Close to the Heel (9 page)

Oh.

He shook his head in disgust. “I'll never understand these young boys. I tell them over and over, glaciers are dangerous. Ice is dangerous. You could slip into a crevice and never be seen again. But they all think they're invincible. Americans are the worst.”

Brynja shot me a look, as if her father had just proved a point that she'd been arguing with me.

“I'm Canadian,” I said—again.

Einar smiled at me. “Has Brynja been taking good care of you?”

“She's shown me a few things,” I said.

“Good. Good. I have some business to wrap up in the next day or so, and then we can get organized for your expedition.”

“When do you think we'll be able to leave?”

“If all goes well, Thursday,” he said.

Thursday? This was only Monday. What was I going to do for the next couple of days?

He must have read the disappointment on my face, because he said, “Have you visited Reykjavik yet?”

I shook my head.

“You must spend a day there. We'll arrange it.” He looked at Brynja and held up a picture frame. “I found this facedown. What happened to it?” His tone was mild, but his eyes were sharp and piercing.

Brynja looked at the frame. “I did that yesterday,” she said. “I'm sorry, Dad. I just…I'm sorry.”

Einar pulled his daughter close and hugged her. “It's all right,” he said. “I was thinking about her too.” He set the frame back on the shelf. “Well, I'd better unpack.”

“I'll help you,” Brynja said. She glanced at me. I would have bet anything that what she really wanted to do was tell her dad about the mysterious journal I had shown her grandfather. But that was her business, not mine. Anyway, I had other things on my mind. I was staring at the photograph that Einar had just replaced on the shelf. The woman smiling out at me was eerily familiar. I'd seen her face on the Internet only yesterday. She was Gudrun Njalsdottir, the woman whose family was convinced she had been murdered.

NINE

I woke with the sun. The clock beside my bed read
6:15
. I couldn't get back to sleep—and, believe me, I tried. So I swung up out of bed, showered and got dressed.

The house was quiet. I hesitated to go into the kitchen in case I disturbed the old man. Instead, I let myself out of the house into the crisp morning air and took a stroll around the property. I walked back as far as the base of the waterfall and gazed up at the highlands where it originated. There was a rough path up one side of the falls. I started to climb it. The higher I went, the more spectacular the view became and the colder it got. The farmhouse, the little church and the outbuildings below got smaller and smaller, and once I was at the top, I spotted another farm to the east and Reykholt to the west. The terrain up top was desolate. In the distance, cresting the highest points, was a sheet of white—snow. Or ice. I wasn't sure which. There wasn't a tree anywhere. I don't know why, but it popped into my mind that a fugitive would have a hard time in Iceland. Not only was the place small, but there didn't seem to be anywhere to hide. It was all farmland, coastline and lava fields.

I wandered inland, sticking to the creek so I wouldn't lose my bearings. I was no Eagle Scout, but I knew how to be careful in unfamiliar surroundings—not like, say, Worm, who stepped off the trail to take a leak the day after I duct-taped him to the canoe and promptly got lost. He wasn't my buddy that day; Jimi had had the pleasure, and Jimi hadn't cared that he was gone because we were staying camped for a few days and were only hiking to an old fire tower. Long story short: we spent six hours doing a systematic search for Worm and found him blubbering under a tree just before sundown. He'd gone just far enough into the woods so that he couldn't see the trail and had got disoriented. It happens. One tree looks pretty much like another, especially to a city boy like Worm.

I followed the creek back to where the waterfall began its tumble to the rocks below. My stomach was growling by then, and I was hoping that Einar at least would be up and ready for breakfast when I got back to the house.

He was.

I spotted him down below.

He was walking around the long narrow rise in the land on the far side of the house from the outbuildings. As I began my descent, I saw him standing in front of the rise. Then I lost track of him. Going down sounds easier than going up, but it isn't, not when you're basically rock climbing in reverse. You have to watch what you're doing and test your footing with each step. It took a good half hour before I got to the bottom. By then Einar was nowhere to be seen.

I found him talking on the phone in the kitchen and started to back away. I didn't want to interrupt his coversation or give him the impression I was trying to eavesdrop either—not that I understood a word of what he was saying—but he turned and saw me. “He's here,” he said into the phone, in English this time. “I'll talk to you later.” He closed his phone and set it down onto the counter. “I thought we'd lost you,” he said. “Where were you?”

“I woke up early. I guess my internal clock is all screwed up. Everyone was asleep, so I went for a walk. I climbed up by the waterfall. I got a great view from up there.”

“You shouldn't wander off without telling anyone where you are.”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“Well.” He let out a long sigh. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

Finally, a smile. “As I suspected. Teenaged boys are always hungry. How about some muesli and yogurt, followed by eggs, toast, cheese, some ham…?”

I grinned as the menu got longer.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

I had just polished off a bowl of cereal and yogurt, two soft-boiled eggs and three pieces of toast with slices of cheese and ham, when Brynja stumbled into the room.

“Hungry?” Einar asked.

She shook her head. “Is there coffee?”

“Just made. Pour some for Rennie too. I'm going to check on Sigurdur.”

He disappeared into the old man's room, leaving me alone with Brynja. She filled a mug of coffee and slammed it down so hard in front of me that it sloshed over the brim.

“Hey!” I ducked back so none would drop onto my jeans. I grabbed a napkin and sopped up the mess on the table.

“Sorry,” she said without a shred of sincerity. She took her coffee into the back room and sat down at the computer.

Her father came out of the old man's room. “If I make some tea for Sigurdur, will you sit with him until Elin comes?” he asked Brynja. I guessed Elin was the nurse.

“I'm supposed to meet Johanna,” Brynja said. “We have plans.”

“I'll stay with him,” I said. “I don't have any plans except a shower and a little sightseeing.”

Einar looked at me as if weighing both my offer and my character.

“It's really Brynja's responsibility,” he said, shooting a disapproving look her way.

“But I already told Johanna,” Brynja said. “She'll be here any minute to pick me up. And you heard Rennie. He doesn't have plans.”

“Really, I don't mind,” I said again.

Einar scowled at Brynja.

“Thank you, Rennie,” he said finally. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem.”

I heard car tires crunching over gravel. Brynja gulped down her coffee and dropped her mug into the sink.

“That's Johanna,” Brynja said. “She's going to borrow an outfit and then we're leaving.” The doorbell rang, an Brynja ran to answer it.

Einar put the kettle on and tidied the kitchen while he waited for it to boil. He made a cup of tea.

“You'll have to wait until it cools a little,” he said. “And you'll have to help him with it.” He stood in front of the stove for a moment and glanced from me to the old man's room as if he was having second thoughts about leaving me to care for him.

“It's no problem, really,” I said. “I worked at a nursing home for a couple of months last year. I'm used to old people.” I didn't see any point in mentioning that the work was court ordered, part of my sentence for throwing apples at an old man who threatened to call the cops on me because I had stolen “said apples,” as the judge called them, from the old guy's tree. The old guy told the judge that I had no respect for my elders. The judge agreed and came up with what he thought would be an appropriate cure.

At first I hated being around so many super-old people. They smelled funny. They looked and talked funny when they didn't have their dentures in. They never heard anything you said the first time. They repeated themselves constantly. They were just taking up space. At least, that's what I had thought at first. The main thing I discovered? Old people can really surprise you. They know stuff you could never in a million years guess they know when all you do is look at them. Like the old guy who'd been a sword swallower in the circus, and another guy who had done one of the first heart transplants in Canada and could still describe it in gory detail.

“Really, he'll be fine,” I said. “I won't do anything stupid.”

He looked at me a few moments longer.

“Elin should be here in under an hour,” he said. “I'd stay myself, but I have to deal with the insurance company, thanks to that boy wandering off on his own and breaking his ankle.”

“No problem. Give me your cell number and I'll call you if there's any problem.”

He liked that idea. I think he thought it showed responsibility. He jotted it down for me and left.

The old man's eyes were closed when I took the tea into his room. I didn't have the heart to wake him, so I set the tea on his bedside table and sat down to wait. The nurse showed up before the old man's eyes opened. I told her where the family was and got up to leave.

“Has he eaten anything?” Elin asked.

“I don't think so.” I hesitated. “What's wrong with him?” I asked. “Is it just because he's old?”

“You mean his illness?”

I nodded.

“Well, he's ninety-seven,” she said. “He gave up his practice decades ago.” Grandpa's letter had mentioned that Sigurdur had been a doctor. “But he didn't give up farming until last year. Everything stopped for him when his granddaughter died.”

“Brynja had a sister?”

“Brynja calls Sigurdur
afi
, but he's really her great-grandfather.”

“So his granddaughter was…?”

“Brynja's mother.”

“Gudrun?”

She nodded. “He was heartbroken after what happened to her. She drowned, just like her father. It happened just over a year ago—in fact, I think it was a year ago on Sunday.” The day I had arrived in Iceland. The day that woman had harassed Brynja at the gas station. That day, of all days.

“Gudrun's father drowned too?” Talk about a hard-luck family!

“Yes, but not the same way as Gudrun. Njal was a fisherman. It's a tough job at the best of times. He went out one day and never came back. Sigrid, Gudrun's mother, was already very ill. Cancer. Gudrun was just a little thing when she died. I think she was five. Sigurdur raised her. He doted on her. Sigrid was his only daughter. Gudrun was his only granddaughter. Now there's just Brynja.”

A trembling voice called from the bed. Elin smiled.

“It seems my patient is awake. Excuse me.”

I headed upstairs to have a shower. As I peeled off my clothes, I decided I would take a ride into Reykjavik later and poke around. It was the biggest city in Iceland. There had to be something going on. Or maybe I could do a little sightseeing on my own. I was thinking over my options when I got into the shower. I reached for the shampoo and cursed silently. I'd left it in my room.

I opened the shower door, leaving the water running, grabbed a towel, and hot-footed it back to my room.

I don't know who was more startled: me, at finding someone going through my things—
again
—or the would-be thief who was bent over the open drawers of the dresser in my room and who clearly hadn't expected to be interrupted while the shower was still running.