STOLEN LIVES

BY JOHANNA HOLMSTRÖM

Vuosaari

Translated from Swedish by Lone Thygesen Blecher

I

It’s three days before the burial, and Carin writes in her blog, Everything from IKEA, possibly with the exception of potted plants, is completely “out.”

Celestine shuts her laptop with a snap and looks around her living room which could have come straight out of an IKEA catalog. Everything is matching in earthy tones of brown and beige, gray and white, harmonized from the same product lines, carefully planned so nothing stands out, clashes, or disrupts—and all the same it is lifeless, and now also, according to Carin, outdated.

Of course, Celestine thinks. Carin would never make a mistake like this. Carin who shops in Missoni Home and orders her bedding from Bed Bath & Beyond. Obviously she’s right. Because Carin has everything under control. Everything! Except her baby.

Carin’s baby takes his daytime naps outdoors just like all the other children, even if it is winter.

And that’s the reason Finnish babies are so strong and healthy, Carin writes in her blog.

Unattended, Gabriel snoozes in his Emmaljunga stroller of black-and-white leather by the white plastered walls of the row house apartments, right beneath the window where the shades facing the street are drawn. Pedestrians pass by his stroller, and children with breaths of white clouds play in the nearby snow mounds with bright-colored plastic shovels.

The baby lies in the safety of his Emmaljunga bubble, behind a white cloth with a pattern of starfish and other sea life while Carin, with her shades drawn, is advising clueless mothers on how to best take care of their offspring. And Celestine is standing on her balcony right across the street, four floors above in the city rental housing, looking at the stroller by the row house wall. She wets her winter-chapped lips and breathes in the smell of melting snow through her nose.

The rental complex on Lilla Ullholmvägen is jokingly nicknamed the Castle. It is one of the only places in the area where subsidized housing is offered, and most of the inhabitants are on welfare or alcoholics. Large Somalian families stomp up and down the stairs to their apartments, filling the stairwells with the echoes of their laughter. Celestine is one of only a few with a Swedish last name. Everyone else is Finnish, Somalian, Arab, Kurdish, Vietnamese . . . She has tried figuring out how many nationalities are gathered underneath the same roof. There must be at least nine.

When you move up in the world, you move down, down to the row house apartments. If you do even better, you move to the villas with panoramic windows down by the innermost inlet. That’s where you find the small boat harbor, the yachts, the private tennis courts, and the running tracks. And the closer you get to the waterfront, the whiter the skin color.

Carin and Anders live in the row houses, and their cars are parked by the curb in front of the Castle. They park for free right in front of the less fortunate. Celestine despises cars. She doesn’t even have a driver’s license. She takes the metro back and forth to the university and a bus in between. Just like most people in her building.

It’s Carin who drives their town jeep. A Subaru Forester. It is not exactly luxurious. She jokingly calls it her little shopping box. They also have a Benz. That’s the one Anders uses.

Celestine scratches the Subaru with her keys as she passes and Carin complains at length online. Celestine reads. She reads everything Carin writes. Her eyes glide greedily along the lines and she steals the pictures Carin posts. They are pictures of the new couch in brown antique leather. The soft, cream-colored shaggy rug. Pictures of the coffee maker that you feed with small single-serve plastic cartridges. And pictures from their frequent trips to European metropolises—trips that continued in spite of the family addition. The flow of pictures is punctuated with recipes for lemon meringue pie, homemade ice cream with real vanilla, and the perfect roast beef. And while she’s writing, the boy is sleeping in his carriage beneath the window.

His name is Gabriel. The angel Gabriel. Celestine looks into his amazed blue eyes and smiles at him almost in real time when Carin posts a picture of something which is, most certainly, no longer just passing gas but a real smile. He doesn’t look at all like Otto, Celestine’s Otto, but there’s something about him that makes her run her finger down the round baby cheek on the screen, very slowly, and when she closes her eyes she sees him.

* * *

She was six years old when he was born. Celestine’s mother Harriet had already disposed of her first husband, Tomas, and was busy with the next one, Markku. She and Celestine had moved away from the single-family house in the town by the river where the church burned down when some young vandals threw a Molotov cocktail up onto the roof. Markku lived and worked in the capital and Harriet couldn’t afford the long trips. It was a practical arrangement.

It was called a suburb, but it felt more like a bedroom community. The streets had names like Starry Eye Alley, Blue Bird, Air Castle Street, Winding Honey Alley, Mossy Path. It was a fairy-tale town by a sandy beach where you could see freighters like red and white spots far out at sea at all times of the year. The harbor was tucked away behind a promontory and you could hear the ships bellow at each other at night. The sound made her shudder. It filled the hollows of her body and seemed to reverberate inside her until she stood in front of the open window, shaking.

In her new school they made fun of her name. Celestine, out of all the names in the world. It was worth at least a snort and a giggle. The name belonged to a time when Mom still had dreams. Not just a bag to pack when it was time to dump Tomas, Celestine’s dad. Not some deadbeat, but a musician just like Mom was back when she still gave kids names like Celestine. But with Markku, who worked in construction and had a regular income and a pension, all they could come up with was Otto.

The name is a palindrome. It has no beginning and no ending. It repeats itself forever, on and on, in a perfect symmetry of circles and the two crosses in between.

From the very beginning he belonged to Celestine and no one else. Their mom Harriet was no Carin. She didn’t know any recipes for lemon meringue pie. She just played her music in bars so smokey that you could hardly open your eyes. She’d come back home long past midnight. Markku loved her, he said, and so he let her have her way.

—The girl can take care of the boy, Markku said.

He himself sat with a glass of beer at the bar where Harriet played and never took his eyes off her even when it got to be late and they were both cross-eyed as they started toward home. For a man like Markku it was no problem having to get up for work the next day. For a man like Markku the alcohol is never a problem. The only thing Markku had a problem with was his jealousy, and when Harriet and Markku started breaking apart their love as well as the furniture inside Air Castle Street number 4B, Celestine and Otto had to escape out into the snow flurries.

 

II

Two days before the burial, she straightens up her things and cleans the apartment as though cleaning up a crime scene. A sock gathering dust on the floor goes into the laundry basket. Papers that have slipped out of the printer are swept up and land in a drawer by the computer. She wipes every surface with a damp rag, polishes the mirror and door handles with window cleaner, waters the basil, oregano, lettuce, thyme, sage, and mint by the kitchen window. While she’s cleaning she drifts to another time, another place, and the images that pass before her mind’s eye are so strong and clear that she loses herself in them.

Her tongue licks the snot from under her nose. The snot is always running, tickling her upper lip, during those wet months. To crawl across the frozen, icy snow in slippery rain pants or winter overalls. The thumping sensation of the plastic shovel blade hitting the snowbank. The constant sliding. The pointless, monotonous digging. The woolen cap soaking up moisture, itching the skin. And the eyes adjusting to the darkness that came creeping in from between the walls of the surrounding buildings.

The other children, everywhere, all around her, hinged together by the common effort of conquering the snow mound and carving it into a cavern of tunnels that one could crawl through in a slight state of panic. A feeling of having narrowly escaped the death of suffocation every time one reached safety on the other side. In the dark evenings the parents would light candles and place them in the tunnels, lighting the caverns from within. It was horrific. Beautiful. Like the sacrificial altar of some kind of death cult. A cranium lit up and burning all through the long winter night.

Celestine runs hot water over the dishes and pulls on a pair of green rubber gloves. The steam hits her face and it gathers in droplets on the down of her upper lip. The taste is salty.

She used to watch him through the window when he crawled around on the snow mound with the other children. The tip of his tongue licking the upper lip beneath his nose. The pom-pom on his cap bobbed up and down as he dug. When she was done with her house work she used to pull on her cap, jacket, and winter pants, the heavy boots, and then run down to join them. Halfway to the tunnel she would realize she had forgotten her mittens.

Her hands are still cold. She dug in the snow until her nails were bleeding. It burned like fire when they thawed. Then she screamed. Screamed and cried. But her hands never warmed up again.

 

III

The day before the burial she wakes up with a start and a violent gasp. Her mouth is dry and she sits up in bed. Her head is heavy with sleep, her thoughts at a standstill. She looks at her hands. Blood. Her breathing is fast, she’s trembling, and she lifts up the blanket, the pink one with green and red flowers. The yellow sheet is stained. For a moment the sight drowns her in thick, hot darkness. The sun-filled bedroom disappears, but she is not thrown back into the snow-filled nighttime landscape of her dream where the candles that the parents had placed in the caverns of the snow mound had fallen over and gone out. Instead, she is caught inside the limbo of escalating panic. Suddenly, in a flash of clarity, she regains control of her own body. Time and space returns.

Of course!

She’s still clasping the blanket in her fist and staring at the sheet. Then she parts her legs. Her thighs are covered with sticky, dark-brown blood and her panties are soaked. She breathes more calmly.

Typical . . . this would never happen to Carin.

Carin has a menstruation chart. Her ovulation is never off. It’s never irregular nor a few weeks late the way Celestine’s can be. Carin would never have any shocking surprises.

At least not yet, Celestine thinks, when she gets out of bed and walks to the bathroom to shower.

* * *

That afternoon she decides to call her mother. The thoughts that have circled around Otto for the last few weeks drive her to the cell phone, which she usually puts away on a shelf as soon as she gets home from business college and hardly touches again. She picks up the phone and opens the cover. A missed call. From her mom.

She wets her lips, quickly pushes the buttons. Her mother only calls when something is seriously wrong. Usually most things are wrong, but not so terribly seriously that it warrants a phone conversation.

Come on, come on, Celestine has time to whisper while the call goes through. A scratchy pause and then Harriet’s squeaky, disoriented voice:

—Hallo? Through a cloud of psychopharmacology.

—Mom? It’s me! Celestine!

—Celestine? Is it you?

—Yes!

—Why are you calling? Has something happened?

Harriet is slurring her words. Celestine can picture her. She’s lying on the couch dressed in her dark-green winter coat, orange-knitted scarf, a felt hat, the henna-dyed curly hair in a tangle over the couch pillows, the hem of her skirt dragging on the floor, and still with her knee-high, dark-brown boots on her feet. She has collapsed in that condition onto the couch and then sailed through the night, more unconscious than sleeping, high on pills, low on alcohol, empty of joy. But whatever she is, Celestine understands her. For, in spite of everything, it was unforgivable. Celestine’s betrayal.

It was your job to watch over him!

The cry rings through her head so suddenly that she thinks it’s Harriet who’s saying the words. She flinches, swallows, and pulls herself together.

—I should be asking you that! It was you who called me, says Celestine.

—I did? That’s funny, I could have sworn my phone started beeping and then I answered it, and it was you. How strange . . .

—No, not just now. I called you because you called me earlier, says Celestine.

The receiver grows silent. Celestine checks the screen to see if the connection has been broken, but then she hears Harriet clear her throat.

—Yes, oh, right . . . now I remember. I called you . . . It’s the anniversary of the funeral tomorrow.

He would have turned eighteen a week ago.

Celestine pinches her trembling lips together. Her eyes are stinging. Harriet’s voice sounds like an old woman’s. Brittle, sharp, and lonely. Celestine presses her thumb and forefinger against her eyelids but can’t prevent the tears from coming. She sniffles and tries to make her voice as light and cheerful as she can.

—Yes, Mom, that’s right, she says, but can’t get out any more.

—Celestine. I want you to know that I never blamed you. Whatever I said back then.

—I know.

—Celestine . . .

—I have to go now. Anders is calling. He’s cooked up the most wonderful brunch with whole grain bread. He’s saying that my macchiato is getting cold. You really should come and visit us. Gabriel would be so happy. He was just a newborn in the pictures I sent you.

—Wait, don’t go . . . Harriet pleads.

—I have to check on Gabriel. He’s sleeping in his carriage outside. I think he’s crying. Oy, now I really have to run. Bye, Mom. Take care of yourself.

* * *

Bit by bit, Celestine has stolen Carin’s life. Little by little, she has recreated it in her conversations with Harriet, in the e-mails to her girlfriends, Tuula and Hanna, who have both moved abroad to study. When she sometimes gets together with them, she’s careful to meet them only in the center of town. In a café somewhere. And then she dresses just like she knows Carin would dress for a quick latte with a girlfriend. In a sensible, knee-length, dark-blue Fjällräven parka-deluxe with a faux-fur hood that matches her bleached-blond hair perfectly, beige velvet leggings and ankle-high dark-brown leather boots with low rubber-soled heals. She’s left the baby with Anders, she tells them, and then chatters on about baby swimming and exercise classes, diaper rash and car seats. But it’s not enough. Soon both Tuula and Hanna are going to want to see Gabriel. So far she’s been able to make excuses because he’s so little. But now he’s already six months old. She shows them the photos on her phone and they say ooh and aah, but they both hint in asides and looks that it’s about time she shows them the real thing, the real, live, bouncing baby. The tips of her fingers are sweating and her skin is tingling when she slips the cell phone into her pocket. The jacket was way too expensive. She’ll have to take it back. She’s made sure to hide the price tag underneath the carefully tied brown scarf, which doesn’t really match the leather bag she got at the flea market in Lovisa where her mom sometimes even manages to find real Prada.

* * *

That night she sees his face as she lies in bed twisting and turning with insomnia. She blinks, and his face flickers before her.

It’s March. She blows on his forehead and he closes his eyes. Throws his head back and laughs with sharp white baby teeth. His mouth, tongue, throat, everything is so clean. His breath has no smell. It just is.

The living room is lit by spring sunshine. Slowly the world is melting around them, running down the dirty window panes. She’s thinking of spring cleaning, washing the windows, and looks at the piles of clothes on the floor. He’s always complaining that he can’t play with his Legos when there’s so much stuff everywhere. Empty boxes. Pieces of paper. Beer bottles. So she picks up and cleans, but it never ends. His skin is pale with tiny blue veins, downy and completely smooth.

He opens his eyes and looks straight into hers. The glittering of his baby-boy blues fills her chest and she draws one last deep breath, as if she were diving into a still summer bay, before she falls asleep.

 

IV

Just what do you know about loss? she asks Carin’s back in an army-green, long down jacket. It’s the morning of the burial and she’s standing on her balcony with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand.

The closest you ever get to a really dramatic situation is in the war zone of the supermarket when you grab the last of the discounted coffee boxes right from under the nose of some poor retiree. You have never looked into eyes which just hours before were laughing, and realized they will never laugh again.

Celestine gets increasingly agitated as she watches Carin’s blond hair, pulled back in a thin ponytail. She is skinny in just the right way. Her pants are saggy in the back because they are empty. She’s an exclamation point against the snowdrifts by the car, and now she walks back inside again, leaving the trunk open, and Anders shuts it. He laughs and shakes his head. Carin comes back out with two overfilled bags in her hands and laughs toward Anders. They stand by the closed trunk, babbling and laughing at each other before he reopens the trunk and Carin throws in the bags.

Celestine wonders where they are going. She feels uneasy. Carin has not mentioned any trip on her blog, but it’s Thursday. Thursdays occasionally mean long weekend visits at Carin’s parents. Sometimes they’ll have been preceded by a few glasses of wine behind drawn shades the night before. And Carin sitting alone, sulking by the kitchen table gesturing angrily toward the living room. Then the brake lights when Anders drives off into nowhere late at night. The next day the car is packed with overnight bags, a foldable cot, and baby Gabriel. But Celestine has not seen any quarrel. Not sensed any new developments on Carin’s blog.

Carin and Anders kiss each other lightly on the mouth and exchange a meaningful look. Celestine glances away quickly. When she looks back up again, Carin is waving her hand and climbing in behind the wheel. Gabriel is already strapped into the baby seat. Anders stays by the driveway as Carin pulls the car out. He raises his hand in a belated wave. Then he turns around and stares straight at Celestine where she stands on her balcony.

She quickly pulls back. Her heart is beating wildly and her eyes are wandering. She shakes her head. No, how would he know?

But why today and not any of the hundreds of times she’s stood watching him in his gray jogging pants washing his car, or flipping burgers on the little round garden barbeque, or raking the leaves on the small patch of grass in front of the building? He’s never seen her. Never so much as given her a single glance. But what if he’s been watching her too? Completely unnoticed? Her chest is pinching and tingling and her hands are shaking when she sees him cross the street with decisive steps.

* * *

By the time he rings her bell, and in the exact time needed to climb forty-six steps to her front door, Celestine has undergone a total transformation. She’s smoothed down her hair and her eyes are no longer flickering. Her hands are dry and fingers still. The front of her blouse is uncreased and spotless and she gives him a smile that makes it all the way to her eyes. She crinkles her brow quizzically and shakes her head.

—Hi? Is there anything I can do for you? she says in Finnish.

He quickly checks the name on her door and then fires off a smile toward her. She blinks, startled. He reaches out his hand and says:

—I assume you speak Swedish?

His hand is warm and firm, precisely as she has always thought it would be. She swiftly nods and shows her teeth when she smiles. His eyes twinkle.

—Of course.

—Very good. I’m Anders Johansson.

—Stine, she says.

She learned a long time ago that it’s better not to be too conspicuous. For someone like her, it’s better not to draw too much attention to yourself. It’s already enough with the last name.

—Vårvik, he says.

—Yes, she answers.

—It’s a lovely and unusual name.

She stands with her hand on the door and a questioning smile; he’s losing his thread. Is just staring at her. She turns her face away and wipes her hands against the back of her pants.

—I’m sorry. I’m standing here staring like a fool. Perhaps you know us. Carin, my wife, is often out with my son Gabriel, we live right across . . .

He babbles on and she feels it coming over her, that thing that always comes over her when someone gets too close, when someone touches the purulent surface that will never heal. Something shuts down inside of her. A gear changes. She’s running on empty and switches to autopilot. The feeling engulfs her whole body while she nods and laughs and plays along. Her psychologist has a fancy name for it. “Detachment.” According to him, Celestine suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Just like a war victim. Like a child soldier.

He’s gotten to the end of his speech and now he’s serving up the final line.

—But actually, the reason I’m here is that I’m running for office in the local elections and I wanted to tell you a little bit about my election program. A bit of . . . propaganda, you might say, he says, and laughs nervously.

She feels her upper lip tightening against her teeth when she laughs. With decisive steps, he has made the necessary leap across to the other side in order to fish for a few random votes in unexpected places. Perhaps he could mobilize some of the couch potatoes who usually don’t bother going to the voting booths. He’s chosen to live a little dangerously, and as a reward he gets to have her for a little while. He thinks she’s nice. She can tell from his look. The smooth, even skin, the round, large breasts under the soft, rose-colored blouse. He’s sweating. She wants to shut the door in his face but is forced to invite him inside to sit down, and later she has to make coffee and nod silently while he talks on about county borders and tax burdens and playgrounds full of heroin syringes, while she thinks that he’s not the one she wants to get at. Not him. It’s Carin.

* * *

In another life she could have been Carin.

Celestine sits in the darkening room by the balcony and waits for the Subaru. Waits for it to turn into the yard.

In another life she could have been Carin, if people like Carin had not messed it all up for her. Those terrific mothers. The all-seeing, all-hearing, powerful neighbors in their orthopedic shoes and their ears pressed against doors and walls.

She hears a car coming from the right.

The people who infected everything with their looks, who picked at every spot with their yellowing fingernails. Those people who would sometimes knock on their door with a well-meaning smile and concerned wrinkled brow, sniffing the air with a crinkled nose.

—Is your mother home, dear?

And she would stand silently, staring, always upward, at the downturned faces where the skin had started to sag, hardening their features when they peered down at her.

Carin’s Subaru turns into the driveway.

They called social services. Again and again. And the social workers walked into their lives with blue plastic bags covering their shoes so they wouldn’t mess up the floors, floors which Celestine wiped with wet rags and flower-fragranced scouring powder three times a week. But she suspected they wore the plastic bags to prevent her family’s life from soiling the soles of their shoes, not the other way around. That’s precisely how much they were worth to them. Not even the dirt under their feet. The social workers didn’t see the shiny clean stove with never a spot. The well-polished tabletop. The rugs in straight rows on the floor with rubber mats underneath so they wouldn’t slide about. They just saw the holes in the walls that Celestine had tried to cover up with awkwardly placed boy band posters, the cracks in the floor, the lack of ceiling trim, and the beer bottles in the refrigerator. That was enough. Their pant legs flapped as they marched from one room to the next. And the fact that it was Celestine they had to talk to when they came didn’t make things better. Celestine. A ten-year-old in a too-large apron with rubber gloves on her hands.

—How do you manage all this? And homework too?

They asked, but they didn’t think she could manage all that as well as homework, though she answered in a shaky voice.

—Yes, I do manage it. At least well enough.

Enough, they said. Children should not be taking care of children, and certainly not taking care of grown-ups. But the day they came to get them, they were no longer there.

Carin gets out of her car. She reaches in the backseat and lifts out Gabriel. Celestine gets up and walks to her computer. Fifteen minutes later Carin writes:

 

Phew! Gabbe is asleep. Went to bring clothes to the flea market and Emmi said they were great quality. I should think so! Baby Gap and Benetton! From Daddy’s parents, of course. It pays to recycle! Gabbe has almost only shopped secondhand and you all know how good he looks, tee-hee! Anders is at a meeting. He’ll be back late. I’m going to take a lovely, long bath. Have a nice evening, everyone!

 

Celestine gets up. She’s got to work fast if she’s going to do it all. Carin in the bath, Anders gone. She hurries to the closet.

A few minutes later she walks along the driveway up to the baby carriage, dressed in her Carin clothes and with the hood turned up. The bangs she’s had cut the day before fall down and itch her forehead in a way she’s not used to.

It’s snowing lightly. Her bare knuckles are red when she grips the handle of the baby carriage.

Late in March they came to get her and Otto. She was blinded by the sun as she ran as fast as she could with her brother’s hand in hers. He stumbled in his big winter boots and she had to stop several times to drag him back up onto his feet. That evening she had listened to Harriet and Markku and had known that it was time. The sound of Harriet’s resigned sobbing and Markku’s attempt to comfort her. But Celestine knew that it was her responsibility. She and Otto would have to stay away just long enough for it all to pass. She got to the woods and slowed down to a walk. They were surrounded by trees. Protected from all eyes.

She pushes the carriage in front of her. Leaves the row house area behind her. Her hood is still up, and a neighbor nods and smiles in recognition and she nods back. To the person passing by, she is just a familiar mother taking her baby for a walk.

When they reached the top of the old garbage dump which had been made into a recreation area with a view of the whole town, Otto cried inconsolably. She had half carried, half dragged him up the kilometer-long hill, and he collapsed onto one of the massive stone piles and refused to move. Tears ran down his cheeks. He wanted to go home. She tried making her voice light when she pointed to the freighters and containers in various colors like big Lego blocks.

If only we could sneak onboard one of those boats and sail far away. To Namibia, Celestine thought, and blew on her hands to keep them warm.

She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined the darkness of the inside of a container. They would hide at first, but when the ship had left harbor they would sneak out. What could they do to them? Throw them overboard? Hardly!

She looked at Otto as he blubbered on the rocks. After a while he stopped. Then he just sat sucking on the worn blue collar of his snowsuit, and stared at his boots. She pointed out across town and took a deep breath of melting-snow air through her nose.

—You see that, Otto? That’s the cathedral. And there’s the onion-shaped dome. And the radio tower in Böle.

He stood up next to her. Searching for her hand.

—There’s the water tower. And the Hertonäs’ jumping hill.

And far out there, the open sea.

Gabriel is not crying. He’s sleeping. He’s warm. Celestine puts a finger inside his collar. His neck is sweaty. She aims for the Coffee Quarter. Luxury apartments with ocean views reflect into the oily water. Rich Russians buy up the apartments as soon as they are built. On the other side of the sparse spruce forest, just a stone’s throw away, the houses are a few decades older and more worn down. The population, too, is scrambled together from various places around the world. Windblown. Hapless.

When Celestine and Otto got back home a few hours later the social worker lady was still there. She was talking with Harriet who nodded exaggeratedly and mumbled, “Yes,” and, “Sure.” Otto had started to freeze. And cry. There was nothing else to do but go home. Harriet met them by the door.

—Take the boy and stay away! she cried. You have already caused enough problems!

She did as she was told and brought Otto to the snowdrift which was so big that year that it reached up above the roof of the parking lot. There the kids, including herself, had dug tunnels like crazy all winter long. She took one of the shovels tossed on the ground and started working the snow but couldn’t drive away the anxiety that crept into her body. Harriet and social workers. It was never a good combination. God only knew what Mom might think up to say to them. She would just run her mouth, making up one glib lie after another that only made things worse. They had already seen everything. There was no point in making promises and lying anymore. She took a quick look at Otto. He was sitting deep inside the snow tunnel sucking on a piece of ice. For a moment she hesitated. Then she said:

—Otto. Wait here for a bit.

And she walked off.

Inside the kitchen she had to sit on a chair and answer questions. She had been given a glass of juice. She had nodded and looked up into the social worker lady’s face with big eyes. Then Harriet had sent her away again. Celestine’s steps were lighter when she returned. It was all going to be okay, they had said. And she called loudly for Otto.

No answer. She hurried up. Ran a little. Saw from a distance the car that had driven into the snow mound, and her legs started moving on their own. The man who had been driving was vaguely familiar. He lived in one of the small, charming, wooden villas a little ways from there and used to take the short cut through their area, by way of the bar. He stumbled out of the car and fell on his face, cursing, too drunk to stay on his feet. Celestine got there and was on top of the snowdrift in one leap. The system of tunnels and caves had collapsed. Where Otto had been sitting a few minutes before was now a solid wall of icy snow. The fender of the car had ploughed deeply into the hole where he was hiding. She plunged her fingers deep into the frozen snow and started digging.

The hole she is digging in the snow mound that the small, yellow snowplows have been piling up for weeks is getting deeper.

People like Carin doesn’t deserve to have children, Celestine thinks while she digs. People who see their children as an accessory. Who exhibit them in their egocentric blogs, completely unprepared for the unexpected. So cluelessly lost in their almighty safety that they leave their doors wide open for anyone to walk uninvited into their cozy, warm lives. It’s just a question of time before something happens. Carin should be glad that what happened was just me.

She’s sniffling. He’ll be fine for a long time in the snow. Until it’s time to go back and get him. After the worst excitement has passed. She’s going to lay low for a few weeks somewhere else and then take him to Harriet’s in Lovisa. She’s going to say that they have to hide. That Anders has been violent for quite a long time. That she worries for the safety of the child. Harriet will understand. She won’t question it. And then everything will be just like it was before.

—Just look at you, Celestine says when she lifts Gabriel out of the carriage. Carin is supposed to be the perfect mother. But here you are.

He whimpers in his sleep. His mouth is moving and the pacifier begins to bounce up and down with a smacking sound. He is waving his hands, dressed in thick blue mittens, in front of him. She carefully lowers the sleeping child into the hole and covers him up with snow.

When she leaves the spot, gripping the handle of the carriage firmly, large snowflakes are already falling, covering up her tracks. She pushes the carriage into a thick spruce bower and walks home.

* * *

That whole evening blue lights are blinking in the area. They knock on every door, including hers. She becomes one of them, the good and splendid ones. The ones who see and hear everything. Blond and fine with rosy cheeks and cold fingertips, she pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders and furrows her brow. Moans and groans. But no, she has seen nothing suspicious. Heard nothing at all. The policeman hardly looks at her. It’s just routine. She’s not among the suspects. They contact the border patrols, the coast guards. The harbor with its departing freighters is under especially careful observation. Celestine remembers how Carin fell on the staircase and howled. The sound floated above the row house area like a foghorn and Celestine shuddered. She hugged herself. It didn’t feel the way she had expected. Carin crawling down the driveway and then stopping on her knees where the carriage had been. It was like a scene in a dream. Not even the tracks from the wheels were left. Anders was gray in the face and pulled Carin by the arm but she pushed him away and he fell in the snow. Then he just sat there, panting. It was so raw. Much too primitive. Celestine wished she could shout out to them that they didn’t need to worry. That Gabriel was fine. That he was warm and safe and almost certainly still sleeping. But she just swallowed hard and, confused, pulled away from the window to an armchair to wait out the night.

* * *

The next day she reads about it in the papers. It’s a big spread, takes up several pages. Baby Found in a Snowdrift. He’d been there for four hours. They had found him in the nick of time. The press speculates about who, where, how, and why. “When,” they pretty much knew. Carin insisted she had checked on the baby just ten minutes earlier.

Sadly enough for Carin, Fredriksson’s Anita had seen her disappear down along Lilla Ullholmsvägen with Gabriel in the carriage right about then. They had even said hello to each other. Anders could say nothing; he had not been at home. The state-appointed psychologist who came to talk to him a few hours after his wife had been picked up—no handcuffs necessary, she didn’t resist—said that this kind of thing was more common than you would think. Carin had been pretty depressed right after the birth. She had generously shared all about that on her blog. No one could know when that sort of thing might get worse.

* * *

Three days later Anders brings Gabriel back from the hospital. He’s wrapped in a blanket. It’s exactly like the day when he came back from the birth clinic, but Anders is more fragile now and Carin is missing. His back is bent and his steps are slow. Celestine stands by her window looking at him.

He’s going to need all the help he can get, she thinks.

During the three days that have passed since the burial, she’s jumped at every little sound, convinced the police would come knocking at her door. But as the hours have multiplied, her anxiety has subsided. She has been able to follow all the main turns of events in the story of Baby Gabriel in the media. The press has not published any photos nor mentioned any names, in consideration of the family. Celestine is relieved. For a moment she feels a sting of conscience when she thinks of Carin, but it quickly passes. Celestine has always been the kind of person to put her foot into a door left ajar. So she dresses in her best push-up bra and leaves the top button of her blouse open, as she walks across the street toward the row houses to extend her most sincere sympathy to Anders Johansson.