The Undertaker's Daughter (Ilka #1)(20)

She curled up. Later she realized she had fallen asleep with her clothes on. Her pants pinched her waist. She raised herself onto her elbows and noticed that the pile of letters she’d found in her father’s desk drawer the evening before was about to fall behind the bed.

Some of the letters she’d found were hers, the ones she’d sent him over the years, bound by a wide rubber band and stuffed in the top drawer. The envelopes had been cut open, the letters unfolded. And read. She could see that from the dog-eared corners and creases. She felt a lump in her throat when she found them, and when she read the last one, the one in which she had written about Erik’s death, she began sobbing. The letter was stained; it had been read more than once; that much was certain. But it wasn’t that pile she had knocked over in her sleep. Another, smaller pack of letters had been stored in the desk, letters he had written to her. Her name was on the envelopes, but they had never been stamped and sent.

There were birthday cards and Christmas cards, and a photo of a little pony had been enclosed in the first letter. A date had been written in the right-hand upper corner—April 1983, six months after he’d left Denmark.

“See who’s here waiting for you, you’ll be the finest little horse and rider.” The photo had been taken in front of a large racetrack, and her father posed beside the pony. There wasn’t a word in the letter about him leaving for good. It was only a happy note from a father to his little daughter.

Almost eight months passed before he had written again. On December 2, 1983, he was looking forward to showing her how Americans decorated for Christmas. “They don’t hold back,” he wrote. “Wait until you see the elf arrangement in one of the fancy department stores in Chicago, and they also put caramel in the hot chocolate. I’m looking forward to seeing you again, Trotter, the pony is doing fine.”

Trotter. She’d forgotten that name. His little trotting horse. Images began popping up. Lost memories, pulled up from out of the deep. Summer evenings at Havnsie Lake, where they ate fried eel, her father’s favorite food, at the inn. One of his friends from the racetrack had owned a summerhouse down there, and occasionally they had borrowed it. They had eaten outside in the small yard. She’d been given extra scalloped potatoes, which she mashed.

She could almost physically recall what it had been like, walking down to the harbor to look at all the boats. The smell of tarred bulwarks, the sound of the water lapping against the railing. She’d held her father’s hand while carrying an ice cream cone, her mother smiling from under her broad summer hat.

After the first few years, the letters became less frequent.

“My big girl,” one of them said. “I think about you. And I think about how your mother is doing. Nothing went like I expected it to, we know that now. I have so often thought about the direction your life has taken. Do you have children? Have you found a good husband?”

There were fourteen letters in the pile. The last one had been written four years ago. Of course, that wasn’t many over a thirty-three-year period, yet she was shaken. Why had he never sent them?

She heard a faint knock on the door. Sister Eileen called out.

“Just a moment,” Ilka called. Quickly she gathered up her father’s letters and put them back in the drawer; then she walked over and opened the door.

The gray-clad nun stood holding a breakfast tray. Tea, toast, jam, and a glass of juice. “I am so very sorry about the inconvenience you had yesterday, having to fetch your things at the hotel. I hadn’t understood that you preferred to stay here.”

Ilka stepped aside. “It wasn’t a problem. Please don’t worry.” The sister walked in and set the tray down.

Ilka needed a shower, and she still had to unpack her suitcase properly. Even though it wouldn’t affect her appearance much, given how little she’d brought along to wear.

“I only thought that you might have felt uncomfortable sleeping in your father’s bed.” Sister Eileen glanced over at the bed.

“I’m okay with that; it’s no problem for me being here.”

The nun wouldn’t leave it alone. “Some people would probably not like it. We don’t know exactly how long he lay there before he was found.”

Now Ilka looked over at the bed. “You mean this is where he died?” For some reason, she had assumed it had happened at his home.

“Yes, this is where he departed this life.”

Ilka stood for a moment, not knowing what to say, and Sister Eileen misinterpreted her silence. “Of course I changed the bedclothes immediately.”

“Wasn’t my father living with his family?” Ilka asked, ignoring this bed business. She told the sister about driving by his house and seeing the two women on the porch, one in a wheelchair, the other younger.

“Your father and Mary Ann were involved in a serious traffic accident eighteen years ago. She was injured worse than he was, she never walked again, but he was also affected by it.” She stepped over to the window. “He was driving the car.”

Ilka had unconsciously moved away from the bed. Yet she didn’t feel uncomfortable knowing he had died there. It was more as if she were standing in a very private space, very intense, which her father filled even more now.

“It was probably Leslie you saw on the porch; she’s their oldest daughter. She stayed home to take care of her mother, even though Amber also has been living there since your father died. But make no mistake, he lived there, even though he often spent the night here. I believe he did so mostly out of consideration to his wife and daughter, so they wouldn’t be woken when he was dragged out of bed.”