When they’re alone, Kersti folds her hands in her lap and looks at Dr. Gliberman as though nothing has happened. “What are the next steps?”
After the appointment, Kersti goes home by herself and Jay goes back to work. She heads up the front walk to her house, bending once to inhale the sweet scent of her stargazer lilies, which are still blooming happily in the sun and completely indifferent to her self-pity. She loves her garden, especially now, wet and lush, carpeted with soaking grass. The thrips are swarming the sunflowers, burrowing holes in their leaves, their fringed wings propelled by the post-thunderstorm gusts. The neighborhood is otherwise still. Life goes on, she thinks. All around her, life goes on, and she’s slightly buoyed by the reminder.
Inside, the foyer is light and open, flooded by sunlight; a mirrored Venetian pedestal table sparkles beneath an admittedly ostentatious crystal chandelier. The walls are Cloud White, the wood floors and stairwells stained almost black, the three fireplaces carved white marble. Kersti likes her spaces simple, soft, and clean. The only bright color is found in their art—bold, bright pieces personally selected for them by their art dealer at the Bau-Xi Gallery. She drops her bag on the table and goes into the kitchen to make lunch. She pulls out the pot of leftover nogesesupp, sets it on the stove, and then retrieves the hard-boiled eggs she prepared this morning. She stirs the soup, tastes it with a wooden spoon, adds salt, and tastes it again. Sunlight is streaming in through the kitchen window, softly lighting the six eggs that are perfectly arranged in the glass bowl. Like a painting, she thinks, ladling soup into a ceramic bowl. She crumbles one hard-boiled egg over the bowl, places it on a tray with some sourdough bread and the day’s mail, and heads upstairs to her office.
Her office is a small oasis that occupies its own wing at the end of the second-floor hallway. It’s got sloped ceilings and wood beams and the wall-to-wall bookcase Kersti always dreamed of having when she used to fantasize about writing for a living. Today, her laptop sits open on her desk, the words from the first chapter of her next stalled effort ridiculing her. The three novels in her bookcase with her name printed on the spine do nothing to silence that voice in her head that shrieks: You’re not a real writer! You suck! You’re going to humiliate yourself with this one!
Her first short story was published by the Tundra Peregrine Literary Review, a prestigious though obscure Northwest Territories magazine, while she was still at Humber. With her creative writing professor’s guidance and encouragement, she decided to turn that story into a novel. Three hundred and seventeen pages later, when she was just twenty-six, The Ski-Maker’s Daughter was published by Snapping Turtle Press, a small publisher out of Nova Scotia, to decent reviews. The novel, which sold about twelve copies and was quickly removed from the shelves of Indigo and Chapters bookstores, vanished from the literary landscape as though it had never existed. But its publication helped Kersti land a fairly prominent Toronto agent named Rona Sharpe, who was instrumental in getting her next book, Moonset Over Tallinn, published in Canada and the United States by one of the big publishing houses.
The love story of an Estonian refugee and his beautiful Russian lover, Moonset Over Tallinn sold an astonishing hundred thousand copies in Canada alone, making it a surprise bestseller. Kersti was not yet thirty, which added to the PR frenzy around the book’s success. She was nominated for all sorts of literary awards, including the prestigious Luba Shishbaum Prize for best writer under thirty, which she did not win. There were a lot of accolades at that time for being the Most Promising Writer Under Thirty, or the Most Promising Canadian Woman Writer Under Thirty, or the Most Promising Historical Women’s Fiction Writer Under Thirty. The only thing that did not happen for her before thirty was having a kid.
Her third novel generated respectable sales and brought forth another round of literary prize nominations, although again no actual prizes. And no sign of her parents’ approval, either. “Another corny saga about star-crossed Estonian refugees?” her father said. At least she was solidifying her own literary niche, in no danger of being challenged by another better writer under thirty. She dominated the Estonian refugee market.
It doesn’t seem likely at this point that she will be able to please her parents, not even if she wins a Nobel Prize for literature. What would have made them happy is if she had married an Estonian and been able to breed.
She opens her desk drawer and takes out the letter from Lille. She notices a newspaper clipping in the envelope and realizes Mrs. Robertson also included Lille’s obituary.
After a long battle with cancer . . .
Lille would never have “battled” cancer. She didn’t battle anything or anyone. She succumbed. Cressida was the one who fought. She fought for what she wanted, fought against what she didn’t want, fought for the sake of fighting. Which was what made the fall so shocking. Whether she was drunk and indifferent or suicidal, Kersti always felt the falling implied she’d given up.
One of Kersti’s last memories of Cressida is of her floating across the grass in the moonlight to meet one of her lovers, daring to snatch the freedom she believed she was owed. How can you know everything is about to change? You can’t, of course. Kersti had no premonition. That night, she was angry with Cressida. She felt betrayed.
Cressida had changed by then. It was obvious to Kersti and the rest of their inner circle that the more selfish, self-centered side of her was now fully in command. Their friendship had become something of a love/hate roller coaster. Cressida had a way of always drawing Kersti back in, but that night, as Kersti watched Cressida escape from the school grounds, she wasn’t sure she could be there for her much longer.
The next morning, when Mme. Hamidou told Kersti what had happened to her roommate, Kersti was paralyzed with guilt. She’d contemplated the possibility of abandoning Cressida that very night. In the end, it was Cressida who abandoned her.
The days that followed the accident are still quite hazy. Kersti remembers Mme. Hamidou sitting down with her on the front steps of Frei House. It was dusk, the same day Cressida’s body was found. The ambulance and police were long gone and an eerie silence had fallen over the school. Hamidou had given her a sedative that morning and even though it was almost dark, Kersti was still groggy. Hamidou handed Kersti a cigarette and lit it, and then lit one for herself. “Take a deep breath,” she said. Her voice was shaky, but it was also soothing. Kersti tried to focus on it in order to feel calmer.
“Did she go out last night, mon amour?” Hamidou was looking at Kersti expectantly with her warm brown eyes. “Do you know if she snuck out?”
Kersti nodded.
“Where did she go?”