The Lost Boy

FJÄLLBACKA 1871

The ice had started to break up. The April sun was slowly melting the snow, and on the island tiny tufts of green were venturing out of the crevices. She had only a vague memory of what had happened. She recalled the spinning ceiling, the pain, and glimpses of their faces. But sometimes the terror came back to her so vividly that it made her gasp for breath.

None of them had spoken of the incident. It wasn’t necessary. She’d heard Julian tell Karl that maybe now his father would get his wish. It wasn’t hard to understand that the whole episode had to do with the letter that had arrived, but that did nothing to diminish the shame and humiliation she felt. It had taken threats from her father-in-law to get her husband to fulfil his marital duties. No doubt the old man had begun to wonder why she and Karl had no children.

In the morning she had awakened feeling stiff and frozen. She was lying on the floor with her heavy black woollen dress and her white petticoats hitched up around her waist. Quickly she pulled them down, but the house was empty. No one else was there. With a pounding headache and dry mouth, she had hauled herself to her feet. She felt an ache between her legs, and when she later went out to the privy, she saw the blood that had dried on the inside of her thighs.

Many hours later Karl and Julian came back from the lighthouse, both of them acting as if nothing had happened. Emelie had spent the whole day frenetically scouring the house with soap and scrubbing-brush. Nothing had interrupted her work. Even the dead were keeping strangely quiet. Then she had started preparing the evening meal so that it would be ready by five o’clock, but she seemed hardly aware of her movements as she peeled the potatoes and fried the fish. Only a slight trembling in her hands when she heard the footsteps of the two men as they approached the front door betrayed the emotions churning inside her. Karl and Julian came in, hung their heavy jackets in the front hall, and sat down at the table without paying her any attention. And that was how the winter days had passed. With hazy memories of what had happened, and the cold spreading a frozen white carpet over the water.

But now the ice was beginning to crack, and occasionally Emelie would go outside and sit down on the bench next to the house, lifting her face to the sun. Sometimes she found herself smiling, because now she was certain. At first she wasn’t sure, since she didn’t know her own body very well, but finally there was no longer any doubt. She was with child. The night that she remembered as a bad dream had led to something good. She was going to have a baby. Someone she could take care of, someone she could share her life with here on the island.

She closed her eyes and placed her hand on her stomach as the sun continued to warm her cheeks. Someone came and sat down next to her, but when she opened her eyes, no one was sitting beside her. Emelie closed her eyes again and smiled. It felt so good not to be alone.