The Seventh Child (43 page)

“I’m looking for Dorah Laursen. She used to live in this building forty years ago—on the third floor,” I said in a somewhat formal tone. I wasn’t used to speaking with strangers.

“Ms. Laursen? But she moved many years ago.” Oddly, he remembered her right away. I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Did she have a husband?” I asked. Surely he would be easier to track down.

“Married? No, I don’t think so. She lived alone.”

I was surprised by this information.
Alone?
It would run directly counter to Mother’s Aid Society’s basic principle that adopted children grow up in whole, healthy families—which is to say, with both a mother
and
a father. “But—she had a child
…
?” I said, a little flummoxed.

“Ah, yes
…
” The old man hesitated for a second. “There
was
a child right before she moved.”

“Right before she moved?”

“Yes. It was the year my wife died
…
” The old man paused again. “In 1966.”

“1966?” I was more perplexed than ever. It was like walking through a dark corridor and discovering that all the doors
you’d
opened led to new, unlit chambers no one knew existed.

“Yes. A little boy.” He suddenly smiled. “She took him in his baby carriage to the grocer
…
I think he was adopted—the boy I mean.”

“Adopted?”

“Yes.”

“Could this have been a few years earlier?” With unease I tried leading him back to the year I was focused on. “1961 or ’62?”

“No,” he said firmly. “My wife died in 1966.”

“But do you know where she moved to, with the boy?”

“Yes. To Jutland. She had grown tired of the city. She sent me a letter after my wife died.” He recognized my curiosity at once.

A couple of minutes later, he returned with a small envelope in his hand. Her address was written in neat script on the back of the envelope:
Dorah Laursen, Sletterhagevej 18, Stødov, Helgenæs.

From between the old man’s feet, the dog stared at me as if it understood what was about to happen.

Though I hated traveling, I had to go. I hadn’t gone that far since my secret investigation of Asger Christoffersen and his parents in Jutland when we were kids.

The new date was a complete mystery to me. I simply couldn’t understand how the woman who had been selected to adopt Eva’s child in 1961 had suddenly been declared childless—until, according to the old man, she adopted a boy in 1966. Five years too late. Maybe they’d given up and found another.

For many hours I thought about my options, but there was no way back. Three days later, I stepped off of bus 361 in the little town of Stødov at Helgenæs and knocked on a small, low door in a whitewashed house with a thatched roof. The door was opened by a small, stout woman with a short, thick neck and stumpy legs, which made me wonder whether her seemingly squashed figure had anything to do with the modest size of the house—if it was actually possible that decades of living in such a low-ceilinged residence had finally compressed this woman’s frame, flattening it.

“Hello,” I said.

She was about seventy years old, and her living room was rather messy—full of trinkets as well as tiny cobwebs that were visible in the light that filtered through the narrow windows.

The minute I mentioned Kongslund, she interrupted me with a frightened look in her eyes. “You’re from Kongslund
…
from the orphanage?”

I kept the crooked side of my face hidden in the shadow so she wouldn’t find yet another cause for concern, and said carefully, “Yes. I’ve lived there all my life.”

For a moment she sat completely still. Then she said, “But what’s happened at Kongslund after all these years that has anything to do with me?” The question was straightforward, yet peculiar—and her voice trembled.

“How long has it been since you heard from anyone at Kongslund?” I asked.

For some reason she suddenly blushed. “Do you mean when I gave up my child—or later?” Her fear hung like a dark shadow in the pockets of dust under the low ceiling.

“Tell me about the
first
time,” I said, trying to conceal my surprise at her strange question.

“It’s not easy
…
It’s been so long, you see,” she said with the immense hesitation characteristic of that hilly region. “I just remember that I contacted them
…
when I became pregnant.” She closed her eyes and sank into herself. “I asked them for help
…
because I had no idea who the father was.”

“What year did you become pregnant?” I edged farther away from her in the hope that it would help unfold her sunken body just a little bit.

“It was 1961. Today my son is—” She interrupted herself, opened her eyes, and stared up at me. Then she said, “But he was given to somebody else.”

“But you have a child today, Dorah, don’t you?” I spoke to her as though she were one of the two-year-olds in the Giraffe Room, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Yes. Lars. I got him
the second time around
…
When I got angry.”

“The second time around?”

“Yes. First they came and picked up my
…
son. Early in the morning. It was a woman I didn’t know.” She sniffled once, quickly and the sound filled the entire room. “They promised me there’d be no trouble. She took the child with her
…
my son
…
It wasn’t an official adoption, after all, and that was that.” She looked up, a little startled as though it had all just happened. “It was four in the morning.”

“Who took him?”

“How would I know?” she said defensively. “I first talked to Mother’s Aid Society and then with a lady from Kongslund who said they would take care of it for everyone’s benefit. I just had to let in their messenger when she arrived. And afterward, I was to forget all about it.”

Messenger.
I noted her word choice with a light shiver. She had, without knowing it, used the exact same word that was printed in Magdalene’s journal:

It was a messenger, and not a mother. I saw that right away. She simply placed the little one on the steps; there was no farewell, no grief.

“You just had to forget all about it?”

“Yes. We were never to discuss it again.”

“But then you got pregnant again?”

She gave me a surprised look. “No. That was the problem. It was as though my deed had
…
” She searched for the words, but couldn’t find them. Then she continued in a muted voice, as though she were confiding a big secret to me: “After a while I regretted it
…
that I’d handed over my son. So I called them and demanded to have him back
…
Then I got another visit from the woman from Kongslund—”

“The same woman?” I asked, interrupting her.

“Yes. I don’t remember her name, but she was small, petite. This was in the winter of 1965. She said I couldn’t have my son back
…
because
he’d
long since been placed with a family.” Dorah sniffled and wiped her nose with her meaty forearm, the way a child does. “That made me really angry, because I was the one who was alone, and they were the ones
who’d
said it was the best thing for me. But they’d been completely wrong. I should’ve kept my son.” She sniffled again. “Then I told her that they seemed to be living in a world where little babies could be given and taken at will, and that they had to find another boy for me to replace the one they had taken.”

I started, and my reaction must have been obvious, because she became nervous and silent and looked like she might just disappear from the face of the earth, right into the sofa cushions.

Finally, she stirred again. “At first they refused. They couldn’t do that, she said. But I was serious. And then they got scared.” She reemerged from the cushions, as though reborn.

“They got scared?”

She laughed, sniffling at the same time, and said, “Yes. I think they would have liked to have gotten rid of me—handed me to someone who could lock me up—but they didn’t dare, and finally they gave in, and I was told to wait.”

“To wait?”

“Yes. For the delivery.” Dorah’s eyes shined bright.

The delivery
. I could feel a cold shiver running up my crooked shoulder.

“It was in early February.” She glared at me defiantly, as though I was one of them. “In 1966.”

I waited for the frightening conclusion.

“Well, then she came
…
one Saturday evening
…
with my child. With my new son. All the paperwork was in order, of course. Everything. They had even baptized him—his name was Lars—and that couldn’t be changed. But I didn’t care.” She smiled up at the clock on the wall; clearly she had traveled back in time.

Her life’s triumph.

It was grotesque.

“He could be named Lars for all I cared,” she said.

A flood of questions streamed through my mind, and I didn’t know where to begin. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was telling me. How could she have been given a son—
again
—five years later?

And what had happened to the first child?

And who was the woman who gave and took children—Goodness of Heart’s very own messenger?

“I don’t understand it,” I said in a low voice, already resigned to never understanding it.

“No, I’ve never understood it either,” she said. And then she suddenly stood. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It doesn’t matter now. I got Lars, and that’s what matters. I’ve never had any problems with him. And it’s been so long.”

“Where is he now—your son?”

“He isn’t here. He’s a chauffeur. He drives for a limousine company in Aarhus. The wealthy hire them for parties and weddings. He’s coming to visit me tonight.”

“Did you ever tell him
…
that you
…
?”

“No. What am I supposed to say? I don’t know anything about his background
…
and I promised not to say a word to anyone.”

I could feel the anger in my twisted bones. I could feel how it forced its way through my stomach and lungs and throat and readied itself to leap, glowing red, into the living room where there was no place for that kind of outburst.

I breathed and checked my emotions—and then stood. “I want to tell you one thing, Ms. Laursen
…
You should
never
keep your child in ignorance about that kind of thing.
Never
.” I almost whispered the last few words. “Because
they can feel it anyway
…
and that ruins them forever. It ruins their lives because they know that something’s wrong, even when no one talks about it. They just know
…
the way every person knows that kind of thing. A lie is an illusion. Deep down you always know the truth.”

She stared at me, startled.

“Somebody has played a trick on you, Dorah, and you and I have to figure out who. All we know right now is that Kongslund is involved, and if you don’t tell Lars,
I
will, and I mean it
…
You have to tell him the truth.
Now
.”

She had sunken into the gray sofa and was crying.

I never saw Dorah again. I left her late that afternoon, before her son came home. Judging by the light of what happened later, I should have stayed and talked everything through with her. With both of them.

I should have been present when her son received the terrible message. I should have been there to observe his immediate reaction to the shocking story; nobody knows when and in which situations people will react uncontrollably. But confused by the woman’s crying, I had imagined a quiet and equally compressed, younger male version of Dorah, which of course was a foolish mistake since they were not blood relatives at all.

I should have known that better than anyone.

When he showed up in Copenhagen, it was too late. And how he tracked down Magna’s inner circle, I’ll never know.

That day in the hills I overlooked the obvious.