the house, close to the cliff. It was indeed a huge creature, with antlers that towered high above its head—more branches than antlers. Its face was turned to the camera, as though it had heard the click of the shutter from all that distance.
Another picture turned out to be a close-up and not a landscape shot—it was a close-up of a snow globe, and there was a quarter of a face in the right side of the frame. A woman’s face. I guessed it must have been Aurelia’s face, and that Gaia had taken the photograph. Still, she’d framed it. I found myself paying more and more attention to that photograph, deliberately taking the long way to the kitchen in order to pass it. I was curious about Aurelia. I think I was curious not just because she was the mother of the two girls I was falling in love with but because somehow she had passed through that door that I had only knocked on. The door of suicide. We both understood something of the grim path that leads to that door, but Aurelia had had so much more to lose than I had. She must have known it, too. She had a beautiful family, a stunning home in London, and then this dream home out here in Norway. The photographs were a little out there for my taste, but she was clearly a talented woman. Talented, rich, surrounded by people who loved her.
Why would she kill herself?
And as though she could read the thoughts turning over in my head like pages, Gaia started to bring up her mother more often. It was less of the “Mummy’s gone to heaven” kind of statements and more about her Mummy running away.
“Your mummy didn’t run away,” I told her gently one night, as I was settling her into bed. A farcical move, really, when we both knew she’d be creeping back into my bed a handful of minutes afterward. “Your mummy is in heaven, my darling. And heaven is very comfy. Like a big soft bed made of clouds, with unicorns and rainbows and long summer days.”
She took off her glasses and set them on the nightstand. “No,” she said, rubbing the worry doll I’d made her out of an old tablecloth with one hand and clutching her teddy Louis in the other. “I saw her. Do you think she went to find the elk?”
She started telling me about how she’d left a bowl of porridge out, but it didn’t work and Mummy might have found her friend again.
I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
“Mumma ran away.” She pouted. “I didn’t have my glasses on, but I saw her . . .”
This was new information. “OK,” I said. “When did Mummy run away?”
“It was the last time I saw her,” she said in a small voice. “I saw her running from the house.”
“Which house?”
“This house. She ran outside.”
“Maybe she had to go help your dad with something.”
An emphatic shaking of the head, her chin swinging from shoulder to shoulder. “She saw something.”
“What did she see?”
“I think she had to go swimming.”
“Swimming?”
“In the fjord. Derry went swimming, too.”
None of it made any sense, but I could see Gaia was growing frustrated so I changed the subject. “All right, my lovely,” I said in my finest Mary Poppins voice. “Enough about bad dreams. That’s what your worry doll is for, OK? She absorbs all your bad thoughts and fears like a sponge, leaving you to dream sweet . . .”
“I did see Mumma,” she said in a firm voice, way older than her six and a half years. She held me in a fixed stare for a handful of seconds, before turning over and laying her head on the pillow.
I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Good night,” I said. Usually she’d reply, but tonight she didn’t. And I felt guilty.
I went to my room and waited for Gaia to come creeping in, but she didn’t. I flipped open my laptop and tried to add to my story, but the protagonist, Alexa, stood in the proscenium of my mind’s eye, her face pulled into a tight sulk and her arms folded. One foot tapping. You should have let Gaia speak.
I sat watching the rain for a long time, feeling rather blue and surprisingly lonely. My own memories were starting to dredge up like rusty shipwrecks inhabited by sharks and killer squid. I got up and headed to the kitchen, intent on