I’m not going to cry, she thought, it’s only a shoe. Then she felt her eyes filling with an intense heat, and she had to blink away the tears in order to be able to see. She saw the black rubber sole and the brown leather straps, dry and cracked with age.
A sandal, a little boy’s worn sandal.
“I don’t know if it’s the right shoe,” said Gerlof. “As I remember it, it did look like this, but it could be a—”
“It’s Jens’s sandal,” Julia interrupted him, her voice thick.
“We can’t be sure of that,” said Gerlof. “It’s not good to be too certain. Is it?”
Julia didn’t reply. She knew. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with her hand, then carefully picked up the plastic bag.
“I put it in the bag as soon as I got it,” explained Gerlof. “There might be fingerprints...”
“I know,” said Julia.
It was so light, so light. When a mother was going to put a sandal like this on her little son’s foot, she picked it up off the floor by the outside door without even thinking about what it might weigh. Then she stood beside him and bent her back, feeling the warmth of his body and taking hold of his foot as he steadied himself by holding on to her sweater, standing there quietly or saying something, all the childish chatter that she only half listened to because she was thinking about other things. About bills that needed paying. About buying food. About men who weren’t around.
“I taught Jens to put on his own sandals,” said Julia. “It took all summer, but when I started college in the autumn he could do it.” She was still holding on to the little shoe. “And that was why he was able to go out alone that day, to sneak out... He’d put on his own sandals. If I hadn’t taught him he wouldn’t have...”
“Don’t think like that.”
“What I mean is... I only taught him to save a bit of time,” said Julia. “For myself.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Julia,” said Gerlof.
“Thanks for the advice,” she said, without looking at him. “But I’ve been blaming myself for twenty years.”
They fell silent, and Julia realized suddenly the picture in her memory was no longer fragments of bone on the shore in Stenvik. She could see her son alive, bending down with enormous concentration to put on his own sandals, finding it difficult to make his small fingers do what he wanted them to do.
“Who found it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It came in the mail.”
“Who from?”
“There was no sender’s name. It was just a brown envelope, with an indistinct postmark. But I think it came from Öland.”
“No letter?”
“Nothing,” said Gerlof.
“And you don’t know who sent it?”
“No,” said Gerlof, but he was no longer looking Julia in the eye; he was looking down at the desk, and she got no more answers. Perhaps he suspected more than he wanted to tell her.
No answers. Julia sighed.
“But there are other things we can do,” Gerlof went on quickly. Then he stopped.
“Like what?” said Julia.
“Well...”
Gerlof blinked without replying, looking at her as if he’d already forgotten why he’d asked her to come.
But Julia had no idea either what they should do next, and didn’t say anything. She suddenly realized she hadn’t looked at her father’s room properly; she had been completely fixated on looking at the sandal, holding it in her hand.
She took a look around. As a nurse she quickly noticed the emergency call buttons along the walls, and as a daughter she discovered that Gerlof had brought his memories of the sea with him from the cottage in Stenvik. The three nameplates in lacquered wood from his cargo ships Wavebreaker, Wind, and Nore were hanging above framed black-and-white photographs of the ships. On another wall hung framed ship’s registration certificates with stamps and seals. On the bookshelf beside the desk stood Gerlof’s leather-bound logbooks in a row, next to a couple of tiny model ships that had sailed straight into their own glass bottles.
Everything was just as neatly arranged as in a maritime museum, clean and shining, and Julia realized she envied her father; he could stay in his room with his memories, he didn’t have to go out into the real world, where you had to make things happen and pretend to be young and sharp and try to prove your worth all the time.
On the table next to Gerlof’s bed lay a black Bible and half a dozen pill bottles. Julia looked over toward the desk again.
“You haven’t asked me how I am, Gerlof,” she said quietly.
Gerlof nodded. “And you haven’t called me Dad,” he said.
Silence.
“So how are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” said Julia tersely.
“Are you still working at the hospital?”
“Oh yes,” she said, without mentioning the fact that she’d taken an extended leave of absence. Instead she said, “I drove through Stenvik before I came here. I had a look at the cottage.”
“Good. How are things looking down there?”
“Just the same. It was all closed up.”
“No broken windows?”
“No,” said Julia. “But there was a man there. Or rather, he turned up while I was there.”
“I expect it was John,” said Gerlof. “Or Ernst.”
“His name was Ernst Adolfsson. I presume you know each other?”
Gerlof nodded. “He’s a sculptor. An old stonemason. He’s from Småland originally, but...”
“But he’s all right in spite of that, you mean?” said Julia quickly.
“He’s lived here for a long time,” said Gerlof.
“Yes, I vaguely remember him from when I was little... He said something odd before he left, something about a story from the war. Was he talking about the Second World War?”
“He keeps an eye on the cottage,” said Gerlof. “Ernst lives over by the quarry, and he picks up the leftover reject stone sometimes. Fifty men used to work there in the old days, but now there’s just Ernst... He’s been helping me a bit with working all this out.”
“All this? You mean what happened to Jens?”
“Yes. We’ve talked about it, speculated a bit,” Gerlof said, then asked, “How long are you staying?”
“I...” Julia wasn’t prepared for the question. “I don’t know.”
“Stay for a couple of weeks. That would be good.”
“That’s too long,” said Julia quickly. “I have to get home.”
“Do you?” said Gerlof, as if it came as a surprise to him.
He glanced at the sandal on the desktop, and Julia followed his gaze.
“I’ll stay for a while,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
“With what?”
“With... whatever we need to do. To move forward.”
“Good,” said Gerlof.
“So what are we going to do, then?” she asked.
“We’re going to talk to people... listen to their stories. Like in the old days.”
“You mean... several people?” said Julia. “Did several people do it, then?”
Gerlof looked at the sandal.
“There are certain people here on Öland I want to talk to,” he told her. “I believe they know things.”
Once again he hadn’t given Julia a straight answer. She was beginning to grow tired of it, and really just wanted to leave, but she was here now — and she’d brought cakes.
I’ll stay, Jens, she thought. For a few days. For your sake.
“Is it possible to get some coffee around here?” she asked.
“It usually is,” said Gerlof.
“Then we can have coffee and cakes,” said Julia, and despite the fact that she thought she sounded unpleasantly like her older sister, always planning ahead, she asked, “Where am I going to stay tonight? Any suggestions?”