Snow Angels

35

“I kept my promise. I’m home on Christmas Eve.”

Kate shakes her head, laughs a little. “Yes you did. And I’ll keep mine and help you put yourself back together again.”

By some miracle, the bullet passed through my mouth without breaking my jaw. It shattered the next to last two teeth on the upper right side and passed out through my cheek without further damage. I asked the doctor how bad the scar will be.

“You’ll look like a tough guy.”

“People already say I look like a tough guy.”

He laughed. “Well, now you’ll look like a tough guy who got shot in the face.”

“That’s great,” I said, “just what I need.”

Kate called Dad. When she explained what happened, Mom offered to come over and help make Christmas dinner. Dad said he’d come if I put the sauna on. Christmas isn’t Christmas without sauna, he said. It’s sweet that Mom is cooking. She’s doing it for Kate. I can’t eat solid food and will be living on soup for a few weeks.

I start building a fire for the sauna. I can’t go with the bandages on my face. It disappoints me almost as much as not being able to eat Christmas dinner. The phone rings. Even with heavy painkillers, my face and broken teeth hurt like hell. It’s the national chief of police and I want to find out if I’m fired, so I answer anyway.

“How’s your face?” he asks.

“Hurts.”

“Fair enough, it’s been hurting the rest of us for a long time.” He laughs at his own joke. “You’re a jackass,” he says.

“I know.”

“I don’t know whether to prosecute you or promote you.”

“Me neither.”

“When your officers processed the scene, they found the video camera and tape recorder. The whole thing is documented.”

I didn’t know Valtteri left them running and captured his own suicide. “It was a tragedy. I wish it could be forgotten.”

“It can’t. I’m putting it on the evening news. To save your ass.”

I don’t say anything.

“I’m a man of my word and a deal’s a deal,” he says. “You solved both murders. What job do you want?”

“You serious?”

“What do you think?”

I tell him to wait a second and start to ask Kate what she wants to do, then think better of it. She’s been under enough pressure lately. It can wait until after Christmas.

“Can you give me some time to consider it?” I ask.

“I’ll give you a week,” he says. “You’re a jackass, but I guess I’m going to have to decorate you for bravery again anyway, to put the right spin on things. What the hell, it will get me some face time on television.” He hangs up.

I tell Kate what he said.

“You were right about the case,” she says. “Maybe you’re right about staying here too. Then again, Helsinki sounds nice. Let’s take some time and think about it.”

I wasn’t right about everything, and wish I’d been wrong about the rest of it.

Mom and Dad arrive. Mom hugs me, looks like she’s going to cry. “You okay son?” Dad asks.

“Yeah.”

He hands me two wrapped gifts. One is obviously a bottle. “Open them,” he says.

The bottle is Koskenkorva vodka. The other package contains two plastic straws. “They’re symbolic,” he says. “We’re gonna drink it together.”

“I shouldn’t drink on top of the painkillers,” I say.

Mom doesn’t speak any English, but Dad’s is passable. He looks at Kate. “Do you mind if your husband gets drunk with his father?”

“A little,” she says. She looks at me-I shrug. She gives Dad a Christmas hug. “But go ahead anyway.”

He looks happy, cracks the top off the bottle, takes a drink and hands it to me. I take a sip.

The doorbell rings again. I’m surprised to find Seppo on my front porch. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

He’s the last person on earth I want to see. “What do you want?”

He looks sheepish. “If I had done what you told me, left here and never come back, Heli would still be alive. Now I’m leaving for good and I want you to have this.”

He hands me a manila envelope. “What is it?” I ask.

“The deed to my winter cottage. I don’t want it anymore. I thought it might make up for things a little bit.”

Five people are dead and he thinks he can just buy goodwill, fix everything with an expensive gift. I hand it back. “I don’t want it.”

He doesn’t take it. “It’s worth eight hundred thousand euros.”

I grab his hand and press the envelope into it. “I still don’t want it. Go away.”

He looks like a sad little kid. “Sorry I bothered you.”

Then I realize. “Wait,” I say. “Give it to me.”

He hands it back. “Why the change of heart?”

“Valtteri left a widow and a bunch of kids, and Sufia’s mother is alone now. I’m not sure if she’s capable of providing for herself. Selling your winter dacha can take care of them all for a long time.”

“Good,” he says, “I’m glad.”

I shut the door, and for the first time I realize how much better off we all were when Heli left me for him. She got what she wanted-a stupid rich man she could manipulate. He had a woman who stayed with him despite the fact that he’s a philandering drunk, and besides, I think he really loved her. Heli wasn’t who I thought she was when I married her. Maybe, like Sufia, no one really knew her. I was allowed to go on with my life and find someone I could make happy, someone who makes me happy.

Dad asks me who was at the door. I tell him it was nobody.

Mom takes Kate to the kitchen to teach her the fine art of making rosolli. The way they manage to communicate despite not having a common language, mostly with hand gestures, amuses me. People always seem to find a way.

Dad and I sit in front of the television, pass the bottle back and forth. The combination of drugs and alcohol allows me to screw up my nerve and ask the unspoken question. “Dad, do you ever think about Suvi?”

He leans over, arms on his knees, and stares at the floor. It takes him a long time to answer, but when he does, he looks me in the eye. “Every day of my life.”

“Should we talk about it?”

“Some things you can never make right. There’s nothing to say.”

A few silent minutes tick by. “The sauna almost ready?” he asks.

“Almost.”

More time passes. “It was a good-looking ham you bought,” he says.

“Yep,” I say, “a good-looking ham.”

Kate comes in from the kitchen. “How are you two doing?”

Dad holds up the vodka bottle. “Couldn’t be better. You know Kate, the sun is going to rise tomorrow. Just for a few minutes, but kaamos is almost over.”

Kate comes up behind me, reaches over the couch and puts her arms around me. “Hyvaa Joulua,” Merry Christmas, she says.

Merry for whom? Sufia Elmi, a refugee who defied the odds and succeeded in a xenophobic country, felt so hopeless inside that she let herself be abused by men who cared nothing for her. My first instinct was right. Her charm and beauty inspired hatred, and because of them, she was butchered like an animal. I don’t know what her father was guilty of, but he had put his past behind him, come to our country and built a new life for himself. I dredged up his past and he died, because of me, for nothing.

My ex-wife, a woman I once loved and believed I would spend the rest of my life with, turned out to be a sociopath and a killer. She manipulated a boy who had led such a sheltered life that he was nearly defenseless. She drove him to murder and suicide, destroyed him, so I believe, with no more thought than she would have given to squashing a bug. Maybe Heli, burned to death on the ice, got what she deserved. I don’t know.

Valtteri was a good man who believed his faith would protect him and his family. What God failed to do, he tried to do himself, and he covered up a murder to protect his son. His shattered faith and his own failure drove him to murder Heli, an atrocity that, a week earlier, would have been beyond his comprehension. His widow and seven remaining children are spending Christmas mourning his loss and Heikki’s, doubtless mystified, drowning in sorrow, shock and disbelief. Abdi’s wife, Hudow, must be doing the same.

I neglected my wife, risked my marriage, nearly left my children fatherless for what I believed was the pursuit of justice. Instead of justice, I got the truth, and it was a poor substitute. Now I don’t know what I was looking for. I feel like I failed them all, like I failed myself. I saved no one. And yet, I’m going to be decorated for bravery, labeled a hero, given a promotion if I want it. Maybe there is no justice.

But there are other things. I look around and see all I have to be grateful for. I’m surrounded by family. My wife loves me, has her arms around me. Our babies are growing inside her.

I look up at her. It hurts, but I force a smile. “Merry Christmas Kate.”