As Black as Ebony Read online

  No. That couldn’t be it. Lumikki wouldn’t accept that.

  Where in her parents’ house would someone hide a chest they didn’t want anyone finding?

  Lumikki searched the cupboards and closets, the living room, the entryway, the basement, and the small shed in the back yard. No chest. No hint of a chest. Evening had already turned to night. Hope began to change to gray frustration.

  Think, think, she urged herself as she sat on the living room couch. Lumikki gently rubbed her temples, trying to ward off an incipient headache. She dug the key out of her pocket and held it in her palm.

  Little key in my hand. Tell me where your lock is hid. Lead me to the chest I seek.

  The key was just a dead weight in her hand. It didn’t have any answers.

  “Sometimes what you seek may be closer than you think.” Lumikki had always hated “deep” thoughts like that. But now, that was all she heard repeated monotonously in her head. What could be closer than she’d think? Under her butt? Yeah right.

  Before Lumikki had even finished thinking her sarcastic retort, she was tearing the cushions off the couch and opening the hide-a-bed.

  And finding the chest.

  The bed part of the couch was under the cushions, folded in a space you had to pull it out of. Inside the couch, between the bed frame and the floor, was a small space just big enough to fit a flat box for storing sheets and a blanket. But instead, there sat the familiar wooden chest. Lumikki lifted it out with sweaty hands. She didn’t waste any time admiring the decorations on the outside. The contents were the important thing. She could barely hold the key. It turned laboriously in the lock. Lumikki had to work to get the lock to finally open.

  She didn’t know what she had expected. She couldn’t say what she believed or hoped she would find in the chest. Suddenly, Lumikki saw before her a childhood she’d never remembered having.

  Photographs of a blond, gray-eyed girl who resembled her but not quite. Who resembled her father and mother, but not quite. Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa. Her sister Rosa. When Lumikki saw the pictures, she suddenly remembered how her sister smelled and how she breathed in her sleep and how her arms hugged Lumikki and sometimes pinched a little too. Rosa’s giggly laugh. Her furious tantrums. Her singing and whistling that sounded like a nightingale.

  Pictures of two girls together. One was shorter, with brown hair. Lumikki. They sat side by side. They waded in a lake. They ran. They danced under a sprinkler.

  Lumikki wasn’t looking at the pictures anymore.

  All her senses were suddenly awash with memories.

  Strawberries in summer. Rosa gave her the biggest, reddest ones. Grandma’s attic always smelled of autumn, even in summer. Grandma’s old shoes, which were too big for them. They both put one foot in the same shoe. It was impossible to walk without falling. Rosa’s hair tangled easily. Lumikki’s didn’t. Rosa brushed her hair with a hundred strokes and then another hundred. Rain was lashing the window and they built a fort under a blanket that was oranger than orange. When a scary part came in their favorite television show, Rosa put her hands over Lumikki’s eyes and whispered that it was only a story. The smell in the rosebushes made her giddy, but the thorns poked them. Adults never understood the best games. Sometimes you had to get the whole floor wet in your room. Because it was the ocean. Rosa’s cheeks were salty because she had been crying. Lumikki licked the salt off. She was a cat. They held each other’s hands and were never going to be apart. They would always move to the same house and always sleep in the same room. They would be Frog and Toad. They would be Snow White and Rose Red. And if they had bad dreams, they would sleep in the same bed. Warm side by warm side. Breathing in unison. Nightmares could never get in if they slept right against each other.

  Lumikki didn’t know how long had passed when she finally remembered she was eighteen years old and sitting on the floor of her parents’ living room surrounded by photographs. Dozens and dozens of photographs scattered all around. They filled the floor. As if a new sky had opened up above her and colorful, rectangular snowflakes had fallen from it. Lumikki wasn’t three anymore. She wasn’t holding her older sister Rosa’s hand.

  Lumikki felt as if a tidal wave had washed over her, stripping away the ceiling, floor, and walls. The floodwater had thrust her into the middle of a black nothingness. There was no safety anywhere, no firm foundation, and everything she had believed was a lie, a black darkness. She had lived her entire life up until now believing that she was an only child, alone.

  How could a sister be taken away from a person? How could they have hidden from her the fact that Rosa ever even existed? And why? What had happened to her?

  Lumikki stood up. She had to support herself on the edge of the sofa. She felt faint. She felt like vomiting. She felt like crying. Her feet wouldn’t carry her weight. She fumbled around on the living room table for her phone. She had to call her mom and dad right now. It didn’t matter what time it was. It didn’t matter if they might already be sleeping. Liars. Deceivers. You couldn’t do things like this to someone you loved. Could you? How could they have concealed something this big from her all her life?

  Lumikki had to ask.

  Now.

  She had to know what had happened to Rosa. Just then, a series of text messages showed up. Lumikki knew immediately who they must be from.

  I see you. You’re standing with your phone in your hand. But don’t make that call. You don’t want the leading role on opening night played by blood spattered on the walls. Blood running across the stage. Enough blood to fill every seat. You don’t want your nice but stupid boyfriend falling down in the middle of his lines and staring at you with lifeless eyes. And you know canceling the show wouldn’t help anything. I would still find all of you and act out my script. You are beautiful right now. A person who has seen the truth is always beautiful.

  Lumikki rushed to turn off the living room lights even though she knew it wouldn’t help anything.

  Then she stood stock-still in the dark room and stared into the yard, trying to see something. Only blackness gazed back.

  Lumikki let the hand holding the phone fall and hang limply. She knew she couldn’t call.

  Knowledge is beautiful and cruel, my dear Lumikki. With knowledge, you can do anything. Knowledge leads to action and belief and trust. It gives us true power.

  If you know the right people, you can always get more information and find exactly what you’re looking for. I know so much about you because I wanted to know. My thirst for knowledge was like a person who has never had a proper drink. I knew how to ask the right questions from the right people. I found ways to get everything everyone was trying to keep secret.

  Nothing is secret when you’re as thirsty for knowledge as I am.

  People are always ready to make an exception once you convince them they have a reason to share. Sometimes that takes money and sometimes other forms of payment. Usually, cash isn’t necessary though, because people want to tell what they know, even their most sensitive secrets. It’s in the blood.

  I’ve been patiently collecting information about you, piece by piece. I didn’t rush. I knew I had time, and when the time was right, you would be ready to accept what I found.

  Knowledge is power.

  Truth is beauty.

  I will make you more powerful and beautiful than anyone else.

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14

  Always walk in the light, Lumikki.

  Those were Lumikki’s grandmother’s final words to her. Pancreatic cancer had taken her Grammy five years before. Lumikki had visited Grammy in the hospital and leaned in close so Grammy could stroke Lumikki’s cheek with her dry, wrinkled hand. Grammy had been widowed at a young age and left to raise four children on her own. Lumikki had loved Grammy, this strong yet fragile woman, without question or reserve. Grammy had loved her too. Lumikki never doubted that for a second. Her father’s parents were more distant, though. They lived in Åland, and Lumikki didn’t see them much.

&n
bsp; But how could even Grammy have hidden from Lumikki that she had a sister? Lumikki felt as if she had been thrust into a strange, artificial reality where everyone was conspiring against her. Candid camera. A giant play.

  A reality TV show that was actually scripted but Lumikki was the only one who didn’t know.

  Always walk in the light.

  Her grandmother’s words came to Lumikki’s mind as she walked past the central square downtown on her way home from school. The patterns of the Christmas lights bathed the whole street in yellow and gold brilliance. The flower and snowflake shapes, strands of lights wrapped around tree trunks and branches, and the lights and window displays in the stores made you forget that, if the city ever suddenly lost power, people would have to wander in complete and utter darkness. When there was enough light, you forgot the darkness. Lumikki wondered if her Grammy thought that too. That if she just made Lumikki’s life full enough of light and joy, the tragedy of the past would disappear.

  Because there had to be a tragedy in her past. Lumikki understood that now after seeing the pictures. Only a major tragedy could offer even a partial explanation for the inconceivable fact that her sister had been hidden from her.

  Lumikki hadn’t slept a minute the previous night. After her stalker’s text messages, she had turned off all the lights, closed all the curtains, found the sharpest knife in the kitchen, and curled up in the corner of the couch staring straight ahead. She had listened more carefully than ever in her life and jumped at every howl of the wind, every creak of the house, even the patter of the sleet against the windows. She had been so afraid she thought she might die of it. Lumikki wanted to call Sampsa or Blaze or her parents or the police, but she couldn’t.

  The stalker had tied her hands and paralyzed her, taking away any room to move or breathe.

  As the night slowly dragged on, Lumikki had tried to think who her stalker could be, but she failed to come up with even a remotely plausible answer. A lunatic. A madman. But who could know so much? Who could know about the chest and the pictures and the key? Who could have got their hands on the key? Lumikki’s parents, of course, but although she had increasingly begun to doubt their love for her, she still couldn’t imagine that they could be behind this kind of harassment. Her own mother and father. No, that wasn’t possible.

  But Lumikki wasn’t really able to give her full attention to the identity of her stalker since she was so consumed by the question of what had happened to Rosa. That felt more important than anything else. She had to get an answer to that before she would be able to think about the rest.

  The stalker had given her a key, but still left the larger mystery locked. Lumikki knew she was at his mercy. She was sure her stalker had the answer.

  When the December morning had finally cast its tired, gray gaze over the northern hemisphere, Lumikki had crawled off her parents’ couch, arms and legs numb, and on the verge of passing out. She took the knife back into the kitchen and then erased every trace that she had been in the house. She completed each motion mechanically. Sometimes you had to run on autopilot when you lacked the strength and resources for anything else.

  Just do what you have to. Shut out everything else.

  So Lumikki had taken a morning train to Tampere, stopped by her apartment to change and drink a quick cup of coffee, and then walked to school. Normal things, normal life, as if everything was business as usual. All around, people were living their lives, hurrying to work and school. Lumikki felt like she was watching them through glass, from her glass coffin. Present, but not really.

  Once upon a time, there was a girl who wasn’t.

  Rosa, who had just been wiped away. Lumikki, who walked and breathed and must have looked like a perfectly normal living person, even though all she felt inside was blackness. She was just a shell of a person.

  At school, the first person Lumikki had encountered was Henrik Virta, her psychology teacher, who looked at her with concern.

  “You aren’t sick, are you?” he had asked.

  “No. Just winter blues,” Lumikki had replied.

  “At this time of the year, you have to make sure you get enough sleep and light,” Henrik had said, smiling warmly.

  Lumikki had only had the energy to nod. Next, she had seen Sampsa, who was even more worried about how exhausted she seemed.

  “I just stayed up late with my parents,” Lumikki had lied. She had started feeling like telling one more lie might make her vomit.

  “Crazy Finland-Swede party animals,” Sampsa had said with a laugh.

  Somehow that had led to the fight. Lumikki was irritated by what Sampsa said and his smile and his tone of voice and, really, everything. It made her mad when Sampsa said he would wait for her in the library after school so they could walk home to her place together.

  “I’m so tired all I want to do after school is take my crazy Finland-Swedish nap alone in my crazy Finland-Swedish apartment,” Lumikki had said.

  “I promise to be quiet and not bother you,” Sampsa had replied calmly.

  “No. I want to be alone today.”

  “You want to be alone a lot lately.”

  “That’s just how I am. You knew that when you started dating me.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m a pretty insignificant part of your life.”

  Lumikki had seen the sadness in Sampsa’s gaze and, under different circumstances, it would have hurt her. But not today. She was so tired and anxious and felt so weighed down that Sampsa’s sorrow only felt accusatory.

  What could Lumikki have said?

  I don’t want you with me because every word I say to you is a lie? I’m lying to you to protect you, but today I can’t do it anymore? You can’t save me. No one can.

  She had gone through the whole school day in an impenetrable black fog. Now she was crossing the bridge over the river rapids in the center of the city with an honor guard of horses made of light. Lumikki had always thought this was the best part of the city’s Christmas lights. Rearing horses with front hooves pawing the air, their proud neighing almost audible.

  Always walk in the light.

  She would never get out of the blackness until she knew.

  Lumikki decided that it was time to contact her stalker herself for the first time. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she sent a text message to the number service the stalker was using.

  I want to meet you.

  Lumikki hoped that would be a strong enough invitation for her shadow. If she had gleaned anything about her stalker’s mind, she believed he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation.

  Lumikki knew she was playing a dangerous game, but she had to find out who was behind this.

  A surprise was waiting for Lumikki at her door. Sampsa. He was sitting on the stairs with a picnic basket next to him.

  “If you want, I’ll leave. But I thought it might do you good to have a little food and maybe a neck rub.”

  Sampsa looked so disarming and sweet in his big, light-green hat with his eyes full of hope that Lumikki thought her heart would break. What had she done to deserve such unselfish, unshakeable love?

  “Did you really think you were going to take me on a picnic in December?” Lumikki asked.

  “Of course. I have a blanket and everything. Your apartment is small, but there’s plenty of space on the floor.”

  Sampsa grinned. Grabbing the boy’s coat collar, Lumikki kissed him long and tenderly, because right now Sampsa deserved that more than anyone else in the world.

  Inside, Sampsa really did spread the blanket out on the floor and then proceeded to produce baguettes, fresh cheeses, grapes, and chocolate muffins. He put on an album of modern folk songs. Sampsa sat Lumikki down, offered her bread with cheese, poured her a glass of red wine, and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Now you just enjoy,” he whispered in Lumikki’s ear. Lumikki closed her eyes. Sampsa was so good and so nice that Lumikki was afraid she would burst into tears.

  The rhythm and words of
the soothing song, Sampsa’s warm touch, the warmth of the red wine in her veins. All of it together formed a soft, fluffy, fairy-tale world around Lumikki. What if she could just stay here? What if she could just forget everything else? Just for a few moments?

  Sampsa’s massage was pleasant. But Lumikki still couldn’t help thinking of the other hands that made her skin feel electric in an entirely different way, sending shocks of pleasure through her whole body with only a few light strokes. Blaze. She thought of Blaze even though Blaze was precisely the one she shouldn’t have thought about. That wasn’t fair to Sampsa.

  Just then, Lumikki’s phone dinged with a text message. She reached for it.

  “Don’t look at it now,” Sampsa begged.

  “I have to,” Lumikki replied and grabbed the phone.

  Sampsa’s hands slid off her shoulders. The fluffy clouds had dissipated already anyway, and Lumikki’s heart was pounding in her ears, equally from horror and hope. But the text message wasn’t from the stalker. It was from Blaze.

  I think about you all the time. First thing in the morning and last thing at night. And all the time in between. I still love you. I will always love you.

  Lumikki felt her cheeks flush. Could they really have such a strong connection that when she thought of Blaze, he sensed it? Lumikki stood up. She walked into the kitchen.

  “Who was it from?” Sampsa asked.

  “My mom. I accidentally left a shirt at their house.” Lie, lie, lie, lie. Another lie.

  Automatically, Lumikki had opened the kitchen drawer where she kept the dragon brooch Blaze had given her and picked it up. Her fingers stroked the intricate scales. Oh, if only Lumikki could have pinned it to the collar of her coat and worn it proudly. Why couldn’t her life be that simple?

  Lumikki heard Sampsa get up from the blanket. She quickly slipped the brooch into her pocket. Then she deleted the text message from Blaze. What she really should have done was delete his number from her phone entirely. Lumikki couldn’t do that yet though.