Sun Storm by Åsa Larsson Read Free Book Online Page B

to Thomas Söderberg.
    He looks good, you have to admit. Dark brown curly hair, and long black eyelashes. He laughs and jokes, but from time to time he becomes totally serious. He’s young to be a priest—or pastor, as he says. And he’s wearing
jeans and a shirt. He draws on the board. The picture of the bridge. It’s all about how Jesus gave up his life for them. Built a bridge to God. Because God so loved the world that he gave up his only son. He addresses the class with the friendly “du” form, although he is talking to twenty-four people at the same time. He wants them to choose life. Say yes. And he answers all the questions they put to him at the end. At some of the questions he falls silent for a while. He frowns and nods thoughtfully. As if it’s the first time anyone has asked these questions. As if they have given him something to think about. Much later Rebecka realizes that it was far from the first time he’d heard those questions. That the answers had been prepared a long time ago. But the person who asks the questions is made to feel special.
    He ends the visit with an invitation to the Mission church summer gathering in Gällivare. Three weeks’ work and Bible studies, no pay but free board and lodging.
    “Dare to be curious,” he urges them. “You can’t be sure the Christian faith isn’t for you unless you’ve found out what it really stands for.”
    Rebecka thinks he’s looking straight at her as he speaks. She looks straight back at him. And she can feel the fire.
     
    T he snowplow had cleared the road right up to her grandmother’s gray cottage. There was a light upstairs. Rebecka lifted out her suitcase and the supermarket carrier bag of food. She had shopped on the way. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, but you never know. She locked the car.
    That’s the sort of person I am now, she thought. The sort of person who locks things.
    “Hello!” she called when she got inside.
    There was no answer, but presumably Sanna and the children had closed the upstairs door leading to the staircase, so they wouldn’t have heard her.
    She put down what she was carrying and took a walk around downstairs without switching on the lights. It had the characteristic smell of an old house. Lino and dampness. Musty. The furniture stood there like a collection of tired ghosts, pressing themselves against the walls in the darkness, covered with grandmother’s hand-stitched linen sheets.
    She went upstairs carefully, afraid of falling; the melted snow under the soles of her boots had made them slippery.
    “Hello,” she shouted up the stairs, but there was no reply this time either.
    Rebecka opened the door to the upstairs flat and went into the narrow, dark hallway. When she bent down to unzip her boots something black came flying at her face. She screamed and tumbled backwards. Two cheerful yelps and the black thing turned out to be a lovely little dog. A pink tongue took the opportunity to acquaint itself with her face. Two more encouraging yaps and then the dog licked her again.
    “Virku, come here!”
    A girl of about four appeared in the open doorway. The dog did a little pirouette on Rebecka’s stomach, danced over to the girl, gave her a lick, then pranced back to Rebecka. But by then Rebecka had managed to get to her feet. The dog shoved its nose into the bag of groceries instead.
    “You must be Lova,” said Rebecka, switching on the hall light and edging the dog away from the carrier bag with her foot at the same time.
    The light fell on the girl. She had a blanket wrapped around her, and Rebecka realized it was cold in the house.
    “Who are you?” asked Lova.
    “My name’s Rebecka,” she replied briefly. “Let’s go in the kitchen.”
    She stopped at the door and looked at the kitchen, dumbstruck. The chairs had been turned over. Grandmother’s rag rug was screwed up under the kitchen table. Virku scampered up to a pile of sheets that had presumably been covering the furniture. She