“I agree. And certainly not on Garden Island, in that most godforsaken of places. But might not planting a tree turn that moment of yours into something more permanent? Might it anchor the thought of who Alicia Curtis is, until the day she returns?”

I considered this. Most likely Elsa would like the idea. Vee too.

“It might,” I said. “It would certainly be in Licia’s spirit.”

“Then there is another island a little farther down the fjord that I would like you to see.”

Eighteen

We took our boat, traveled an hour down the fjord to the island Bror had told me about. Håøya. Unpronounceable but beautiful, all abandoned factory buildings and wild-roaming goats. German troops had been stationed in this place during the war. The officers’ quarters had been converted to weekend cabins; a small workshop made goat cheese and served coffee.

We moored in a natural harbor on the western side of the island, followed the path up past a simple tarred-wood cabin.

“Strange,” said Elsa.

“What is?” said Vee.

“I’m pretty certain that’s Quisling’s cabin.”

Nordic carvings decorated the heavy front door, roughly cut. Smoke curled from the chimney. Plants hung in baskets from the heavy roof beams. Through the windows I saw plates and pans lined up in the white-painted kitchen; the table was set for a meal of crayfish and crab.

“Who’s Quisling?” said Vee. But Elsa was disappearing fast up the rise, pushing Franklin’s stroller ahead of her, as if sweeping a path.

“Wartime leader,” I said. “Under the Germans.”

“What, like a Nazi?”

“An actual Norwegian Nazi. Sent a lot of Jewish people to their deaths.”

“Why are people using his cabin?”

“I don’t know.”

Elsa had stopped in a clearing where the redbrick mess hall stood. Through high metal-framed windows you could see the stage where German troops had cheered and entertained each other with music and song on chill Norwegian nights. The guts of a piano were spilled across the floor. Someone had taken an ax to it in cruel revenge for the songs it had once played.

“Why are we doing this here?” said Vee. “If this really is a Nazi island?”

“It belongs to people like us now,” said Elsa. “Not to people like that.”

We sat for a while at a picnic table outside the mess hall, listening to the wind in the trees, and, farther off, the bells that hung around the necks of the goats. Sunlight dappled prettily on the brickwork. There was an eerie stillness to the buildings that appealed to Elsa, I guessed; something unresolved and unfinished. She knew this place from her childhood. She had said yes to Bror’s suggestion at once.

“Who’s that?” said Vee, staring toward the far end of the clearing. But when I looked up there was no one there.