No Regrets (4 page)

Ruth had relatives all over America. Surprisingly, she managed to keep in touch with many of her siblings. She would often say how much she loved her family, and how—as she grew older—she realized the importance of having a family you could count on.

Unfortunately, when Ruth met Rolf Neslund, her mother was dead. Some members of the Myers family whispered that Ruth was responsible for that.

Even though her mother lived in Illinois and was elderly, Ruth had managed to write a life insurance policy on her through the Seattle company Ruth worked for. Not too long after, her mother became ill. When Ruth learned that her mother had been hospitalized back in her home state, she rushed to her side. Ruth soon managed to convince her mother’s doctors that she could take much better care of her at home. As it turned out, she could not— or did not. Some of Ruth’s sisters claimed that she deliberately fed their mother the very foods that the doctors had put on her forbidden list. The elderly woman died shortly thereafter.

“Ruth was the beneficiary of our mother’s insurance,” a relative sniffed in derision. “She collected her money, and when anyone said anything to her about how she gave in to
Mom’s cravings for sugar and all, Ruth just said, ‘Well, she was going to die anyway. . . .’”

Her sisters may only have been jealous; Ruth was already a lot better off financially than most of her siblings were.

Her mother’s insurance payoff wasn’t much of a windfall, but Ruth was very good with money. At the time she met Rolf, she was buying the small house she lived in in Everett, Washington, twenty-six miles north of Seattle. She paid five thousand dollars for her little house. This was in an era in Washington State when a newly built three-bedroom house could be purchased for about ten thousand dollars. After Ruth met Rolf, she sold her bungalow for a few thousand more than she paid for it. She also owned a vacant lot near Paine Field. The real estate boom in the area was some years away, and her houses and lots were excellent investments.

With his wanderlust, Rolf had never cared much about owning real estate, and, planning to reunite with Elinor, he had been living in a cheap apartment about ten miles south of Ruth’s place when he met her.

Whatever his true feelings were for Elinor Ekenes and the two small boys who were almost certainly his sons, Rolf Neslund was quickly bewitched by Ruth, and seemed to enjoy being married to her. They were not a young couple, but they appeared to get along with each other—once Elinor was essentially out of the picture. Most people who knew them thought it would be fine if they ended up together, living out the rest of their years in a companionable way rather than with a wild sex life. But their age belied the very real attraction that sizzled between them. Ruth wanted Rolf, and he had come to want her—a lot. Initially, there was probably more sexual electricity there than anyone
suspected. And they had much in common: Both of them had colorful pasts marked by poverty in their early years, a history of numerous other relationships, extensive travel, and, particularly in Rolf’s case, near-death experiences.

Despite her many relatives around the country, Ruth had been basically alone when she met Rolf. But she wasn’t a helpless single woman or anyone to be pitied. Although she had very little formal schooling, she was highly intelligent. She was most adept at arithmetic, and kept perfect records, even when she didn’t have much to keep records about. It was probably predictable that she sought some permanency in her life. Her ambition was to own a great deal of property, to have something solid that belonged to her, something she could see. She could certainly see Rolf, and he had an air of confidence and stability about him. He didn’t dress like a rich man, but she had quickly ferreted out that his pilot’s position made him well off. And he planned to work for many more years.

Rolf had been something of a barterer, trading goods for service, and he owned some oil stock that had impressive-looking certificates, but he wasn’t nearly as interested as Ruth was in making money. After he ran off to sea, Rolf’s family in Norway had built a thriving shipping business. His mother had left her estate to him and his three siblings, and he had about nine thousand (American) dollars in a Norwegian bank. Rolf was quite willing to let Ruth keep the books and look around for property to buy. She called herself a “horse trader,” and he was impressed with her business sense.

The Neslunds soon moved off the mainland of Washington State. After looking at property, they settled on
Lopez Island, one of four rocky outcroppings that make up the San Juan Islands: San Juan, Orcas, Shaw, and Lopez. Islands adrift in the Strait of Juan de Fuca some eighty-five miles northwest of Seattle, all of them astoundingly beautiful places to live.

Forty-five years ago, there wasn’t much going on in the San Juans except for the promise of serenity, more sunshine than the rest of Washington State, and the feeling of being part of a community where people knew and cared about one another. Even twenty years ago, there weren’t more than twelve hundred people living on Lopez Island. There was virtually no felony crime, and murders were extremely rare.

But progress, for better or worse, was edging into the San Juans. Tourists were beginning to discover the tranquil forests, gently rolling meadows, and vistas of the sea from countless miles of shoreline. Quaint shops and restaurants attracted visitors, and a number of artists and writers were drawn to the islands.

Bestselling thriller writer John Saul built one of his many homes on the edge of a cliff on Lopez Island, next to where his parents had lived for years. Writer Charlotte Paul lived there. Actor Tom Skerritt and his wife resided on Lopez whenever they could get away from Hollywood, and later on, they opened up a bed-and-breakfast. Richard Bach, author of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
took up residence on nearby Orcas Island. A number of familiar faces from Hollywood vacationed there. In the San Juans, they were all just part of the community, and not celebrities to be pointed out or stalked. The area was an oasis from a world that moved too fast.

Lopez was a particularly friendly island. It was the custom there to wave to anyone you passed on the road— friend or stranger.

Unlike the well-known people who moved to the San Juan Islands, the Neslunds were far from famous or sought after, but like them, enjoyed the serenity and peace. In 1974, they bought a 7.2-acre plot of land with an old house on it on Alec Bay Road, on the south end of Lopez. The next year, the house mysteriously burned to the ground. With the insurance money, Ruth designed and built a five-thousand-square-foot home, one of the largest on Lopez. An almost hidden dirt road led to the backyard of their barn red rambler, while the front windows looked out on Alec Bay. They fenced in meadows on either side to make pastures for sheep and cattle.

Ruth handled it all. She wrote the checks that chipped away at their mortgage with payments of $152.00 each month, only occasionally falling behind. She always managed to catch up on mortgage payments and taxes just in time to keep them from losing their property. She knew it was a canny real estate investment; by 1981, one estimated appraisal of their house and land was an almost unbelievable five hundred thousand dollars. By that time, Ruth had whittled their mortgage down to only sixty-five hundred dollars. She knew all about how compound interest could build a fortune, and she always deliberately waited five years to pay their taxes because she knew she could use that money in ways that brought in more in interest than she lost in penalties.

Early on, the Neslunds established a pattern where Rolf turned his pilot’s salary over to Ruth, and she wrote all the checks to pay bills. He preferred to handle cash only.

To be sure he always had spending money, Ruth kept
cash on hand in a dresser drawer. Sometimes, it was twenty dollars; sometimes it was fifteen hundred. “Whenever he needed money,” she said fondly, “he would tell me and I would go and get him some. I always wanted him to have the cash he needed.”

In November 1962, a year and a half after their marriage, Rolf wrote his last will and testament. He left virtually everything to his new bride, with apparently no provision for his sons or their mother. Ruth kept the will in a strongbox in their home.

A few years later, on May 27, 1965, the couple signed a “boilerplate” form Ruth had purchased at a stationery store. It was very simple: They filled in the spaces that showed they agreed that if one of them should die all of their holdings were to be considered community property and go directly to the survivor. They had a notary public validate their signatures, and they filed the agreement at the courthouse the next day.

What belonged to him would be hers, and what belonged to Ruth would be Rolf’s. Their signatures each had large, sweeping capital letters at the beginning, although Rolf’s writing was a bit more flamboyant than his wife’s. A graphologist would probably say that they were both confident—and even dominant—personality types.

Ruth decorated their large home in the style of the 1960s and seventies, buying plush, velvety furniture in shades of brown and gold that blended perfectly against wood-paneled walls. The carpeting was mocha shag piling, with a pattern of darker colors sprinkled across it. Her lamps and knickknacks were much more feminine than anything Rolf would have chosen, the end tables draped with starched and embroidered white linen, the matching lamps with either ivory globes or marble bases. As almost
every woman crafter did in that era, Ruth crocheted afghans in the ubiquitous zigzag pattern of orange, brown, and white.

The Neslunds’ native stone fireplace with its thick wood mantel held a chiming Seth Thomas clock, and their walls were hung with numerous paintings, some of the ocean, some of flowers, some with big-eyed children.

Ruth collected and resold antiques, but her favorites were the parlor furniture which had once belonged to Rolf’s mother in Norway.

“I took it all apart,” Ruth recalled. “It came over on a ship and it was pretty well fractured. I restored the wood, braced it, glued it, and reupholstered it. [There’s] a little love seat with four parlor chairs. That’s not for sale.”

Rolf was a man of the sea, his very blood seemingly infused with salt water, and on Lopez the smell and sight of the sea was everywhere. Still, it was nice for him to come home from standing against the icy winds on the bridge and riding the troughs and peaks of storm-tossed waves, pleasant to share his evenings with Ruth.

She tended a big vegetable garden and strawberry patch, and either froze or canned what they didn’t eat during growing season. In a good strawberry year, Ruth sometimes had a stall over in Anacortes where she sold berries to people waiting for a ferry. She was a pretty fair cook and joined Rolf in a drink or two before dinner.

Theirs was an idyllic life, or so it seemed to those who knew them.

Northwest islanders are a different breed, content to be far away from city traffic and problems. Their lives revolve around the arrival and departure of the ferries that come
and go each day, bringing in supplies and visitors, taking residents off-island when they have business in Seattle or Bellingham or Vancouver, British Columbia. Lopez Island is almost as close to Canada as it is to the mainland of Washington State, a fairly self-sufficient community caught between two countries. The island certainly proved to be the perfect place for Rolf and Ruth.

They made friends on Lopez, and Rolf had a large circle of friends among the other pilots in the Puget Sound Pilots’ Association, so the Neslunds had ample opportunity to socialize. The ship pilots were an extremely tight-knit group, as loyal to one another as any military men who have fought wars together. They took care of their own, and Rolf Neslund was definitely one of their own.

As it turned out, Rolf would work as a pilot for eighteen years after their marriage, but Ruth never felt alone; she had neighbors she could count on. Through the early years of their marriage, it seemed that the couple had made a good match. Rolf was gone quite a bit and Ruth had her friends on the island to have coffee with, or to invite in for supper. She had her garden, of course, and she was always looking for antiques or other items she could refurbish or resell.

She continued to look around for reasonably priced pieces of real estate. Rolf didn’t care much about real estate investments, but he wasn’t against putting his money to work—as long as Ruth took care of all the paperwork, and saw that payments were made.

One drawback, perhaps, to living on an isolated island with a small population was that everyone knew your business; there were very few secrets. If married couples had loud arguments, details of the encounters soon spread. When somebody got drunk in a bar or even at home, people
knew. Actually, there were only two public places to drink on Lopez: the Islander-Lopez or the Galley. They were close together, and lots of rumors passed back and forth.

Ruth and Rolf had their share of arguments over the years. What they argued about was not initially obvious, although it would become more so as the years passed: It was almost always about Elinor. Oddly, Ruth would always deny that she knew precisely what Rolf’s relationship with Elinor Ekenes had been. She insisted that she and Rolf never really spoke of Elinor, and she was vague and uninterested in talking about the situation. But everyone knew that Ruth frowned whenever she heard Elinor’s name. It was apparent to close observers that she knew more than she would say about Rolf and Elinor. Indeed, she remained terribly jealous of Elinor, and believed that Rolf was still carrying on with her—even after she and Rolf had been married for two decades.

Over the years, Ruth had deftly rearranged the truth to her own satisfaction. She maintained that Rolf had never spoken to her of any affair with his late wife’s sister, and he certainly never told her that Rolf and Erik Ekenes were his sons. She said she had never asked him about the boys directly.

She insisted that she knew very little about the boys: They lived in Vancouver, British Columbia—a whole other country, albeit only a short distance by sea from the San Juan Islands. She was lying, of course, but her friends believed she only fibbed to save face.