Melt (17 page)

She went to her bed and lay back down with her cheek on the cool pillowcase. She closed her eyes, remembering the one kiss they had shared. She had kissed Kelly too long and had wanted so much more than one kiss. But the circumstances were wrong in every way.

There were plenty of her colleagues who had no qualms about relationships with their students, often with a greater age disparity than between her and Kelly. It was a common enough phenomenon to be a cliché: the middle-aged professor and his young protégé. He strutting about looking ridiculous with that self-satisfied coquette on his arm. How could he be so pompous as to think she wouldn’t open her eyes someday soon and see him in all his wretched ludicrousness?

Not to look ridiculous was one of Jordan’s chief goals in life. She had earned the respect of her colleagues, but one stupid mistake could change everything. Besides, men didn’t suffer loss of reputation as easily as women did, even in the modern world. She knew how much harder a woman had to work to hold onto credibility. She couldn’t allow herself to show weaknesses associated with her gender, like sentimentality, passivity and self-doubt. Her rule was that it was okay to feel those things, but it was not okay to let others see them. Which made it hard sometimes to ask for help…or understanding. Or anything, really, because needing something, anything, automatically put her in a position of vulnerability.

She had been lying on the bed for several minutes when she heard Sonja’s voice.

“Jordan, I’ve got your breakfast. Are you sick?”

Jordan rolled over and sat up. “No. Just tired. I didn’t sleep much last night and I woke up with a stiff neck.”

Sonja smiled sympathetically, her bangs hanging halfway over her eyes. She set a plate of syrup-covered pancakes on the side table, then sat on the edge of the bed. “Sorry,” she said, putting her hands on Jordan’s shoulders and massaging gently. “Why don’t you lie back down and I’ll give you a massage. I’m pretty good at it. So people tell me.”

Jordan brushed her away and swung her feet to the floor, facing her pancakes.

“Good news about Pippa, isn’t it?” Sonja asked.

Jordan nodded. “Quite a relief for Kelly, I’m sure.”

“I bet you were totally blown away when she turned up here out of the blue like that.”

“Uh-huh. The last place I would have expected to see Kelly Sheffield. Actually anyone from home.”

“She said you haven’t seen one another for nine years. Why is that?”

“She was my student,” Jordan said flatly. “I don’t keep in touch with many students.”

“I get the impression she was a special student.” Sonja looked up to catch Jordan’s eye. “
Very
special.”

“Not
that
special,” Jordan said sternly, cutting a triangle out of her pancake stack.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you were to her once, that’s in the distant past. She’s got Pippa now, hasn’t she?” Sonja looked pleased with herself. “And it’s apparently serious. They’re totally devoted to one another.”

Jordan stiffened, dropping her fork in the plate. “Did Kelly say that?”

“More or less. It was her explanation for blowing me off when I made a pass at her last night.”

Jordan laughed, noticing it came out sounding more bitter than amused. “You made a pass at Kelly?”

“Uh-huh. Why shouldn’t I? She’s super hot. Anyway, she turned me down flat.”

“Maybe she just isn’t interested in…” Jordan reconsidered her insult. “Blondes.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just too old for her.” Sonja tossed her bangs and strode out.

Jordan brushed off the implied insult about her age and took a bite of her breakfast. She shook her head at Sonja’s seduction technique. Apparently she thought she could goad Jordan into bed. She plied her as often with abuses as compliments. This morning her argument seemed to be, “Nobody else would want you, you old hag, so you may as well take me.” It didn’t much matter. It was a lost cause whichever way she played it.

Sonja was one of several students who had made a play for her over the years. Jordan had plenty of experience in this department. The thing to do was pretend not to notice that they were sitting in your class fantasizing about slithering into your lonely spinster life and blowing your mind. They imagined that you weren’t getting any and they were going to rock your world. They were so naïve and so arrogant, most of them. Because of their youth, they didn’t know how obvious they were. Or how boring.

That Kelly had turned Sonja down pleased Jordan, but didn’t surprise her. Kelly couldn’t have changed so much that she would be so cavalier about sex. It was totally out of character to think she would go for a cuddle in the sack with Sonja. Especially if she was seriously involved with someone else. But an eighteen-year-old? That seemed out of character too.

There was always the chance Kelly was in love with Pippa and couldn’t stop herself from what looked to an outsider like folly. Maybe Pippa was really something special. Age wasn’t always an accurate gauge for a person’s maturity.

I’d like to meet this Pippa
, Jordan thought, stuffing a forkful of pancake in her mouth.

Chapter Seventeen

For the last hour, Kelly had been listening to a remarkable story that Pippa had kept quiet about until today. They sat side by side on the couch in the boarding house living room, drinking hot chocolate while rain banged on the windowpane behind their heads. Work plans for everyone had been canceled due to bad weather.

Pippa had been home from the hospital two days and said she felt fine. No more pain in her head. No more dizziness. Her twisted ankle was rapidly improving. Though she limped, she was walking unaided.

As soon as they’d been reunited at the hospital, they had both eagerly told the other about their adventures. Kelly had been touched to hear how anxious Pippa had been about her in the midst of her own ordeal, and how she had fired a half dozen questions at the rescue team the moment they had found her, like, “Where is Kelly? Is she safe?”

Kelly had already heard the story of Pippa’s accident and her rescue. But today she learned that the most important part of the experience for Pippa wasn’t any of that. It was what had been going on in her mind during her many hours in the cave, an elaborate and surprisingly coherent dream about a fourteenth-century Norse woman named Asa.

There was nothing truly strange about the story. It seemed historically reasonable. There were a lot of similar stories about how the Viking settlers lived and how they ultimately died out. What was weird was that Pippa was convinced it wasn’t a dream. She seemed to think it had all really happened just as she dreamed it, that centuries ago the Viking woman had hidden from the Thule in the very cave she herself had fallen into. Had not only hidden there but had miscarried her baby there.

“This has been on my mind every minute since I got back,” Pippa said. “But what I didn’t realize before is that the baby has to be buried in that cave. Where else would it be? She didn’t take it with her.”

“It might not have been buried at all,” Kelly pointed out, going along for the sake of conversation. “She had a lot on her mind. She might have just left it there and some animal took it away.”

Pippa shook her head. “She wouldn’t have done that. These people were devout and superstitious Christians. It would be important to her to bury it. I know it’s there. It’s under the rocks, the pile of rocks I told you about. It’s not just a random pile. It’s a burial mound. She carved a message there. I saw it. That has to be an epitaph.”

Kelly shivered. “You’re freaking me out here, Pippa.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” She frowned and took a drink from her mug.

“No, no,” Kelly objected. “It’s good that you told me. I really enjoyed the story. But, you know, it’s just a story. A vivid dream.”

“What if it wasn’t a dream?”

“What else?”

“A vision,” Pippa replied solemnly. “Like a message from the past.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Pippa shrugged. “Nivi believes it. She believes I can see into the future and the past.”

“That’s just folklore. You know that. What happened to you is just the combination of the concussion and the suggestion that Nivi planted in your mind. You said yourself you were drifting in and out of consciousness and you even hallucinated that you saw someone in the cave. Obviously, there was no one there. You can’t really trust your experiences from that day.”

Pippa shrugged. “Maybe. But I can’t stop thinking about her. I want to know what happened to her. Did she survive? I’ve tried to conjure it up in my mind again, to continue the story. But it’s no use. I get nothing.” She set her mug on the table, looking morose.

She was obviously feeling very close to this story of hers. It was real to her. These people were real to her.

“I just have a feeling about Asa,” she said. “She’s trying to tell me something and I don’t believe it’s just that she died of starvation with the rest of them. I think there’s something special about her.”

Because she’s the heroine of your story, Kelly thought, and you don’t want to think of her perishing so ingloriously. Kelly pulled Pippa’s head under her chin, giving her a bracing hug as Mrs. Arensen appeared in the doorway in a shapeless floral dress.

“I am taking a count,” she announced. “For supper. Jens and Mr. Waddell are going to the Disko Hotel.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “How can a student afford a forty-krone hamburger? Mr. Lance, he is also going.”

“What are you cooking?” Kelly asked, making a mental note that extravagant meals were on Mrs. Arensen’s list of moral weaknesses.

“Laks,” she replied.

Kelly turned to Pippa. “Salmon?”

Pippa nodded.

“That would be great,” Kelly said. “I love salmon.”

“Good.” Mrs. Arensen smiled, stretching her thin lips even thinner. “Nice fresh fish caught this morning. I have been having it all day in a pot with sugar, salt and onions. Nice pickled fish. What about you, Pippa? Will you be having supper with us?”

“
Nej tak
. I’ll be going home.”

Mrs. Arensen withdrew from the doorway.

“What’s wrong?” Pippa asked. “You look like you’ve been stabbed in the stomach.”

“Pickled salmon?”

“You don’t like it?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never had it, but to do that to a beautiful, fresh piece of fish, it’s just criminal. I mean, holy cow, we’re going to eat it tonight, not for Christmas! I know you can’t get fresh fruit and vegetables, but you definitely have fresh fish. So why go and do that to it?”

“The Danish like things pickled. You might like it too.”

Kelly shook her head dejectedly and looked at the window where the rain still blasted against it. “When do you think you’ll be back to work?”

“A few more days. In the meantime, as soon as the weather lets up I’m going back to the cave.”

“What?” Kelly was alarmed.

“I have to go back to finish Asa’s story. I don’t think I can connect with her anywhere else.”

“I hope you’re not serious.”

“I
am
serious. If I go by boat, I can get close enough for a short walk. It’s less than a kilometer inland, don’t you think?”

“Your father will let you take a boat out alone?”

“He gave up a long time ago trying to force me into a traditional mold. I’m a modern woman.”

“But your ankle,” Kelly objected.

“It’s a lot better. It’s a short hike. I can take a walking stick. I’m fine, really. Don’t worry.” Pippa peered earnestly into Kelly’s eyes. “I’ve just got to go back. I have to find out what happened to Asa and her daughter.”

Kelly could tell she had her mind made up. “Then I’ll come with you. Even if your ankle’s okay and you’re a modern woman, nobody should take a boat out alone.”

Pippa nodded her assent as they heard the front door slam shut. Kelly glanced at the antique-looking cuckoo clock on the wall to see that it was five thirty.

“Must be Annalise coming home from work,” she said.

Annalise, who taught a business course in town, was the only person in this house who could go to work on a day like this. A moment later she wandered past the open doorway.

“Hi, Annalise!” Pippa called.

The young woman stopped to look in, blinking through her water-spotted glasses. She wore a navy blue skirt, pale stockings and black flats. She was short and plump and extremely conservative looking, especially for a woman in her early twenties. She wore no makeup, no jewelry, and looked a lot like a Catholic schoolgirl. Kelly knew almost nothing about her, except that she lived in Nuuk and would be returning there at the end of the summer.

“Hi, Pippa,” she responded, smiling. The rest of their conversation was in Greenlandic, a hasty dialogue of small talk before Annalise retired to her room.

“She’s nice,” Pippa remarked.

“Yes, and very quiet. No trouble at all. I think Mrs. Arensen is in love with her.”

Pippa giggled as Chuck came in and grabbed his heavy coat off the rack.

“Hey,” Kelly called, “why’s everybody going out tonight?”

“Aren’t you coming?” He put on his worn Panama hat. Like his Van Halen T-shirt, it was a treasured part of his wardrobe.

“I think I must have missed this memo. What’s going on?”

“Oh, sorry. I was supposed to tell you. Slipped my mind.” He pulled on his coat, wrapping the muffler around his neck. “It’s a birthday party for Waddell. He’s thirty-five today. We’re all invited. Come on. We’ve got the hotel van coming to pick us up. You too Pippa. I’ll go tell Elsa we’re all going, then I’ll meet you out front.”

Kelly sprang off the couch. “The good news is that the pickled salmon will still be edible tomorrow.”

“And the bad news?” Pippa asked.

“The pickled salmon will still be edible tomorrow.” Kelly laughed and extended a hand to help Pippa off the couch.

Chapter Eighteen

Out of utter frustration, Julie half screamed, half growled and let go of the corner of the plastic tarp she was trying to tie down. It flapped wildly in the wind. The rain pelted relentlessly down on them as they worked to cover the supplies and equipment. Jordan hugged the hood of her parka closer around her face, feeling chilled through.