February 7, 2019
Before Agnes can even unbuckle her seat belt, Nora’s stopping her. “We have to be careful in there,” she warns her. “I haven’t met Júlía the whole time I’ve been here. She’s not well. Early onset dementia, Hildur told me, combined with a few strokes. We’re going to have to tread lightly.”
“What about Ingvar’s father?” Agnes hadn’t seen him yesterday, and Ingvar hasn’t mentioned him.
“Karl passed away a while ago. According to Hildur, Júlía was fine on her own until she suddenly wasn’t. Ingvar moved home about six months ago to take care of his mother. We’re walking into some delicate territory.”
She lets Agnes unbuckle her seat belt. They hop out of the truck, careful on the ice.
Like yesterday, Ingvar’s gone inside without them. Nora rounds the back of the truck to retrieve her equipment from the trunk. Agnes doesn’t wait for her. She starts for the door, slow on the ice and snow. She has no idea what will happen when Júlía sees her. Will she remember their last meeting? Will she experience the same horror? The same desire to apologize?
He killed her. We all knew.
When they reach the front door, Ingvar is there, waiting for them. He has removed his outer layer, but he hasn’t had time to wake his mother. He’ll show them to the living room, he says. There’s no twinkle in his eye now. No shared joke with Agnes. And Agnes finds herself wondering, yet again, what he wants out of this visit. This is twice now he’s insisted she meet his mother, even after yesterday’s spectacular failure. And what happened to her being too fragile to speak to Nora?
“I’m honored to meet your mother,” Nora says, following close behind as they make their way into the living room.
“She has been talking about Magnús,” Ingvar says, distracted. “This will make her happy.” Without another word, he disappears in search of his mother.
Nora and Agnes choose the couch. Nora unpacks her microphone, her camcorder. She sweeps the room with the camcorder, swiping the lens across Agnes’s profile.
“Are you hoping to turn this into a show?” Agnes asks. “With all the footage you’ve taken, it seems like you could make a documentary.”
There’s a low rumble of voices through the walls. Ingvar’s, mostly, but with a feminine moan occasionally thrown in. His mother.
“I’ve thought about it,” Nora admits. “But that would distract from the process. The interviews, what people say, that’s far more vital than getting a good shot of someone.”
Ingvar appears at the doorway, alone. “She’s tired,” he says.
“Should we go?” Agnes asks, eager, suddenly, to get out of here. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if Júlía remembers her. If she will have to come clean to Nora about meeting her and Ingvar. And, she thinks with a guilty pang, if the old woman remembers how poorly Agnes had treated her.
“I will check on her again in a minute,” Ingvar says, “when she’s had more time to get used to the idea.” He hunkers down to his knees and starts a fire in the hearth. It’s a clumsy, laborious procedure with his cast, but he refuses help from Nora. The job finished, he collapses onto one of the chairs.
“How long do you have that on for?” Agnes asks him, meaning the cast.
“They say five weeks. Maybe six.”
Nora groans in sympathy.
Practically a dream, Agnes thinks. Easy.
Ingvar dismisses their concern with a wave of his uninjured hand. “Not important,” he says. He leans forward in his seat and takes Agnes in with somber eyes. “I would like to apologize to you.”
“For what?” Agnes asks, startled. What has he done to her?
“I am sorry that I found your grandmother,” he says. “It shouldn’t be that my name is wrapped in hers. Ingvar, the boy who found them. Her death, and the baby’s, they should not be my story.”
Agnes doesn’t consider her next words carefully. She hears herself speak, and she assumes she knows what she’s doing. “They are, though,” she says. “Part of your story. You were a child when you found them. That’s your life, too.”
He nods, but Agnes can tell that she’s missed his meaning.
“It’s okay,” she offers.
“Could we—” Nora says, looking between the two. “Would you mind if I recorded this conversation?”
Ingvar asks, “For your radio show?”
“Podcast, yes.”
He shrugs. “That is all I wanted to say.”
“Agnes knows very little about her family’s history,” Nora persists. “Her grandfather never spoke of his wife and daughter to her, right, Agnes? I think it would be meaningful for her to hear about her family from you. In the same way that it is meaningful for you to apologize to her.”
Ingvar lifts his eyebrow in question. Would it really?
“Sure,” Agnes says. She regrets Nora’s presence, and that of the microphones, but this is exactly what she’s wanted. When Nora sets up that same bulbous microphone on the coffee table and beckons for Agnes to sit closer to Ingvar, she feels the anticipation building in her spine, quick and hot.
He killed her. We all knew.