Chapter 5

Winter came early in Helsinki.

During my first week at the new job, the first snow fell by the harbor.

The company set me up with a temporary flat for two months, not far from the Design Archive. It was small but south-facing, and on clear days, sunlight would stretch from the window all the way to the center of the wooden floor.

There were no books of Elias's here, no pill organizers for Ingrid, and no one to wake me before dawn asking why I hadn't done something for them.

I worked late every day.

The new archival projects were piling up. My Finnish colleagues spoke plainly and kept clear boundaries. When the workday ended, no one treated their personal responsibilities as someone else's obligation.

The work made me realize, for the first time, that I was perfectly capable of doing the job. I wasn't the person Elias had made me out to be, the woman who "just sat around at home."

I had simply spent the best six years of my life holding his life together.

Claire's video call came through while I was putting together a new bookshelf.

Claire Dawson had been my closest friend since university and was still in London, working as an intellectual property lawyer. The moment her face appeared, she peered at the snowy view behind me and let out an exaggerated sigh. "Not bad. Settling into the new job? Are the Nordic men as good-looking as they say?"

I tightened the last screw. "No time to look at men. I'm run off my feet with projects."

"Good. Stay busy and you won't think about the ones who don't deserve it."

She paused, her tone turning careful. "There's something I have to tell you. Elias showed up at my office a couple of days ago."

I put my tools back in the box and said nothing.

"He was frantic, asking where you'd gone. I told him I didn't know, and he stood downstairs for three hours. He said your old number was disconnected. When he went back to the flat, he found you'd cleared out almost everything. All that was left was the key and the ring."

Claire let out a cold laugh. "I asked him, who throws a tantrum and cancels a phone number they've had for six years? Who throws a tantrum and takes every last shard of their dead mother's work with them?"

"The second I said 'her mother's final work,' his whole face changed."

I leaned against the bookshelf and listened quietly.

Claire went on. "At first he was convinced you were just trying to make him cave. He said you always waited for him to make up after every fight. Then he went back to the flat looking for something and found hospital-prescribed medication in the bathroom cabinet. And the examination folder you'd left at the bottom of the bin."

"He sent me message after message, asking if something was wrong with you."

She went quiet for a moment. "Mara, I didn't tell him about the miscarriage. I don't think it should come from me. And honestly, he doesn't deserve to hear the truth that easily, secondhand."

"Mm."

"Don't go soft on him." She fixed her eyes on me. "Just because he's panicking doesn't mean he actually understands what he did wrong. He might just not be able to accept that you really left."

Outside the window, the snow fell slowly.

The things that had once cut me so easily seemed to have finally lost their sharpness, dulled by two thousand kilometers of distance.

"What about Linnea?" I asked.

Claire's expression grew complicated. "Three days after you left, Elias tried to send her back to Finland."

"He bought her a ticket and wrote her a check, saying it covered her project fee and compensation. Linnea slapped the check down on the table. She didn't take a penny."

"Did she cry?"

"She did, but not because she was some clueless girl," Claire said. "She asked Elias why, if it had only been a research collaboration, he had accepted her family's silver brooch in front of her father, her relatives, and the sponsors. Why had he said on camera that he would stay in the north for her? The brooch wasn't some universal Sámi engagement custom. It was an heirloom passed down in her family, and giving it to someone was her personal choice. Elias knew all of that, yet he deliberately staged the moment for the cameras as a declaration of love. Everyone at the exhibition thought they were together. Her family believed he was ready to commit to her. Now that the project had gotten the attention he wanted, he planned to put her on a plane with a check and be done with it."

I said nothing.

Outright lying had never been Elias's greatest talent.

What he was good at was telling selective truths and leaving other people to bear the consequences.

To me, he said Linnea was just a research subject, a young artisan who needed looking after.

With Linnea, he encouraged her feelings through every intimate gesture, letting her believe he would stay.

"What happened then?"

"Linnea left without taking anything," Claire said. "After she got back to Finland, she posted a statement on her personal page. She didn't attack anyone or play the victim. She just laid out, clearly and precisely, how Elias had directed the filming and used their apparent relationship to generate publicity. The university and the foundation both demanded an explanation about research ethics. The grant was suspended. The promotional film that was supposed to air got pulled."

I set a Finnish dictionary on the shelf.

The heavy spine landed with a quiet thud.

The silver brooch, the traditions, the promises, the academic ideals. In the end, they were all just material Elias could edit and delete from his reports.

But Linnea and I, two living, breathing people, had become the price he cared least about paying as he crafted his image.

I didn't like Linnea. I wouldn't forget the baby cradle she had handed me days after my miscarriage, and I wouldn't make excuses for her.

But in this moment, I could see clearly that the person who had set us against each other was Elias.

Claire switched to a lighter tone. "Enough about them. Isn't your team heading to Lapland next week for the winter archive trip? Think you'll see the northern lights?"

"Probably. We're spending two days in Rovaniemi, then heading further north."

"Then look at them a little longer for me."

I smiled. "I will."

After I hung up, I stood at the window for a long time.