Chapter 29

Wilma’s call gave Sofia a proper fright. She called her parents, Benjamin, Alma, and even Edith Bergman at the university library, but no one had been asking after her. Then she wondered if all her phone calls could give the cult fresh clues, and decided to lay low instead. They were probably looking for her somewhere in Italy.

Life in Palo Alto soon settled into a comfortable routine. She biked to work in the morning, always towards the rising sun. She finally asked someone if it was always sunny there, and how anything could ever grow if so, and was told that almost all the rain fell between December and March. And when she asked if it was always so hot, she learned that the heat often lasted well into October.

She spent most evenings by the pool, reading books in a lounger and taking dips every so often, so her wet suit could cool her body. On a few nights, it was so hot in her apartment that she hauled a mattress onto the balcony and slept there. She woke up at dawn to chirping birds in the olive tree. It seemed the birds only sang in the morning; during the day even they were struck dumb by the heat.

The library where she worked was new and modern; the staff were friendly and she quickly felt at home. Melissa kick-started her social life with the same enthusiasm as she tackled everything else. She invited Sofia to dinners with her friends and brought her to parties, outdoor concerts, and music clubs.

Sofia went all over Palo Alto on her bike. Sometimes she devoted whole days to riding, circling residential neighbourhoods full of fancy houses that were shaded by enormous oaks, maples, and elms, with flowers climbing over fences and exteriors. Almost all the houses were enclosed behind high walls, like little oases, which made her wonder why you would want to hide away in such a beautiful city.

She roamed around parks, embracing the immense trunks of redwoods and staring up at their crowns, so high in the eternally blue sky; she couldn’t get enough of the scent of pine and eucalyptus that hung over the city like a veil. She often strolled down University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, which really consisted of nothing more than a long street full of shops, cafés, and restaurants. She was surprised at how many people smiled at her. The men seemed more forward than in Sweden, but usually in a pleasant way. A few times she let herself be hit on by Stanford students, and enjoyed the attention even if she did eventually reject their propositioning.

I fit in here, she thought. This is a place I could spend my life.

She often sat at Starbucks or Peet’s, sipping a cup of coffee and surfing the internet. She chatted with other patrons. It was so easy to start a conversation. You’re from Sweden? Oh, wow! What’s it like there? Does it snow all the time?

During her café visits she worked on the blog, because she was afraid her entries might be traceable to her apartment otherwise. One day as she was sitting there surfing after work, she decided to download Oswald’s autobiography as an e-book. It stung her to pay money for it, but what the hell – Simon had never sent the book, and she was curious. At first she was surprised to find that the text didn’t upset her. His lies about his childhood and family, the nonsense about how he invented the theses. When she got to a chapter where he described ground-breaking insights he’d had in prison, which would lead to new theses, she laughed – it was so transparent.

But this was before she got to the part about her. She read it several times as a restless, nagging feeling spread through her body. It was the last sentence, the one about how they would meet again. How could he even suggest such a thing? She tried to write an angry entry about him for the blog, but it all came out wrong. And then came the dark, gnawing rage that he could still affect her like this.

She was so restless that night that she paced back and forth in her apartment and didn’t even notice the blazing sunset until the last few rays of light were licking at the night sky. Despite the late hour, she called Melissa to ask if she had any tips for sightseeing in San Francisco. Melissa didn’t hesitate to say she wanted to come along and show Sofia around.

They took the train up the next day. In under an hour they were in San Francisco, doing all the typical tourist stuff: walking across the Golden Gate bridge and crowding with other tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf. They walked out on the piers, looked at the sea lions, ate creamy mussel soup in bread bowls, and listened to street musicians. Then they did some shopping and had dinner in Chinatown.

Sofia was so exhausted by all the new impressions that she declined Melissa’s offer to see a baseball game the next day.

For her next trip, she went to San Francisco alone. She brought her bike on the train and rode it around with no destination in mind. She walked it up the steep hills and sped down them at ridiculous speeds, until she finally found herself at the coast. The ocean seemed deeper and wilder here. She sat down on the shore and enjoyed the fresh breeze, then rolled up her jeans and waded into the water. It was freezing cold, and the undertow almost pulled her down, so she went back to sit in the sand. A dog was throwing itself into the waves again and again, fetching a stick, and she watched it as she hugged her knees to her chest. The horizon wasn’t visible – only a haze that grew fainter and fainter until it turned into white sky.

She realized that someone had sat down next to her in the sand. It was a man in his forties, with shoulder-length sun-bleached hair. He was tanned, with deep creases around his eyes and mouth.

‘What a shame that we have this beautiful place, and we can’t even swim! I tried to take a dip too, but it’s hella cold.’

‘Is the water always this chilly?’

‘Yeah, pretty much. Although it’s warmer now, in the fall, than it is in the summer.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘In the summer there’s fog at night, and it comes in and covers the whole city. It drives the temperature way down. It will be five or ten degrees cooler than it is inland. You’re from Sweden, aren’t you?’

‘Is my accent that obvious?’

‘Yes, but it sounds nice. How come you Swedes speak such good English?’

‘TV and music, and we visit American websites and stuff like that.’

The man, who introduced himself as Orson King, was easy to talk to and suddenly, before she could stop herself, she had told him why she was there.

‘I already know who you are,’ he cut her off. ‘I misled you a little there at first.’

Her heart jumped into her throat. They found me. It’s all over.

‘Don’t worry,’ King said when he saw her frightened expression. ‘I read everything there is to read about cults, and there was an article about you and that asshole Oswald in an American paper. I work at a shelter for defectors a little inland. When I saw you, I recognized you right away from the picture in the paper. Weird coincidence, right?’

‘Jeez, you scared me! I thought you were a private eye they’d sent after me.’

‘No, definitely not. I’m as anti-cult as they come. Listen, it would be great if you would come to see us. Talk to the teenagers there, tell them about your experience. I bet they’d like that.’

‘It would only scare them if I told them what happened to me.’

‘I don’t think so. I think it would help their problems seem more manageable. Make them want to keep fighting.’

‘Well, in that case, I want to remain anonymous. No one can know that I was there.’

‘We can make that happen.’

And that’s how Sofia ended up spending a Saturday talking to teenagers who had escaped from cults. The shelter was out in a valley in the desert. The little hollow itself was green, but all around it was an expanse of endless sand with cactus-like plants and tumbleweeds. The building was painted red, like a Swedish cottage, and looked out of place in the barren landscape. A couple of horses walked around a paddock, nibbling at the almost non-existent grass. It was quiet as she and Orson King stepped out of the car. Way too quiet.

‘Lots of the kids here have it tough,’ said King. ‘They’re struggling with religious convictions they’ve had drummed into them all their lives, things they’ve never dared to question.’

He showed her around the stables and the main building. Everyone inside was so young. Mostly teenagers. They gazed at Sofia, full of curiosity; some of them gave her hesitant smiles, and some looked away. She asked King about their parents, and he said they were all still in the various cults. These kids had been shunned; their families had rejected them.

They gathered in the mess hall: about twenty teenagers, King, a female counsellor, and Sofia herself. She was going to tell her story – that was all they expected from her. As she began to speak, the images that she created with her story seemed foreign, as if they belonged to someone else. But everyone listened breathlessly. Her monologue turned into a Q&A session. A red-headed, freckle-faced boy, who reminded Sofia of a younger version of Benjamin, raised his hand.

‘Is it true that Elvira wasn’t allowed to go to her mother’s funeral?’

Sofia was caught so off-guard that at first she couldn’t say a word.

‘How do you know about Elvira?’ she asked at last.

A skinny girl of around fifteen with big eyes and thin lips stood up.

‘I’m half Swedish, or whatever. My mom’s from Sweden, and my dad’s from the US. I translated part of Elvira’s blog so everyone could read it. We liked it so much. What happened to her?’

A silent battle played out in Sofia’s mind: tell the truth and kill these kids’ last shred of hope, or think up a decently believable lie? But she didn’t have to rack her brains, because the freckled kid shook his head.

‘She went back to the cult, didn’t she? She gave up. What the hell else could she do, when she was pregnant and all? She didn’t really have a choice.’

‘You always have a choice,’ Sofia said. ‘But still, Elvira did win one battle. She’s being taken care of now, but doesn’t have to actually be part of the cult itself. The babies are fine.’

‘Yeah, except they’ll probably be raised as ViaTerra kids,’ said the girl. ‘And that’s not exactly awesome.’

‘No, it’s not,’ Sofia agreed. She wanted to squeeze in that it was lucky that none of them were pregnant with the child of a perverted cult leader, but then she changed her mind. Because how could she be sure of that?

Another girl, slightly older, who had been sitting silently in the back row, stood up.

‘Listen, we know you have a blog too. I don’t suppose you could translate some of the entries, could you?’

‘I’d be happy to. I didn’t know you were reading it… or that you even existed.’

It struck her, now that she was standing there, that perhaps she had been careless. That the teenagers might leak the news that she’d been there.

‘I hope you understand that I don’t want anyone to find out I was here,’ she said tentatively.

The guy who looked like Benjamin laughed.

‘Who do you think we are? I can assure you there are no Oswald fans around here. And anyway, Orson would kill us if we said a word.’

A wave of laughter broke out, relieving the tension. It was the perfect moment to end her address.

It was already dark by the time Orson would drive her home. They sat on a bench in the garden for a while, looking up at the starry sky and listening to the crickets serenade them. Shooting stars seemed to fall one after the next. The air was dry and cool – soon it would be cold. She thought of the kids she’d spoken with, of their parents’ betrayal. Knowing that they’d found Elvira’s blog and had tried to follow it moved her so much that she felt a lump in her throat.

‘How can this happen?’ she said out loud. ‘Why do parents abandon their children? I felt a little powerless when I was talking to them.’

King considered this for a moment.

‘The last little shred of respect I had for religion disappeared when I got this job,’ he said at last. She couldn’t see his face in the dark; she could only smell his tobacco scent. It wasn’t disagreeable, but it stood in sharp contrast to the scent of mimosa that wafted by on the air.

‘Ugh, I’m sorry for being a downer,’ he said. ‘It’s a good thing you came here to talk to them. You can be sure they enjoyed it.’

‘It was fun to visit. Although sometimes I wonder how you explain to someone that their parents don’t want them. And if there’s really all that much you can do for them.’

‘Sure there is,’ he said. ‘You can help them find their way back to real life.’

Before Orson dropped Sofia off outside her apartment, he gave her a few booklets full of information on the shelter, and phone numbers she could call at any time.

‘If anything does happen to you here, against all expectations, if you need help, just let me know,’ he said before they went their separate ways.

Just as she walked through the door, Benjamin called.

‘I love you, Sofia,’ he breathed.

‘I love you too. Nothing has changed.’