The Healer by Antti Tuomainen Page B

talking about.”
    â€œI see,” I said, and realized I was blushing.
    â€œYou’re jealous,” Elina said.
    I nodded reluctantly, feeling heat in my cheeks.
    â€œThis all happened a long time ago. I’m sure you have a past, too.”
    â€œOf course I do,” I said, feeling the heat spread to my neck and wanting to change the subject. “What were these ideas of Pasi’s?”
    â€œHe was a hard-line conservationist. He had contacts with the kinds of groups that were starting to shoot company owners and politicians—anyone who had caused environmental destruction or hadn’t done enough to slow it down. It was the black-and-white thinking of youth: if you’re not with us, you’re against us, and you don’t deserve to live. Johanna and I waved that flag, too. In secret, that is. But we believed it.”
    â€œI didn’t know you were so radical,” I said. “I mean, I knew that Johanna was an activist, but I didn’t know that she’d been living with a terrorist.”
    Elina looked for a moment like she was trying to remember how things really were. The coolness was disappearing from her gaze little by little.
    â€œPasi wasn’t a terrorist. A passionate person, even an obsessive person, yes, but he wasn’t a bad person. He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?”
    I thought of the murdered families and the evidence that Tarkiainen was at the scenes of those crimes. I shrugged and let the question pass.
    â€œWhy is it so hard for you to talk about?” I asked.
    Elina nodded toward the bedroom.
    â€œAhti doesn’t really understand,” she said, then added faintly, almost involuntarily, “for a lot of reasons.”
    I looked at her.
    â€œHaven’t the two of you ever talked about it?” I asked.
    She looked surprised and offended for a moment, then just surprised.
    â€œWhy would we? You and Johanna didn’t.”
    The truth stung.
    â€œNo, we didn’t. I guess there wasn’t any reason to.”
    â€œYou were happy as long as you thought you knew everything you needed to know,” Elina said. “And now that you know that there were things you didn’t know, you feel bad. You’ve got to make up your mind about how much you really want to know. Even about your own wife.”
    There was something in her voice that I’d never noticed before. The coolness had returned, and with it something hard, even bitter.
    â€œTell me more about Pasi Tarkiainen,” I said.
    â€œWhy?”
    I looked her in the eye.
    â€œYou haven’t told me everything.”
    She let out a puff of air and rolled her eyes. But she was a bad actor. Even she knew it.
    â€œYou’re not going to find Johanna by digging up things that happened a hundred years ago.”
    â€œYou haven’t told me everything,” I said again. “Ahti’s asleep. You can tell me.”
    She glanced toward the bedroom again. We listened to the silence for a moment. I could hear Ahti snoring.
    â€œThis is important, Elina,” I said. “Johanna has been missing for a day and a half. I don’t even want to think about any other possibility but finding her alive, unhurt. I need all the help I can get. It’s not easy to ask, but I have to. I have to find Johanna.”
    Elina pulled her legs up even closer, brushed the hair from her face with a few quick movements of her hand, and looked straight ahead for a moment. Then she looked at me again, her head bowed a little, and said, as if she were surrendering something:
    â€œI adored Pasi Tarkiainen.”
    She was still looking at me, perhaps waiting for some reaction. Then she continued: “I don’t know how to explain it now, but I adored him. And, of course, I wished that he adored me in the same way. But it was Johanna he wanted. I can admit it now—now that it’s been so many years. I was in love with Pasi, and I was dying of