Copper Heart (32 page)

Kaisa sat down next to me with a leggy blonde who she had introduced earlier: “This is Elvira, my friend. The Estonian hurdler.”

She didn’t need to explain any more, and I had no trouble guessing that the sparkle in her eyes was from more than just winning the gold. It looked right when Kaisa wrapped her arms around Elvira’s shoulder. That was probably a greater victory than the European Championships.

Johnny switched from “All My Loving” to “Michelle.” Lately I had been wondering about his sense of perspective given that he had thought Meritta committed suicide just because of him. Johnny had brushed the issue aside by claiming that he had been too messed up that night to think straight about anything. After finding Meritta’s body, he had tripped going down the steps on the hill, which was where the mysterious bruises came from. We had finally had the conversation I promised to have with him after I solved Meritta’s murder. But there hadn’t been much to talk about. There was no way to change the past, and we didn’t have any future. Still, I was happy that the only witness had been my uncle’s cat when I cried the whole night afterward. But I was also sure I was never going to dream about Johnny again. At least not very often.

Taking slow sips from my bottle of wine, I looked at the city sleeping below, the city I hated as a teenager and later tried in vain to forget. I was never going to escape the fact that I was from here, born with copper in my heart.

As if to taunt me, Johnny plucked those familiar chords on his guitar again. Two could play that game though. But as I sang, instead of looking at him, I gazed down the hillside.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

A familiar tall, thin, dark-haired figure climbed the stairs. I wasn’t entirely surprised, since the secretive glances and
whispering I had observed between my parents and Koivu over the past few days made me guess some surprise was in the works.

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

Still, my insides filled with butterflies.

I knew happy endings usually only lasted five minutes, or at best a day or two.

Remember me to one who lives there.

Then it would be time to start again, time for facing new trials. But as I stood up and ran down the stairs toward Antti, I was ready even for a short happy ending.

He once was a true love of mine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © Tomas Whitehouse, 2011

Leena Lehtolainen was born in Vesanto, Finland, to parents who taught language and literature. A keen reader, she made up stories in her head before she could even write. At the age of ten, she began her first book, a young adult novel, which was published two years later. Besides writing, Leena is fond of classical singing, her beloved cats, and—her greatest passion—figure skating. She attends many competitions as a skating journalist and writes for the Finnish figure-skating magazine
Taitoluistelu. Copper Heart
is the third installment in her best-selling Maria Kallio series, which debuted in English in 2012 with
My First Murder
and continued in 2013 with
Her Enemy
. Leena currently lives in Finland with her husband and two sons.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Photo © Pekka Piri, 2012

Owen F. Witesman is a professional literary translator with a master’s in Finnish and Estonian area studies from Indiana University. He has translated more than thirty Finnish books into English, including novels, children’s books, poetry, plays, graphic novels, and nonfiction. His recent translations include the first two novels in the Maria Kallio series,
My First Murder
and
Her Enemy
(AmazonCrossing), the satire
The Human Part
by Kari Hotakainen (MacLehose Press), the thriller
Cold Courage
by Pekka Hiltunen (Hesperus), and the 1884 classic
The Railroad
by Juhani Aho (Norvik Press). He currently resides in Springville, Utah, with his wife and three daughters, a dog, a cat, and twenty-nine fruit trees.