Here to Stay (17 page)

THE KAEGERS CAME BACK to Barbegazi for dinner that night, with much discussion about the newspaper article and Erik’s necklace passed around the table so everyone could examine it with fresh eyes. Christine called once to see if any new developments had surfaced. Erik could only relay the name Vivian deWrenne which Christine didn’t recognize.

The Kaegers left and Erik was stringing his guitar when his cell phone rang with an unidentified number. His gut twisted in a hunch and he answered formally, “Erik Fiskare.”

“Erik, this is Vivian deWrenne, from deWrenne Atelier.”

“How are you?”

“Among many other things, I’m delighted to meet you.”

“Same here. That article made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It’s still up.”

“Well, I should say the name on my birth certificate is Vivian Fiskare. I use deWrenne professionally. And if you’re wearing one of those gold fish and it was passed down through your family then I believe you and I are cousins.”

“We are?”

“Let me figure a few things out. Hold on, I’m pouring a drink. I’m exhausted. I just got in from Europe.”

“You can call me back if you want.”

“Oh no, I’ll never sleep if I don’t get to the bottom of this. I don’t sleep anyway. I don’t even know what time it is.”

“It’s ten-fifteen where I am.”

“Is it? Oh dear, I’m calling you late. I’m so sorry.”

“No, I won’t sleep either so we may as well get into it.” He looked up to see Daisy in the living room doorway, eyes wide. He gave her a thumbs-up. “Would you mind if I put you on speaker? My girlfriend is dying to hear this.”

“Oh certainly. Am I on? Hello?”

“Hello,” Daisy said.

“Hello there, I’m Vivian. I’m going to drink and ask questions. Your job is to write it all down.”

Daisy held up pen and paper as though Vivian could see her. “I’m writing.”

“Now, Erik, who is your father?”

“Byron.”

A long pause. Long enough to make Daisy and Erik exchange glances.

“I know who you are,” Vivian said. “I know exactly who you are.”

“We’ve met?”

“You probably wouldn’t remember. You were a little boy. I was maybe twenty-three and you couldn’t have been more than five.”

“Where was it? In Clayton?”

“Back up a moment, I need to fit us together first. If you’re Byron’s son, then Kennet is your grandfather, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And Kennet is Emil’s son.”

“I don’t know,” Erik said. “I’m sort of embarrassingly clueless about my family history. My knowledge ends at Kennet.”

“Kennet was Emil Fiskare’s eldest son.”

“Who was Kennet’s mother?” Daisy asked, writing names and drawing lines on her pad.

“Oh God, what was her name,” Vivian said. “Martha? Mary? Something with an M. She and Emil ran the hotel up in Clayton.”

“I grew up across from the hotel,” Erik said. “On Hugunin Street.”

“Now Emil,” Vivian said. “Here’s where we connect the dots. Emil was one of four children. He had one older brother, another Kennet, who married into the deWrenne family. He was my grandfather. What does that make us?”

Daisy was drawing and mumbling under her breath. “I think that makes you and Erik’s father second cousins. So you and Erik are second cousins once removed?”

“Sounds good on paper,” Vivian said. “So my grandfather Kennet was the eldest. Then came Emil, your great-grandfather. Then the twins, Erik and Beatrice. Four children in all. Antoine deWrenne, the jeweler, made a gold fish at the birth of each child, for Bjorn to wear on his watch chain. And the big fish, the articulated one, that was a fob at the end of the chain. It kept the chain from sliding through his buttonhole.”

“The article said the big fish was a wedding present,” Erik said.

“Yes, exactly. It was made for Bjorn when he married Marianne Dupre. I don’t think the photograph in the article showed it, but his initials are engraved in the tail fin.”

“I have his Saint Birgitta medal,” Erik said, reaching a finger up to touch it. “It’s engraved with his initials on the back. B.K.E.F. And the date 1865.”

“You have it?”

“I’m wearing it. And the gold fish and a third charm which is a fishing boat. It has
Fiskare
engraved on the bottom.”

“Hmm. I don’t know anything about those. It sounds as though the saint’s medal is personal. It could have been a christening present and come with Bjorn when he immigrated to the States. I don’t know anything about the boat though. Could you take a picture and send it to me later?”

“I will.”

“Obviously after Bjorn’s death, the fish charms were distributed to his children. I have a fish and you have a fish. That’s two. Which leaves the ones belonging to Beatrice and Erik, the twins.”

“Do you know anything about them?” Daisy asked.

“I know Beatrice died in infancy, but I don’t know what became of her fish. It could be she was buried with it. I tend to think it would be kept for sentimental purposes. As for her twin brother, Erik, I know nothing about him. I assume you don’t either.”

“This is all news to me,” Erik said.

“Well at least we’ll sleep now.”

Erik paused. The woman sounded tired, but the small bits of information she had dropped about his father were too tantalizing. He’d never sleep. “You said you met my father?”

“Yes. You have to understand, I didn’t go often to the Thousand Islands and then only under duress. I was rather obnoxious in my youth.”

“Weren’t we all?”

“But I remember the first time I met your father quite vividly. I was perhaps eleven. And he was fifteen or sixteen. He’d been injured in a terrible boating accident and when I came to visit, he was just home from the hospital. He was out on one of the verandas. Lying on a big wicker couch with a hundred pillows and a tray nearby, looking quite the romantic invalid. And handsome, oh, just the handsomest boy. I fell terribly in love, so I was paying attention to details. Funny how I can still remember. He was wearing a grey bathrobe over blue pajamas. His vision was still doubled—I think he’d had a severe concussion—so his brother was reading to him. He was easy on the eyes, too, and—”

“Wait, what?” Erik said. “Who was easy on the eyes?”

“Byron’s brother.”

“My father didn’t have a brother.”

“His half-brother. Andrew?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“They had the same mother. Your grandmother Astrid married twice. Kennet was her second husband.”

“Oh,” Erik said. He looked at Daisy and shrugged, his bottom lip curling in cluelessness.

“Your grandmother was such an interesting woman,” Vivian said. “She spoke, I think, four languages.”

Erik’s eyebrows flew up his forehead. “She did? I only heard her speak English and Swedish.”

“She was fluent in Spanish.”

“Spanish?”

“Oh yes, I remember it quite well. Anyway, back to the subject, the second time I met your father was at his brother’s funeral. In nineteen sixty-eight. I was a senior in high school. It was another boating accident. Andrew and Elsa drowned on the river.”

“Elsa?”

Vivian’s silence seemed hesitant. “Another relative. It was a terrible tragedy.”

“And you were at the funeral?”

“Oh yes. It was devastating for the family. They never found the bodies. Just the wrecked boat.”

The hair was up on the back of Erik’s neck again. On her sketched-out family tree, Daisy drew a new box under Astrid, labeling it
Andrew.
Nearby she wrote
Elsa?
and circled it several times.

“The last time I saw your father,” Vivian said, “was some time in the early seventies. I was either a junior or senior in college. It was a quick passing-through. I was going from New York to Montreal and I stopped in Clayton with…oh, whoever I was wearing on my arm at the time. And I had dinner at the hotel. Byron was there with his wife. I remember a little blond boy running around which was you. It made an impression because it seemed you were the only thing that could bring a little light back into your grandparents’ eyes. They’d become withdrawn and reserved since Andrew’s death. But whenever you came close to them, they came back to life.”

“What was my father like, do you remember?”

“At that time? Somber. Both him and your mother. Their second child—forgive me, I can’t remember boy or girl.”

“Boy,” Erik said. “My brother, Pete.”

“He was sick. Or something. I can’t remember, but your parents were occupied with it.”

“He’d gone deaf.”

“I see,” Vivian said. “It had just happened. Or just become evident.”

“So,” Erik said. “All three times you saw him, he was…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure what I’m saying.”

“You could say I always came into contact with him when he was down on his luck.”

“Right. Exactly.”

Vivian yawned audibly. “I’m sorry. The day is catching up with me. I’m so pleased to talk to you and know now at least two of the fish charms are accounted for.”

“This has been really interesting. I’ve wondered a long time where this necklace came from.”

“I’m so glad you got in touch. If you’re ever in Montreal, do look me up. I’d be delighted to show you the watch and the other fish.”

“I’d like that.”

“Well, cheers, my dear. Until we talk again. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

PUMPED UP WITH MYSTERY and intrigue, they signed up for a 30-day trial on an ancestry website. Erik laced his fingers and cracked his knuckles, then did a search on Fiskare in the riverside town of Clayton.

Census records were the top search results. He didn’t know what to do with them so he scanned past, looking for…

“I don’t know what to look at first,” he said.

“Why not refine it on Andrew Fiskare,” Daisy said. “Your father’s half-brother.”

He did, and the search results tightened to newspaper archives from
The Ogdensburg Herald.

He clicked on one dated April 27, 1968. He dragged the digitally scanned copy until he saw Fiskare highlighted in yellow, and zoomed in. “‘Search continues for Fiskare youths,’” he read. “‘No hope for survivors.’”

“It’s always April,” Daisy said behind the fingers steepled over her nose.

Coast Guard officials confirmed the search and rescue has become search and recovery for Andrew and Elsa Fiskare, whose wrecked boat was found by Brush Island following Thursday’s storm. Little hope remains anyone could survive in the frigid temperatures of the St. Lawrence for this long.