Beyond the Truth: Hanne Wilhelmsen Book Seven (A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel) Read Online Free PDF

isn’t it?”
    “Is this where you’re sitting, then?”
    Mary shuffled over to the coffee machine. Her pink terry-toweling dressing gown was puffed up around her chest and gathered at the waist with a silk cord from an old-fashioned curtain. The pompoms slapped against her skinny thighs with every halting step she took. She looked like a party balloon.
    “Mary, for heaven’s sake,” Nefis said, laughing. “It’s far too early for you!”
    “Are you aware of all the things I have to do before Christmas Eve, eh?”
    Gruffly she began to count on her scrawny fingers.
    “One: we’re still short of two kinds of Christmas baking, fattigmann cookies and jødekake cakes. Two: the decorations from last year have to be vacuumed and maybe even repaired. There was a pretty wild party here on New Year’s Eve, if I remember rightly. Also, I’ve a lot of new things to try out. Three: I have to—”
    “I’m off anyway,” Hanne said, getting to her feet.
    “I thought so! And when are you coming back, may I ask, Your Ladyship?”
    “I’ll phone,” Hanne said airily, heading for the living room.
    “Hanne,” Mary said, grabbing her by the arm. “Does that mean …”
    She curled her index finger toward the open newspaper.
    “Does that mean we can dream on about that Christmas holiday of yours?”
    Hanne smiled feebly, but did not answer.
    “Honestly, Hanna.”
    Nefis rose to stand by Mary’s side, forming a wall of familiar complaint and vexatious unanimity.
    “I’ll phone,” Hanne said obstinately, before leaving the room.
    When she clambered into her car twenty minutes later, she was still aware of the vague taste of sleep on her tongue from Nefis’s mouth.
    What she wanted most of all was to take sick leave. Maybe that was what she should do. Unequivocally. She would endure this day and all it offered, and then come to a decision later. In the late afternoon, perhaps.
    Or over the weekend.
    In an apartment in Blindernveien, an old woman sat in floods of tears. A cleric was seated beside her on the overstuffed settee, trying to provide consolation.
    “Your son will be here soon,” said the pastor, a woman who had not yet reached the age of thirty. “His plane has already landed.”
    There was not much more to say.
    “There, there,” she said helplessly, stroking the old woman’s hand. “There, there.”
    “At least he died happy,” the widow said all of a sudden.
    The pastor straightened her back, feeling relieved.
    “He died in my arms,” the old woman said, her grimace changing to a smile.
    The pastor stared into her tear-stained face, partly shocked, but mostly embarrassed, and said, “A cup of coffee, maybe? Your son will be here shortly.”
    “I can’t talk about this with him! That would be far too awkward. For both of us. It’s none of my son’s business that his father and I still enjoyed the physical side of our marriage. For heaven’s sake! What’s today’s date?”
    The pastor quickly racked her brains, but this time did not dare express any sense of relief: “The twentieth. Yes. December the twentieth. Soon be Christmas Eve.”
    She could have bitten off her tongue. The widow burst into tears again.
    “My first Christmas without Karl-Oskar. The first one after so many …”
    The rest disappeared in violent sobs. It crossed the pastor’s mind that she would just have to let her cry. And her son had better get here soon!
    “We usually go to Duvamåla,” the widow eventually said. “Yes, that’s our house in the country, you see. Since I’m called Kristina and my husband Karl-Oskar, we thought it would be fun to call it that.”
    Duvamåla.
    Obviously unfamiliar with the Wilhelm Moberg series, The Emigrants , the pastor did not understand any of it, but she seized on the subject eagerly.
    “Our summer cottage is called Fredly,” she stammered.
    “Why is that?” the old woman asked.
    “Well …”
    “At least he died happy,” the widow brusquely repeated.
    Exuding a