Chapter 20: The Price of Arne

"Arne!"

My voice went out over the water and nothing came back.

I reached in and turned off his engine.

His thermos was on the seat, lid off, coffee still warm.

His fishing rod was in the truck bed, never rigged.

I walked the dock with my flashlight.

Halfway down, something glinted between two planks.

His reading glasses, the cord snapped clean.

I was holding them when my phone rang.

No number.

"He's alive," Torvald said. "For now. I thought you'd want to hear that first. You're a caring girl."

I closed my hand on the glasses so hard the frame bent.

"Where is he?"

"Somewhere cold. He's lasted thirty-three years without his girl. He can last a couple of weeks without his heater."

"He's fifty-seven. He'll be hypothermic in hours."

"Then listen quickly." His voice was warm, almost fond. "On the thirtieth, you won't be in my nephew's bed."

"You'll be on a bus out of Duluth by sundown, and you'll stay gone until the moon has set."

"And Arne?"

"Walks home the morning after."

"You'll kill him the minute I'm on the bus."

"I'm a man of my word. Ask the girl's family. I paid every cent I promised."

The water sucked at the pilings under my feet.

"Put him on," I said.

"Ms. Odegaard..."

"Put him on, or I hang up and call the sheriff."

"You can explain to him why you've got an old man in a box."

There was a pause, then a scrape and a rustle.

Then Arne's voice, thin and shaking with cold.

"Kid?"

"Arne. Are you hurt?"

"Tell the chief I'm taking a personal day." His teeth were chattering. "Don't you do it, Linnea. Don't you do one thing he says."

"You give it everything..."

The phone was taken away from him.

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