Read Online Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller - Free Book Online Page A

The moment can be hers.
    â€˜Rhea told him something this morning. Something that affected him.’
    Sigrid turns to Rhea and waits.
    â€˜I had a miscarriage last night. They sent me home from the hospital. I was still in my first trimester. I told Papa this morning.’
    It is Petter who responds to this. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
    Rhea nods. She does not want to be the centre of attention.
    Lars says, ‘We weren’t unprepared for this. But I think Sheldon was.’
    Rhea says nothing. So he continues on.
    â€˜I don’t think it’s dementia. Sheldon has outlived everyone he knows, including his own son and wife. I think he came to Norway because of the baby. For a chance to see life continue beyond him. But then the baby died.’
    â€˜What do you think it is?’ Sigrid asks Lars.
    â€˜I think it’s a kind of guilt. I think he is consumed by guilt for surviving. His son, Saul, Rhea’s father, for starters. Maybe also his older friends in World War II. His cousin, Abe. The Holocaust. People in Korea. His wife. This baby. I don’t think he can take any more guilt. Even with the Koreans. I know there’s some debate about whether he actually saw combat, but I think he did because he sees them hiding in trees. I don’t think they’re just any Koreans. I think he sees the people he killed, and feels bad about it. Even though it was a war.’
    Rhea does not agree. ‘My grandfather does not feel guilty for surviving the Holocaust. Trust me. If anything, he feels guilty for not lying about his age and going to fight the Nazis.’
    â€˜He was fourteen when America entered the war. He was a boy.’
    â€˜Have you met him?’
    Sigrid writes this down in her notebook, along with other observations about Rhea and Lars and the timing of the disappearance.
    There is really only one last order of business.
    â€˜What do you make of this?’ says Sigrid, handing the murder-scene note to Rhea.
    The note rests lightly in Rhea’s hands as she reads and re-reads it.
    â€˜It’s from my grandfather.’
    â€˜And what do you think it says?’
    â€˜Well,’ she says, ‘it isn’t so much what it says as what it means.’
    â€˜Ya. OK.’
    â€˜This is why Lars and I slightly disagree on Sheldon’s diagnosis.’
    Sigrid takes back the note and reads it aloud as best she can, not knowing what accent it is meant to mimic:
    I reckon I got to light out for the Territory, because they’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
    â€” River Rats of the 59th Parallel
    â€˜So,’ Sigrid says, ‘That’s what it says. What does it mean?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ says Rhea. ‘I don’t know.’

Chapter 4
    Sheldon never saw the attack on his son in Vietnam. But he imagined it, over and over and over again. It appeared faithfully in his dreams, night after night after night. Mabel would shake him awake. ‘You’re dreaming,’ she’d say.
    â€˜No. It’s not like a dream.’
    â€˜A nightmare, then. It’s a nightmare.’
    â€˜No, not even that. It’s like I’m there. In the boat with him. Patrolling the Mekong. Up a tributary at night. I can taste the coffee. My feet itch.’
    Mabel was forty-five. She slept naked, except for her wedding ring and a thin white-gold necklace adorned with a tiny diamond pendant at the end. She’d made it from the engagement ring that Sheldon gave her in 1951, and never took it off.
    Mabel did not have trouble waking at odd hours of the night. Her husband’s bouts of fear did not disturb her. Twenty-three years earlier, Saul used to keep her up, as he was a colicky baby. Since then, she’d never needed much sleep. Since Saul died, it no longer mattered.
    Sheldon’s dream started one summer night in New York, 1975. Saul was already buried. Mabel lay stretched out on top of