse? It’s gone,” Everett interjected. “Linnea gave it to me.”

“What?” Ronja said weakly.

Linnea cried to Everett, “What did you do?”

“Paid for our house?”

“You sold it?”

Ronja’s breath came in rampant streams, her eyes flooding with horror. “How could you?” She turned and fled, her last words infusing Linnea with the guilt she was certain one day would turn her body against her. Into a cancer.

Linnea railed into Everett as he closed the door. “Get it back! Do something!”

He rolled his eyes as if this were all melodrama, moving his mother along. Linnea searched for the Chevy’s keys. He protested feebly, telling her to stay as she crammed all but her belly into her winter gear. She rubbed her abdomen, not feeling so alone in this endeavor to beg forgiveness.

She waddled into the driver’s seat. The Chevy Blazer was an ice block. The rear window always made a high-pitched rattling whenever the temperature dipped below zero. She revved it, knowing Everett would yell at her for not allowing the engine to warm. Linnea sped to the outskirts of Mora and past the street where her estranged parents still lived. She turned up the road toward Ulla’s unlit house.

Linnea roared into the driveway, slammed the brakes, and shifted into park. With the car still running, she got out and ran to the door, banging on it. “Ulla! Ronja! Open up, please!”

The longer she knocked, the more the regret intensified. “Please!” she wept to no one. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry for everything,” she whispered against the silent, cold glass.

If anyone were to ask Linnea what happened Christmas Eve in 1987, what she’d witnessed when she pulled up to Curlers’ junkyard looking for Ulla and Ronja, it would be told in frames, as clear as photographs placed in an album. One that she would bury in the deepest corner of her mind, that would manifest in her dreams, or appear suddenly whenever she’d see a German Shepherd, a wrecked car, or a mobile home. Even the sight of a chain-link fence could elicit a restrained scream, leaving her body coiled in anguish.

Every year thereafter on this holiest of nights, Linnea would beg God for the forgiveness she did not deserve. She would devote her life to her son. She would teach him to be good to people no matter what. To be everything she was not. She would cling to the worthless hope that someday she would unsee what Peter Johansson did. The man she called upon to end her embittered humiliation.

He stepped out behind Ulla and Ronja as they exited Curlers’ home, and he followed them, shouting, pleading.

He pulled out a gun.

A flash of dark fur streaked toward him and clamped onto his leg. He crashed to the ground.

The single gunshot drowned Linnea’s scream.

It tore through Ronja.

And it ripped apart Ulla’s soul.

Part VIII

From: Isa and Taylor

To: Me