We had with us bamboo canes and green garden wire. Henrik made a little enclosure to keep the goats off the sapling. Then he walked with us back to the little harbor and we drove him across the sound to Drøbak, where we moored the boat in the guest marina.

The sun was out. It was almost warm. We walked down narrow streets of delicate clapboard houses toward the market square, bought pizza and sour-cream dressing from a restaurant in an ugly gray villa. We sat on the plastic benches outside, eating meditatively, saying very little.

“This was nice,” said Henrik. “Thank you for the food.” He patted me on the back, got stiffly to his feet.

“Where are you going?” said Vee.

“Home.”

Vee stood. Henrik hugged her tightly, nodded to Elsa and to me, then headed off.

“Why’s he being weird?” said Vee.

“Because he’s your grandfather,” Elsa said. “And because the police interviewed him and asked him a whole lot of questions about how close he was to Licia.”

“But he would never . . .”

“I know.”

We sat for a while, finishing the pizza. “Seriously,” said Vee, “why is that woman staring at us?” I looked up. Elsa and I exchanged a look. Because there was no woman.

“Let’s go get you an ice cream, Vee,” I said.

“Sure,” she said brightly. But I saw how she shivered as she got to her feet.

We found a place that sold five flavors of ice cream, with a soft-scoop machine at the back. Elsa and I bought dispenser coffees. Vee bought a white soft-scoop, obscenely large and obscenely soft.

The air was warmer. The breeze had fallen away. We scuffed along through the narrow streets, with their picket fences and their orchards heavy with fruit. Crickets chirped. Apples and pears rotted in the dry grass. Our shoes made little ruck-ruck sounds on the softening tarmac.

No one was following us. Just Vee’s mind turning paranoid circles. Except . . .

It was then that I saw the woman, at the far end of the park. She was turned away, waiting on the bench outside the baker’s, nondescript in her gray shift dress and her flat black shoes, quietly blending in.

“Vee,” I said, taking her by the shoulders, turning her in the other direction, “help your mum get Franklin back to the boat.”

“Why, Dad?”

Elsa sent me a questioning glance.

“I’d like to take a couple of minutes for myself,” I said. “To think about your sister.”

“You all right, Dad?”

“Please. Just to . . .”

You okay? Elsa mouthed.

I nodded. “I will be,” I said softly.

I watched them disappear down the narrow street with its white-painted fishermen’s cottages. I felt a stab of guilt. Wrong to use emotional pain as an excuse. But Vee would be full of questions if I told her the truth. Elsa too.