Page 99 of Ordinary Girl

“I did. I’m not lying to you, Ana.”

“So they – they know I’m okay? Do they know where I am?”

“I told them you were safe.”

I sit down at the table, casting a quick glance out of the huge picture window, but then I quickly look away. If the back yardhas been left to deteriorate the same way as the front then I don’t want to see that. “The Vikings sent them away, right?”

I look at my dad again, but his expression remains impassive.

“They – or rather people associated with them sent your friends away, yes. They were told to stay away for a few months, told not to come looking for you, and they were scared, Ana. With good reason. But I found them.”

I frown. I’m confused. “I’m sorry… you – youfoundthem? So, you saw thembeforethey’d set up their new business?”

He sighs and sets his mug down on the counter. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, Ana. When Sofia was killed: when I found out what had happened, I knew I needed eyes everywhere. I needed to know everything that was going on, and as cruel as it sounds, I watched as your world fell apart, but I always knew I was going to come and get you. I was going to make sure your life would change for the better, and that meant you being around people who love you. So, when I found out Lars and Lea – your friends, people you’d grown up with – when I found out they’d been sent away, shall we say, I saw that as the Vikings taking away any choice you had over what you did next.”

“They told me it was for my own safety. They told me Lars and Lea had been sent away fortheirown safety. Were they lying?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. There’s no doubt you fell into a dangerous world, so maybe they were just looking out for your friends. Looking out for you. But I’ve already told you this: Skip Larsen, he also saw you as a way of keeping a part of Sofia close, which is why, I’m guessing, he wanted any threat of you leaving eradicated. He thinks of you as a surrogate daughter now, am I right?”

I don’t say anything, because I think he already knows the answer to that.

“Anyway,” he sighs, “I didn’t –don’twant that for you.”

“You don’t get to decide what I do with my life. You don’t get to do that.”

His eyes bore into mine, but he isn’t intimidating me. He’s nobody. He’s just someone I need because he knows something I don’t.

“I found out where they’d sent Lars and Lea, and I went to see them. I talked to them. I needed to know the kind of people they are, and they truly are your friends, Ana. They love you like family, and I just want you to be happy. Do you understand that?”

Again, I keep quiet. I don’t care what he wants, it doesn’t matter.Hedoesn’t matter. “What did you do?” I ask, because it’s obvious he did something.

“I offered to set them up in business a little closer to the home they’d been driven from. But they were scared, given that they’d been warned off. They were confused. They didn’t want to do anything that put them in any danger, and they were scared for you, too, Ana. I told them not to be. I told them I was watching you, and that if you all wanted to be together again, I could make that happen.”

“You set them up in business?”

“I wanted to make sure that, when you joined them, you had something to come back to. Something you could slot right into, and they are doing a good job. A very good job. It’s a simple life they’re living, Ana, but I think that may be something you want, now.”

I let a beat pass. “You have no idea what I want.”

“I know you want to see Lars and Lea. That’s why you’re here, you told me as much.”

I’m not sure anymore. All of this, seeing my friends again, being back with them, in a normal, ordinary world, it wouldrender me beholding to a man I don’t want in my life. I don’t trust him, but what’s more, I don’t like him.

“If you want me to stay out of your life, Ana, I will. I promise. I just want you to be safe and happy and I know you will be all of those things and more with Lars and Lea. They want to see you. They want you to join them, and there’s no ulterior motive on my part, you need to believe that. I just want you safe. You aren’t safe here.”

“I can look after myself.”

“I have no doubt about that. Sofia raised a strong young woman–”

“Don’t talk about Mama. Just, don’t.”

He holds up his hands and smiles an apologetic smile, but I still don’t know how much of what he’s doing here is genuine, and how much of it is just to placate me. I’m torn. But I think the bigger part of me was always going to be drawn toward seeing Lars and Lea again. And yes, I’d kind of accepted the fact that that was never going to happen, that I had to forget about my old life and move on. And I know I can’t ever get my old life back, but I can start a new one that could be just as full of love and joy and hope. Because hope isn’t something I’ve felt for a while now. Even with Joel.

“There’s a new home waiting for you, Ana. Everything you need is there, you’ll have no need to worry about anything.”

Again, doesn’t that mean I’d be beholding to him? But I have no real money of my own yet. The store hasn’t been open long enough to make anywhere near enough money to pay either me or Cady any kind of salary.

“I don’t know…” I get up, wander over to the window and steal myself to look outside, and the sight of an overgrown lawn, a patio filled with weeds and moss; dead plants in the pretty pots I remember Mama and I picking out, it’s heartbreaking.

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