The Nightingale Murder by Leena Lehtolainen

Author:Leena Lehtolainen [Lehtolainen, Leena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503901117
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2018-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

11

On Wednesday morning, I woke up at six to have time for a jog. The sun was already rising, and the light cast the trees in sharp relief against the horizon in a red-and-yellow line. The sky was a dazzling blue, and a half moon hung above the trees. I ran about three and a half miles, greeting the familiar people out jogging or walking their dogs. It was cold and windless, which increased the stench from the exhaust of the cars as they idled at each intersection. It was a beautiful day for a funeral.

When I returned from my run, I wasn’t as depressed as I’d been when I woke up. Antti had already made coffee, and I ate a hearty breakfast after showering. He would take the kids to school and then head for Vaasa after seeing his mother. Then she would come watch the children in the afternoon.

“I was thinking about staying over on Friday for Virve’s party,” Antti said. “Maybe it’s good for me to have some time to myself to think things through.”

“What’s so hard about accepting free money?”

“That’s exactly the point. I didn’t earn it! What right do I have for things to be so much easier for me than someone else just because my dad’s family happened to have money and he had a good job?”

Of course, I understood Antti’s logic. He’d always felt guilty about his father’s family being so rich. I hoped he didn’t think I was pushing because I wanted us to take his inheritance. If Antti accepted the money and we used it to buy a house, it might be a good idea to sign a postnup. Apparently, there was still a little bit of the lawyer left in me.

“You’ll be fine with the kids, right? Mom’s happy to help. She enjoys getting into our business now that she doesn’t have Dad to care for anymore.”

I was surprised at the bitterness in Antti’s voice, and Virve’s party had me terrified. Why did I think it was just going to be a party for two? I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t call Antti’s cell phone on Friday night. I still had my pride. The kiss we exchanged before I left for work was a formality, but we didn’t dare go without it. We weren’t actually fighting, after all.

I scraped the frost off the side mirrors and thought about Iida’s teacher’s promise to speak to Miro Miettinen’s teacher. She’d said that, sadly, it was difficult to do much about a child’s behavior if the parents weren’t cooperative. Maybe Miro was from a family where name-calling like that was allowed. Antti was right. A child didn’t choose their parents or the values they were raised with. I’m sure Iida and Taneli would have liked to have parents who were home more often.

Snow began falling gently, and the car ahead of me slid every time it braked. Maybe its driver had taken a risk and switched to summer tires already. In the morning meeting, we went over a report from Helsinki.

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