“Oh dear,” Noora says. “Hanna, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. I know how it can be. Death. It’s so…final. It’s hard for mortal brains to comprehend.”
I gesture to the casket again while keeping my eyes on them. “Noora. Go and look for me. Please. He’s not in there. I’m not hallucinating. And then that guy just showed up out of nowhere. He says he knows where my father is.”
Noora doesn’t even glance at Rasmus. “Oh don’t mind him. He was your father’s apprentice. Seems he can’t let go of him either. So terribly sad. I feel for both of you.”
I sense Rasmus’ presence still behind me but he’s staying silent. There’s a dark, cold feeling in my stomach like I’ve swallowed a pit of ice. “Apprentice? Apprentice of what? Hotel management?” As far as I know, my father didn’t even run the hotel, he was just behind the concept, one of the owners.
“Noora, why don’t you go take a look,” Eero says in a patient tone and nods at the casket. “Just to give our dear Hanna peace of mind.”
Noora gives me a tight smile and walks past me, the air smelling like rot, so much so that I nearly start gagging.
Don’t look, I tell myself. Keep your eyes on Eero.
Eero gives me a half-smile in response, something more sly than anything, like he heard my thoughts and he knows I’m going to lose. Lose what? I don’t know. That pit of ice in my stomach grows sharper.
I hear Noora chuckle softly from behind me. “Oh, Hanna. He is in here, looking so peaceful. He is at peace now, don’t you understand? Come look.”
Eero holds my gaze as I start to waver.
“Really?” I ask. “Rasmus?” I add, wanting to hear it from him. “Is he really in there?”
But there’s only silence. Why isn’t Rasmus saying anything? He was so hell-bent on getting me out of here and now he’s just gone mute.
“He’s at peace, so you need your own peace,” Noora says. “Come see, Hanna. Come see your dear father.”
I can barely swallow the lump in my throat. My entire body feels like shaking uncontrollably and I can’t stop it.
I turn around, breaking eye contact with Eero, a freeing sensation entering my body, and blink. Rasmus is gone. Like, he’s completely disappeared. But before I can even point that out, how that’s even possible, I see Noora peering over the casket.
And I see my father in that casket.
My mouth drops open, hit with both bewilderment at how fucked up my mind must be to have not seen him before, to utter gut-kicking sadness.
It’s him.
“Papa!” I cry out and run toward the casket, Noora stepping out of the way.
Tears automatically stream down my face as I stare down at my father’s lifeless body. It’s him, it’s really him. From his white beard, to his hooked nose which he always used to call his beak, to the stubborn crease between his white brows, like he’s frowning his way through death…
“Papa,” I say again, the word coming out raw and broken and I feel like the grief I thought I knew, the grief I thought I was making friends with, that was setting like cement, has changed once again. It’s deeper now, potent, and ripping my soul apart into tiny little pieces that will never come back together.
I want to touch him but I’m afraid he’ll be cold, that he won’t feel like him. I lean over his face, trying to memorize the details. It had been so long since I’d seen him and yet he looks the exact same. Like he hasn’t aged at all. Like he’s not even dead, just resting, just sleeping.
“I love you,” I whisper to him, and the tears fall from my face, splashing onto his skin. “I’m sorry I never said it enough. I should have said it more. I should have called more, I should have been more present, I should have been with you as soon as I was able to and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I kept putting it off. Putting you last. I thought we had more time. I really thought we had more time and we…we don’t. We didn’t. Now you’re gone. You’re gone.”
More tears fall from my eyes, landing on his face. With shaking hands, I reach to wipe it off his cheek but before I do, his skin seems to move beneath the droplet. I pause, staring wide-eyed. His skin seems to warp and shimmer, becoming translucent, and I swear I can see something underneath.
Something moving.
Something like…another face.
I shake my head, as if trying to right it, because I have to be hallucinating again, I have to be.
But then something shifts, and my father’s nose appears to disintegrate before my eyes, turning black, like it’s rotting off.