The Third Sister Read online

  Her mother, on the other hand, sat with her hands folded in her lap as she studied her ex-husband. She looked shaken, so much so that Ilka wondered if she was going into shock.

  Suddenly she said to him, “My God, you look just like your father.”

  Her father frowned as he ran his hand over his head. “I sincerely hope not.” His white hair lay like a wreath, circling his head above his ears. He was suntanned, and his blue eyes looked light against his dark face.

  “But it’s true. You’ve aged just like him. You have the same wrinkles in your forehead. Like ocean waves.”

  She drew waves in the air with her finger. “And around your eyes.”

  “There’s no one in the world I’d hate to look like more than him. Would anyone like something to eat?”

  Suddenly her mother seemed to be enjoying herself. She followed his movements, absorbing them, while Jette sat with her arms crossed, staring down at the table. At her father’s words, Jette straightened up, reached for a roll, and buttered it, focusing on her plate. She took a few sips of coffee.

  Several times her father’s lips moved, as if he was about to say something more, but not a single word came out. Finally, though, he succeeded.

  “It was Annegrethe.” He turned to Ilka’s mother. “Back when my sister died, something happened to me. All my long life I’ve talked to people who were grieving, and of course I know how you can easily blame yourself when a loved one dies. I often think if I’d been the one who fell out the window that night, my sister would still be alive. Or if I just could have stopped my father from getting so worked up, she wouldn’t have had to hide behind the curtains, on the windowsill. If I could’ve kept my father away from my mother, he wouldn’t have beat her those nights he came home after losing at the track. My sister wouldn’t have been so afraid of him. There are so many things I wish I could have prevented.”

  “You were just a big kid when your sister died,” her mother said. “And you did what you could to get between them. Your mother told me those stories so many times, it started to feel like I’d been there.”

  Ilka sat watching her parents. It was so strange, unreal to her, seeing them both in one room, so very different from all the dreams she’d once had of them getting back together.

  Her mother still hadn’t touched her coffee or the roll Jette had buttered for her.

  “It was blowing up a storm that day out at the track,” her father said. “They were talking about canceling the races, and maybe that was why I gambled the way I did. I put all my money on a bunch of losers to win, place, and show. I was out there alone, sitting by myself in a box seat. Ilka had just come home from a school trip, they’d spent Friday night in a cabin up in the Hare Forest. I picked her up that day while you were out visiting your folks. Do you remember?”

  After a moment her mother nodded.

  “We watched TV that evening,” he continued. “Ilka fell asleep on the sofa with her clothes on, and you asked me if I was going to the track the next day.”

  Ilka caught herself holding her breath. It was the details, the way he was speaking. That he could remember that evening, an overnight trip with her school, her lying on the sofa asleep. He hadn’t forgotten; it was still etched in his memory.

  “I told you I wasn’t, I said I had a funeral in Vangede, and I’d have to drive the coffin out to the crematorium. I promised to do some shopping on the way home. You were going to bake those cumin kringles I liked so much. But there was no funeral, I knew that of course. The funeral home was failing, there wasn’t much to do, and it was all my fault. I was neglecting the business, and I’d also lost Verner. He was the one who’d been keeping it afloat, but I couldn’t afford his salary, and he finally quit. He just couldn’t keep going home to his wife and telling her I hadn’t paid him.”

  Her father took a sip of coffee. “Several days earlier, I’d brought in some money by driving a corpse to Sweden for another undertaker whose hearse was in the garage. And I made a deal with myself: If I bet the money and won, I would take you all out for a weekend in Malmö. We would sail over on Friday evening and come home Sunday.”

  Ilka’s mother’s birthday was the weekend after her father had disappeared. She’d constantly reminded everyone about that over the years. It was a birthday present I could have done without, was how she usually put it. It was also the reason why she always went all-out on birthdays in general. There had to be a celebration, and everyone had to be happy when a birthday came along. Those were the rules.

  “So, the funeral was a lie too.” Her mother nodded to herself.

  Jette had finished off a large piece of kringle, even though she wasn’t much for sweets. Having something to do with her hands seemed to calm her down. She began buttering another roll.

  “I lied,” her father said. “I was going to surprise you both.”

  First her mother shook her head, then her father.

  “They didn’t cancel the races, and I was the only one who picked right on win, place, and show, all three horses. My winnings were a record, and it still stands as the largest amount paid out for a single race.”

  “But you didn’t take us to Malmö,” her mother said after a few moments of silence.

  He shook his head. “They came to me when I was standing in the winner’s circle. I’d seen them out there a few times, I knew they were American scouts. Everybody’s on their toes when Americans show up, because usually it means a lot of money for trainers or owners. Now all of a sudden it was me they were interested in. My cousin introduced us.”

  Ilka already knew this, but it startled her mother. His cousin had kept in touch with them after her father was gone, and he had helped her mother when they moved from their house to a small apartment. He’d remained a part of the family throughout the years.

  “They gave me a good offer, and I knew you wouldn’t go along. I wanted to prove to you, and to myself, maybe mostly myself, that I could be a success. That’s why I left. I wanted to show I could be something other than a loser, and I didn’t want to end up like my father. I could feel it, I was losing control, and I didn’t want to put you through what happened to me. I saw it as my chance to make a new start.”

  He barely took time to breathe between sentences.

  “Why in the world did you believe I wouldn’t go with you?” her mother said.

  He looked at her in surprise.

  She persisted. “What made you think that?”

  “Would you have?”

  She leaned over and took his hand. Jette slammed her coffee cup down on the table.

  Ilka was standing at the window now, looking out at the rain-covered street, the school on the other side. A car drove slowly up alongside the curb in front of the funeral home, and she jerked back away from the window when she noticed the car’s front plate: Texas.

  From behind she heard her mother say, “Ilka had just started school back then, we could easily have taken her. And I’m sure I could have gotten a leave of absence.”

  The car kept driving and turned into the funeral home’s parking lot. Ilka was about to run out when suddenly Leslie appeared in the doorway.

  “What’s going on here?” She looked back and forth between Jette and Karin.

  “This is my mother,” Ilka said. “And Jette.”

  “And this is my daughter Leslie,” her father said. He pulled out a chair for her.

  Before Leslie had time to react, Ilka’s mother stood up and gave her a long hug. “It’s so very nice to meet you,” she said. She sounded like she meant it, even though she’d heard about how rude Ilka’s half sister had been.

  While Leslie sat down and greeted Jette, Ilka eased out into the hall and hurried down to the memorial room with its large windows looking out onto the parking lot. The car had parked in front of Lydia’s apartment, and her throat tightened with fear when she recognized the man in the long, black coat knocking on her door. He’d barged in asking about Lydia Rogers on the day the sister realized she’d
been outed. Now he knocked several times before finally giving up. It looked as though he left something at the door before climbing back behind the wheel and driving away.

  Ilka ran through the rain across the parking lot and picked up the card he’d stuck between the door and frame. Please call, I can help you. A name was printed on the back of the card: Calvin Jennings, Texas.

  She trotted back and stood under the carport. Her hands shook as she reached for the pack of cigarettes and lighter in her pocket.

  “Could I have one too?”

  She whirled and found herself facing Jette. Ilka hadn’t heard the door open.

  “You smoke?”

  Jette shrugged. “I don’t know, I’ve never tried. Right now feels like a good time to find out if I do or not.”

  Ilka smiled at her and offered Jette a drag of hers, but she shook her head and said she wanted one of her own. She lit it and drew the smoke deep into her lungs, staring at Ilka while waiting to see what happened. She didn’t cough, she simply watched the smoke seep out of her mouth in a column until she took another drag.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “How can she take all this so calmly? They’re sitting in there talking like they’ve known each other all these years. She seems to have forgotten all her anger.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “You’re fucking right I’m jealous.” She let out a laugh. “Jealous of an old man we all thought was dead. Jealous and mad.”

  Ilka laughed along with her, mostly to loosen up the knot in her chest. “It is strange, damn strange.” She’d also felt a stab of jealousy when her mother had hugged Leslie.

  They put out their cigarettes and went back inside. Jette said the best part of smoking was when the smoke hit her lungs. “The aftertaste isn’t anything to write home about.” Ilka agreed; the only reason she smoked was for the dizzy feeling, not because she enjoyed it otherwise.

  Leslie was cutting off a piece of kringle when they returned.

  “How about you two, would you like some?” her father asked.

  Ilka accepted a piece. After she took a bite, her phone rang: Artie. She stood up and walked out into the foyer.

  “They canceled the scan today,” he said. “The one that was supposed to show if the blood in my head is gone. And they told me I’m probably going to be discharged from the hospital tomorrow.”

  Ilka was having trouble understanding him. “You’re not being discharged tomorrow. The office told me the money in your account covers three more days.”

  “They said they haven’t seen my insurance policy and they can’t continue treatment.”

  “No one’s sending you home! There must be some mistake, a misunderstanding. I’ll talk to them.” She simply had to get her hands on more money, somehow.

  She wished she could console him, assure him everything was fine, but nothing came to her. She flashed on herself standing and screaming in an empty office on the ward.

  “I’ll take care of it right away,” she finally said.

  Lydia! If she were there right now, Ilka would roll her up in barbed wire and bury her alive! She was the reason Artie was in the hospital in the first place, and now she’d run off with the money that could have helped him. There was still no word from Jeff, and she hoped, she prayed he was out there looking. She texted him, asked him how it was going, then she jammed her phone back in her pocket and rejoined the others to tell them she had to run an errand.

  Leslie was talking about the big library in town, the reading groups and lectures that took place there, which was news to Ilka. She also hadn’t known about the monthly Danish evening in the Scandinavian Club. Apparently, Leslie was breaking out of her stupor, and her mother and Jette were lapping up everything she said.

  “Surely we can use that to our advantage,” her mother said.

  She and Jette had both taught school, and Jette was interested in history in particular. She arranged walking tours around Copenhagen, pointing out small unusual spots that few Copenhageners were aware of. Now they were both jotting down addresses of places they wanted to visit in Racine.

  “And that coffee bar,” her mother continued. “That’s probably a place where creative people meet. Let’s stop by there and put up a notice, an open invitation to a Danish evening here at the funeral home. We’ll serve kringles and talk about Denmark.”

  “Why?” Ilka said, bewildered by their conversation.

  “To bring people in,” Jette said. She seemed to have forgotten her anger and was now just as enthusiastic as Ilka’s mother.

  “Bring people in for what?”

  “To the funeral home,” her father explained.

  Apparently, a lot had happened while Ilka had been preoccupied with the man from Texas.

  “I think your mother’s right,” he said, “it’s probably best to open up as soon as possible, before the prepaid customers start wanting their money back. If we do it right now, nobody will even know we’ve been closed.”

  Ilka took this to mean they thought she’d made a mistake by closing the funeral home. And that stung. “But you don’t have Artie. Who’s going to do the embalming?”

  “Gregg can!” her mother said. “He’s an undertaker, and he handled everything at his funeral home. And your father can too.”

  “But you’re dead, for God’s sake!” Even Ilka could hear how screechy she sounded. She looked around the room; she had the feeling they were all suffering from some sort of mass psychosis. Even Leslie, who now had some color in her cheeks, added that she could keep the books, besides being a registered nurse. It wouldn’t be hard at all for her to be certified as an undertaker.

  Ilka shook her head. “You can’t just all of a sudden start welcoming people in,” she said to her father. “They’ll have a heart attack when they see you. I know, it would be good for business, but you don’t have a license anymore, you don’t have a Social Security number. You don’t have anything, because you don’t exist.”

  “Easy,” her mother said. “Let’s not make this sound harder than it really is. Leslie and Paul have already started taking care of it. And today I’m going in with them to confirm your father is still alive, and that he and I have a child. We’ll tell them there’s been a mistake. Does anyone know when the nun is coming back?”

  Her father shook his head.

  “Until she’s back, I can handle the reception work, answer the phone. I just need to know what to do when someone needs our services. And can people just walk in off the street?”

  Ilka glanced around at them. “There’s something I have to take care of.” She turned to her father. “I’ll take your car.”

  “When will you be back?” Leslie said. “We have to get going too.”

  “You can take the hearse. Everyone might as well get used to driving it.”

  18

  Ilka still had the twenty thousand dollars she’d taken from Fletcher’s desk drawer, money that could have helped her get back on her feet when she returned to Denmark. But now she hoped it was enough to cover the scan and Artie’s hospital room for the next several days. She knew his care would require much more, given how fast the bills were mounting up, which was why she brought along the envelope with the power of attorney Artie had given her, along with her passport. She was nervous, and that annoyed her. Ideally, she could waltz right in to the bank and empty his account, but what if they asked about her relationship to him? Or if they wanted information she couldn’t provide?

  She shook off her thoughts and drove into the long, narrow parking lot in front of the bank.

  “Yes,” she answered, “he asked me to withdraw all the money in his account.”

  A young, black-haired man with steel-rimmed glasses sat behind the glass counter. With no more than a cursory glance up at her, he began counting out bills and informed her he’d need a signature. Ilka had no idea how much Artie had in his account, but she nodded when he asked if she preferred large denominations.

  He tucked eleven thousand dollar
s in an envelope and asked if she wanted to close the account.

  “No.” She stared down at the money she’d been handed; it wasn’t much compared with the bundle of bills Lydia had given her. Her bad conscience from emptying his account made her weak in the knees. Once more it hit her that Artie had used most of his savings to help her—sixty thousand dollars to buy time for her to think about what to do with the business she’d inherited. Not once had he criticized Ilka for being unable to sell it and pay him back; on the contrary, he’d suggested she keep the money as a down payment on the house, which he wanted to buy. And now when he needed it most, there was hardly any money left.

  Ilka got in behind the wheel. A sense of loss overwhelmed her, crushed her; she doubted she could even make it up to Artie’s ward. Reluctantly, she started the car, but by the time she parked in front of the hospital ten minutes later, she had a plan.

  “I have had it up to here,” she yelled. Several people in the ward’s hall turned and stared at Ilka standing in the office’s doorway. “I’m holding this hospital responsible if canceling Artie Sorvino’s scan—which is supposed to happen today—affects his progress and harms his chances for recovery.”

  The woman she’d spoken to the day before stood up, but she couldn’t get a single word in before Ilka cut her off. “I get it, I understand your hospital needs information on the health insurance policies of their patients, and I apologize for not being able to provide it yet. I’ve spoken with the insurance company again today, but the reason I can’t get the information is that I’m not officially the owner of the funeral home that took out the policy. Several months ago, I inherited the Paul Jensen Funeral Home from my father, but the appropriate government agency hasn’t registered that yet.”

  Ilka handed her the old insurance policy. “The agency is working on it, but I still don’t have a Social Security number, which means they can’t register me as the owner. And officially I’m also blocked until my work permit comes through and my visa has been approved. We all know these things take too much time, and all we can do about it is be patient. But if you’d bothered to contact Artie Sorvino’s family before canceling the scan, which by the way worried him, a lot, you’d know his treatment will still be paid for in cash.”