Where the Wild Roses Grow Read online

  “You really did your homework,” I said, and finished the last sausage. I was so full now I felt guilty for having eaten so much. It was just so good, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Morten said, reading my mind. “You are going to need all of it today.”

  I stared at him. “I’m what?”

  “I have a perfectly planned day for us that will make you burn those calories off in just a few hours. Don’t you worry.”

  “But, that’s the thing. When you say stuff like that, I start worrying. What have you gotten us into? Not some fitness thing? Or yoga or biking? Please tell me you didn’t plan for us to bike around somewhere.”

  Morten chuckled again. “No. Not biking.”

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “We’re going hiking today. Hiking in the Wicklow Mountains.”

  Hiking?

  8

  July 2015

  Mary Margaret didn’t usually let herself get upset. She was known in the town of Enniskerry as a calm and collected woman who kept mostly to herself. Since her daughter had moved out, things around the house had calmed down a lot and she hadn’t been this agitated in many years.

  Mary Margaret groaned as she entered the clergy’s house and went inside without knocking. A set of eyes looked at her. They belonged to the housekeeper. “Where is he?” Mary Margaret grumbled.

  The housekeeper barely opened her mouth before Mary Margaret lost her patience. “Arh, forget it. I’ll find him myself.”

  She stormed down the hallway, found the door to his office, and entered without knocking. The priest was sitting in his chair with a book in his lap. He looked up. Then he smiled.

  “Mary Margaret! You’re looking well!”

  “We need to talk.”

  Father Allen pointed at a chair. “You'll have a cuppa?”

  Mary Margaret neither sat nor wanted the tea. “Don't be troubling yourself.”

  “Ah, go way outta that, of course you will!” Father Allen said, then called for the housekeeper.

  The young woman peeked in and he asked her to bring them tea and shortbread. The young woman curtsied, then disappeared.

  “So, what do you want to talk to me about?” the father said, smoking his pipe. The cloud of smoke came towards Mary Margaret and she waved her hand to make it go away. She had always hated smoke.

  “This,” she said, and handed him the letter. “I received this in the mail this morning.”

  “Did you now?”

  The father put the pipe down and took the letter. She waited for him to read it, then for his reaction. He shook his head, leaned back in his chair, then grabbed the pipe and put it back in his mouth.

  “I wouldn’t make much of it,” he said.

  “Wouldn’t make much of it? How can you say that? Did you even read it?”

  He nodded. “I did. I did.”

  “This person knows. Someone out there knows. How are you not concerned about this news, Father?”

  Father Allen drew in a deep sigh. “Why now? Why now, Mary Margaret? We have kept this a secret for so many years. Why would anyone want to rip into this now?”

  Mary Margaret threw her arms out in resignation. “How should I know? But these people can hurt us, Father. Aren’t you concerned what they can do to your reputation if this comes out?”

  Father Allen looked pensive as he smoked his pipe. “I am. I am. But I have to put my trust in the good Lord.”

  Mary Margaret growled again. This was hopeless. The good father had gotten too old. He didn’t care about anything anymore. There was no help for her to find here.

  She leaned over and pointed her finger at him, the old finger quivering in anger.

  “You know perfectly damn well that the good Lord will send all of us straight to hell for what we have done. And you’ll be the first to go.”

  The father stared at her with a baffled look, and she wondered how she could make him understand the seriousness of what was about to happen here in the small town. He had to comprehend that hell wasn’t going to wait for them to grow old enough to die; it was going to break out right here and now.

  Angrily, she turned on her heel and slammed the door as she left. On her way out, she greeted the housekeeper as she came towards her with her tray filled with tea and shortbread.

  9

  July 2015

  I couldn’t believe what I had gotten myself into. I couldn’t believe that Morten would ever think I would enjoy hiking through mountains like this.

  We had driven in our car to the Information Office, then parked and taken the Orange route. The hardest of all the routes, of course.

  “Are you alright there, sweetie?” Morten asked, as we struggled up the steep trail.

  Didn’t he know anything about me?

  “I’m okay,” I yelled back, wheezing from my lungs, wondering when and how I would be able to get back at him for putting me through this. I wasn’t going to cave; I wasn’t going to let him know I was about to pass out from exhaustion. No, I wasn’t going to admit how bad a shape I was really in, so I smiled and waved and pretended to be fine. But inside, I was boiling with fury. How was this considered a vacation? I wasn’t relaxing one bit. On top of it all, it was raining. Not like a heavy downpour, but a light and chilly drizzle that soaked my face. Every now and then, it would run slowly down my neck under the collar of my jacket and onto my back, causing me to shiver all over.

  No, this was certainly not my idea of a relaxing vacation. But Morten seemed to love it. He was smiling from ear to ear as we trekked up the mountainsides and sprang joyfully forward.

  So annoying.

  The trail rose steeply alongside the Poulanass Waterfall, leading us through the Glendalough oak woodlands. We had also visited the ruined miners' village. The scenery of marshland, cliffs, boulder scree, and the steeply descending Glenealo River were quite dramatic and fascinating to me. I liked that part.

  It was the steep trekking parts that I didn’t like. My knees and back soon started to hurt.

  “Could we take a break in a bit?” I finally asked. “I am thirsty and could use a snack.”

  “In a few minutes,” Morten yelled back. “We just need to go a little further.”

  We had been walking like this for hours, and it all started to look the same to me. It was very pretty and very green, but when raindrops keep watering your eyes, there comes a point when beauty simply isn’t enough. I dreamt of far away beaches in Greece, of sitting in a lounge chair, sipping drinks, and eating Greek salad or sitting in a chair in Tuscany overlooking the mountains, sipping local wine and eating olives from a bowl. Looking at the mountains. Not climbing, not hiking, not biking, not running. Just looking.

  “We’re almost there!” Morten exclaimed. “We can have a lunch break right up here.”

  “Lunch break? As in, we’re eating outdoors in the drizzling rain?” I asked, picturing me sitting with my soaked sandwich. We had packed lunches at the hotel, and I had thought we would be sitting somewhere eating them in the sun overlooking the valleys. I had no idea it would start to rain when we were halfway up.

  “Sure!” Morten said. “A little rain isn’t going to stop us, is it?”

  I grumbled something that I was glad he didn’t hear, then continued up the trail till we reached a small clearing. I followed Morten into it. When the trees cleared out, we were suddenly standing on a ledge of some sort, overlooking the green valley with what Morten told me was The Guinness Lakes underneath us. He believed this was what they called the Upper Lake in the map, but he wasn’t sure. It seemed to be where the river ended. Morten told me it was the same river that went through Enniskerry. I wondered if I could have just gone by boat or raft or something that didn’t involve too much walking. Probably not. But I had to admit, it was really beautiful here. There wasn’t a house in sight. It was nothing but nature and us. The colors were out of this world. Brown, yellow, and so much green.

  Morten poked me with his elbow. “I told yo
u it was worth the effort, right?”

  “You certainly did.”

  We ate sitting on the rocks and my previous pictures of my sandwich being soaked weren’t far from the truth. The bread was wet and clammy and I ate it just to calm my starving stomach. I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel and take a long warm bath, then have a big dinner.

  “When we’re done with lunch, we’ll walk all around the lake,” Morten said.

  It wasn’t over? I could have killed him.

  “It’s supposed to be the most beautiful part of the entire hike,” Morten said to me. “At least that’s what I read online.”

  I forced a smile. “Then we’d better do it, right?”

  10

  July 1977

  “You never do anything around here lately. All you do is sit there and read those books!”

  Violet didn’t even look up from her book when her father spoke to her. “I made your coffee; it’s on the table,” she simply said, referring to the cup she had placed on the kitchen table, knowing at this time of day her father always took a small break before lunch to drink his coffee and maybe have a shortbread with it. He had, after all, been up since before the sun rose.

  “What is it with you these days? All you do is read or hang out with Conan. I don’t think it’s good for you.” Her father ended the sentence with a deep growl.

  Now she looked up and met her father’s eyes.

  “What is it with him anyway? Why are you so fond of him?” he asked. “What’s so special about him?”

  “He understands me,” she said. “He has seen the world like I want to. He is smart and knows everything. He has gone to university like I want to.”

  Violet knew it bothered her father that she wanted to do something else other than work on the farm. All he wanted for her was to find a nice husband with a good piece of land. Someone who could take care of her. But Violet didn’t just want someone to take care of her. She wanted so much more, and it was breaking her heart that her father and brothers didn’t understand that.

  “He’s is putting ideas in your head,” her father grumbled. “I’m not sure I like it. I’m not sure I like him coming here with all his…all his fancy words and books and…ideas.”

  “Well, I like it,” she said. “And when I’m done with school, I want to go to university in Dublin.”

  Her father almost choked on his coffee. “You want to go to the university? You?”

  “Yes, Father. Yes, I do, and Conan has promised to help me.”

  Violet’s father stared at her at a loss for words. He wasn’t a man who argued well for himself, she had realized, and the more she read and the more she spoke to Conan, who had an answer for everything, the more she realized how powerful words were. She began to crave them and want to rule the art of conversation, like Conan always did. She never wanted to end up at a loss for words like her father and brothers.

  “Well, that might be, but you can’t,” her father said.

  Violet froze. “What?”

  “You can’t go to university. No one in our family ever went to university. We use our hands. We need you here at the farm. When you’re done with school, you’ll work here.”

  Her father grunted in the same way he always did when he wanted to make sure you understood it was the end of the discussion. He had stated his opinion and there was no more to be said about this matter.

  But Violet wasn’t going to just shut up and do as she was told, like she usually did. No, this was different. She was fourteen years old and would no longer take no for an answer.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “ Conan told me I could, so I am doing it.”

  Her father hit his fist on the table and the cup jumped. He stared at her with wide angry eyes while gritting his teeth. Again, he was short for words, and all he could say was:

  “No!”

  Violet got up, took her book under her arm, and shrugged. “Yes I am. Watch me.”

  She could no longer hold back her tears. Angrily, she turned her back on her father, who didn’t know what else to do but hit his fist once again onto the kitchen table with a loud growl.

  11

  July 2015

  The walk around the lake was by far the most beautiful part of the hike. I had to admit that Morten was right. It was completely worth the hard work to see the view, but I was also very pleased when he finally told me it was time to start walking back to where the trek had begun. It was only a few hours till sundown.

  “I thought we could end the day at the pub we passed on our way here,” he said. “I heard they give a complimentary Jameson whiskey to hikers that eat there afterwards. At least, that’s what it said online.”

  “Finally, you read something useful,” I said with a smile.

  I was already walking faster. I could almost smell the fish and chips that I was going to order. And a shot of whiskey didn’t sound too bad right now, considering the way my body was aching. Maybe it would make me forget my blistering feet and painful lower back.

  The rain had stopped and I thought I spotted the sun on the horizon, as it was getting ready to set behind the mountains. But I could be mistaken.

  Morten grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I smiled at him, feeling the most unsexy I had ever been. I was smelly underneath the jacket and my hair was hanging wet into my soaked face.

  “Thank you for doing this with me today,” he said. “I know this wasn’t exactly your thing, so I am truly grateful that you did it for me and without too much complaining.”

  I chuckled. “You’re very welcome,” I said. “I know you love it. Maybe tomorrow we can do something I like?”

  “Sure. Like what?” Morten asked.

  “Maybe take a drive to the ocean? I know it’s probably not going to be beach-weather but maybe we can do something else? I just know I want to see the ocean.”

  “I know you like the beaches and ocean. Maybe we can go for a walk?”

  I made a grimace. “No more walking after today. My body is angry with me.”

  Morten laughed. “Alright. How about we drive up the coast and see it from the car, then find a nice pub or something for lunch? How does that sound?”

  “Like music, sweet relaxing music to my ears, back, and feet.”

  “The beach it is, then.”

  We were still holding hands as we descended towards the town and it felt quite nice just walking there hand in hand. I hadn’t thought much about my children or the dogs all day, but now I did. I had spoken to my parents in the morning before we went on the hike and they had told me the kids were fine, but Kenneth, the smallest of my dogs, had been eating my mom’s new pillows for the couch that had cost a fortune. I thought it was silly that she spent that much money on pillows, and had to admit I found them hideous, but I knew how much they meant to my mom, so it was a big deal. I just hoped Kenneth wasn’t causing them any more trouble. Mostly because I knew I never would hear the end of it from my mother. She already thought I was terrible at raising my kids, and now she had the dog thing to throw at me as well. Guess I was kind of in over my head with two dogs in the house. Brutus, the pit-bull that only obeyed Victor, scared the crap out of my mother with his intense stare, but at least he never chewed on anything. He was more the type that constantly looked like he was planning how he was going to eat you.

  I loved both of them, though, and so did my kids. Having dogs in the house had turned out to be a better experience than I had ever thought. The kids had both lightened up a lot when they got them, and since they had been through so much, the last years especially, with their dad moving in with another woman and having another child, it seemed like the dogs somehow made us a family again.

  “What’s that?” Morten asked.

  “What?” I asked. “Sorry, I was lost in a train of thought.”

  Morten pointed at the riverbank not far from us. “Over there. What’s that?”

  It looked like something was in the water. I didn’t have to look twice to know that it wasn�
�t something; it was a someone.

  12

  July 2015

  I forgot all about back and foot pain, about fish and chips and Jameson whiskey, about dogs and kids, and I stormed towards the river. Morten was right behind me. As I came closer, I slowed down. My heart was in my throat. It was hard to breathe. I was beginning to freak out.

  “Oh, my God, Morten. Oh, my God.”

  It was a woman. She was under the water, lying on the rocks in the shallow water. Her blankly staring eyes seemed to gaze into the sky. Between her teeth she held a red rose.

  I felt sick to my stomach and turned to let Morten grab me. Then I threw up. Morten held my hair.

  “Oh, my God, Morten,” I said, when I was done and he had given me a napkin to wipe my mouth. “What do we do?”

  He approached the body, and together, we pulled it up from the water. He kneeled on the bank.

  “She hasn’t been dead long,” he said, studying her closely. “Looks like a blunt force trauma to the head killed her, or at least knocked her out. We need to call the local police.”

  I found my phone and gave it to Morten. We stayed at the river bank until they arrived. Morten showed them his identification card. “I’m with the police force in Denmark,” he told them.

  The two officers studied the body, then called for help. They didn’t look like they had seen a body before and I was afraid they were going to be sick just like me. The youngest among them went completely pale and I knew how he felt.

  Less than half an hour later, the place was crawling with people. Men that introduced themselves to me as investigators, detectives, and officers asked me questions on precisely how we found the body, on what we were doing here, where we were from, and where we lived. They were the same questions over and over again and it drove me nuts. Meanwhile, others in full body suits examined the body and the area around it. We were asked to stay, and so we did. Morten followed the examination with great professional interest, while I just really wanted to get out of there and go back and take that shower. I felt terrible for the poor woman, and I couldn’t help staring at the red rose that had been stuck between her teeth. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think of what. If nothing else, it told me this was a murder and some sick bastard had been calculated enough to put the rose in her mouth even after having killed her. It made me shiver in disgust.