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“Taylor called you?” Linnea, eager to call Everett herself, had known this was not her news to share. “What did he say?”
“That if I wanted to meet my granddaughter, to come over right away.” His gaze went past Linnea’s shoulder. She turned and saw Analise lift a shy hand in greeting.
“Hi, Mr. Barnes.”
“Everett,” he corrected. “Hello, Analise.”
Linnea shoveled Everett outside. “Go, they’re in the backyard. If Taylor doesn’t feel like explaining, I will later.” She held in an ugly cry and said, “She’s so beautiful.”
He took a few hesitant steps backward, turned, and quickened his pace.
Linnea shut the door and turned to Analise. “Did you convince Taylor to call him?”
She shook her head. “No, I think it was Pen. On the drive over, she asked what her grandfather was like, and Taylor said she could see for herself.”
Linnea returned to the window overlooking the backyard. She watched Everett shake Penelope’s hand. He looked to Taylor. A few words appeared to be spoken, but nothing more. Taylor went back to passing the ball to his daughter, and Everett stood still, his expression pensive, hands in his coat pockets.
Analise said quietly, “I know how much pain his dad caused him.”
“Did Taylor say something?”
“Not exactly.” She looked down, squinting her eyes as if to funnel back emotions. “Taylor showed me an email account we’d created, like a secret, personal diary. He wrote about his dad a lot. And to me. After we were cut off from each other, he just kept writing.”
“There’s more, you know,” Linnea said, “a memory box.” She followed quickly with a stammering lie, “I didn’t look at it, I just know about it.”
Several moments of silence passed as they stared out the window, at Penelope trying to steal the ball from Taylor’s quick moves, screeching in delighted frustration when he’d trick her with a quick snap back.
Linnea finally looked to Analise and said, “I want you to know, it wasn’t entirely Ulla’s fault you were kept apart. She filed an order of protection against him, and he had a future, a really bright future. He would’ve been arrested if he went near you, though I can’t know exactly if that stopped him, to be honest. If I had known you were pregnant . . . ” She paused, staring at Penelope and Taylor. “I hoped maybe you would’ve tried to find him. He thought for a while you were dead, but as awful as this sounds, I knew that couldn’t be true because he would’ve been charged.”
“Did you see me fall?” Analise asked.
Linnea shook her head. “Not the fall, no. But I was there for everything else.”
“Can I ask you a difficult question?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“What did you do to my mother? That she could justify that level of deceit to me and Penelope?” Her eyes flooded and her voice withered. “His emails . . . he was so . . . devastated isn’t even the right word to describe it. He would’ve loved Penelope. He would’ve been there for all of it. I know it.”
“Ulla never told you about me?”
Analise blinked her tears away and replied steadily, “No, why would she? You were erased from my memory, along with Taylor.” Her expression collapsed again at saying his name.
Linnea carefully searched for the words, slowly piecing this fact together. Ulla never told her how Ronja died? It made perfect sense why she wouldn’t tell Analise, though, at least not when she was a child. But why withhold the truth now?
“You’re not going to tell me,” Analise said.
Linnea sat gingerly, “No, it’s not that. I did something—something unforgivable. All I can say is that I caused Ronja’s death. You’re going to have to ask Ulla for the rest. Believe me, I’m so sorry. It’s just not my place.”
“You knew my grandmother?”
Linnea nodded, her face screwing with pain. “I loved Ronja.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Mora, Minnesota
Ulla
