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Molly held the payphone to her ear, confused. "Um," she said. "A cat?"
"No, no, no!" Lina laughed at herself. "Not cat...bed! Sorry. You need a bed. And you will stay with me! Here!"
A smile spread across Molly's face as she quickly came to understand that her time with Lina would be marked by these funny little misunderstandings.
"Thank you so much," Molly said. She was holding the receiver with both hands, and her rucksack sat next to her feet on the ground.
As they made plans to meet at the train station in Groningen, Molly felt someone swoop up next to her. Before she knew it, her rucksack had been snatched, and a man in a black coat was running through the train station with it flung over one shoulder.
Molly dropped the phone and left it dangling as she took off after the man. It wasn't that she couldn't replace her clothes or her toothbrush, and her passport and money were tucked into a small purse that hung around her neck beneath her coat and sweater. But Rodney's urn was zipped into that rucksack. What was left of her husband--bits that she still meant to scatter in the places she stopped--was now running through the train station in Amsterdam, rapidly disappearing from her view.
"No!" Molly screamed, feeling panic overwhelm her. "Please stop!" She shoved a man out of her way and jumped over a duffel bag that someone had left on the concrete ground. There was a near miss with a woman pushing a stroller, a last minute dodge around an old man leaning on a cane, and with a few more shouts for help, Molly realized that she was still on the thief's trail.
"Help me--someone! My husband is in that bag! Someone stole my husband!"
People gave her confused looks as she shouted, some clearly not understanding what she was trying to say. But suddenly a group of three college-age boys turned, recognition registering on their faces. One dropped his own bag at the feet of his friend's and joined Molly on the chase.
"He stole your bag?" the boy asked, not yet breathless.
Molly, however, could barely speak as she wheezed over the exertion of running. "Yes," she nearly cried. "My husband's ashes are in that bag."
The boy suddenly ran with a turbo-charge, elbowing his way through crowds and closing the gap between them and the thief. As Molly watched, he cleared a low wall, extended his strides even further, and suddenly--just like he was in an action movie--he reached out with one hand and caught the guy by the neck of his jacket, yanking him backwards with so much force that they both fell to the ground.
Molly kept running, catching up to them as the college guy sat atop the thief, pinning him to the ground. At this point they were all breathless, and her hero's buddies had caught up to them.
"Whoa!" one of the other guys shouted. "Dude! You caught this guy."
The guy pinning the thief untangled the backpack from the arms of the man beneath him and thrust it back at Molly. "Here you go," he said, sounding to her like nothing less than Superman himself.
Tears filled Molly's eyes as she reached out and took the bag, hugging it tightly to her chest. She wouldn't ever make the mistake again of setting her bag down in public.
"Anything you want to do to this guy?" the boy on top of the thief asked, looking up at her. His hair was sweaty against his forehead and his chest was heaving from the chase and the struggle, but to Molly he looked like the most handsome, heroic guy she could imagine.
Without thinking about it for even a second, Molly stood over the thief, lifted one foot, and kicked him squarely in the crotch.
Nearly everyone around them began to cheer, though she noticed most of the men wincing in sympathy.
She reached Lina by dinnertime, and that night as she was settled in on the couch in a sunroom, covered by a warm, thick blanket and looking out a skylight at the darkest sky she'd ever seen, Molly felt a wash of gratitude. She was grateful for strangers at that moment--the ones on trains who offered you a different alternative to what you had planned; the ones who gave chase in foreign cities and rescued your husband's ashes; and the ones who took you into their homes, fed youstamppot--kale, sausage, and mashed potatoes--and made up a bed for you with their children's extra cartoon-covered sheets in a cozy sunroom.
From Groningen forward the trip was like that. Molly stayed at Lina's for two nights before Lina passed her on to her friend Lotte in Hamburg. Lotte, a pink-cheeked, pale blonde woman of thirty-one who loved beer and late-70s punk music, took her out to what felt like every bar in Hamburg, buying Molly drink after drink and slinging an arm around her neck as they sang along to loud bands covering The Clash and Sex Pistols, then wandered home through darkened streets as they drunkenly sang more songs by The Police and The Cure.
Lotte sent her on her way after several big hugs and promises to stay in touch, and Molly ended up in Copenhagen with Daniel and Paulina Anselm, who were both writers and who reminded Molly of a Golden Retriever (Daniel, with his floppy blonde hair and earnest smile), and an Irish Setter (Paulina, all long, reddish hair and seriousness). They were kind and warm and she loved staying with them in their slanted-roof penthouse apartment on the top of a garment factory in Copenhagen, but after two nights there of listening to their urgent lovemaking in the next room, Molly was more than happy to move on and bid them and their happy married life farewell.
Daniel Anselm had a younger brother in Oslo who agreed to take Molly in for one night, and it was a night she never forgot. From the moment she met Casper Anselm she was completely smitten, under his spell, dazzled by his good looks. He was as dark-haired as Daniel was fair, and he had the iciest blue eyes she'd ever seen, fringed by long, black lashes. Casper met her outside the bus station in Oslo with a small, semi-wilted bouquet of winter flowers, which was one of the most wonderful things Molly thought she'd ever seen. He wore a cream-colored turtleneck sweater and a pair of Levi's, and when she stepped up to him with a big, open smile, he immediately pulled her to him, kissing her full on the lips and welcoming her to Norway.
Casper's English was almost nonexistent, and as he was from Denmark and spoke Danish as well as Norwegian, they mostly ended up pointing at things and laughing, and by the time they got back to Casper's apartment, they resorted stripping off one another's clothes, kissing, and laughing some more.
Molly had thought her loving passion with Rodney was the pinnacle of romance, and that the understanding and shared pain of losing a spouse that she'd had with Adi had led to some of the most tender nights of her life. But this brief interlude with Casper was a revelation. Rather than the weighty love of commitment and promises, or the heart-wrenching heat of shared pain, what Molly experienced with Casper was joy. They giggled like schoolchildren discovering something new and exciting, enjoying each other and living in the moment and forgetting until the sun came up that there was anything in the world outside the walls of Casper's small apartment.
When he kissed her bruised lips the next day on the street, tucking her hair behind both of her ears sweetly as he looked into her eyes, Molly knew that something inside of her had healed. Something that she'd been carrying around unknowingly, something that was rubbing against her heart like a piece of sandpaper scrapes across rough wood. Being with Casper had smoothed away some of those splinters and rough edges, leaving her a little raw but changed for the better. Definitely changed for the better.
Casper knew a group of college students who were working on a project that revolved around viewing the aurora borealis in Lapland, which was in northern Sweden. They had a small house with an extra bedroom and would be happy to have her stay with them until the New Year in exchange for Molly's willingness to cook dinner for them every night and do some light cleaning--things that none of them cared to do, and that this cerebral group tended to completely forget about most days.
Molly agreed to this stipulation readily, and soon found herself standing in the middle of a wooden A-frame house in the snowy north of Sweden, holding her rucksack on one shoulder as she introduced herself to Graham, Ursula, and Carina.
"Welcome to the frat house," Graham said with a North American accent. He offered Molly a hand and she shook it. "This is my girlfriend, Ursula, and this is Carina."
Molly shook everyone's hands. "Where are you guys from?"
