February 8, 1979
I hope you can forgive me, in time, for what I’ve done.
Marie sits back from the kitchen table and considers the letter in front of her. She’s spent hours—days—trying to plan what she’d write. She drops the pen to the table and massages her hand. What she’s done is unforgivable. It’s almost pointless to put it all into words. But she has to do something. She can’t keep living this way. She supposes something inside her, some hidden, twisting, strange part of her, had wanted to hurt Einar. She’d wanted to punish him, perhaps, for taking her so far away from everything she’s known. For never once acknowledging what she’s done for him, for their family. For still, even nine years later, making fun of her pronunciation. Let’s hear your Danish again, country boy, she’d say, and he wouldn’t talk to her for hours.
But now that she’s actually hurt her husband, she realizes how much she wants him. Just him.
She looks away from the letter, down to the bundle of blankets on the floor. Agnes, sleeping. She sleeps only on hard surfaces these days. She’s already taking after her brother, the feral boy.
Where is Marie’s feral boy?
It’s close to sunset. The house is still empty. Magnús knows the rules. In winter, he has to be home by dark. But Marie supposes she hasn’t been enforcing that rule very well recently, has she? She’s hardly paid any attention to her family. All she’s wanted since summer—she looks again to the bundle of blankets and thinks, privately, viciously, Since you—has been some peace and quiet. Time to herself.
And now that she has finally found herself alone, she can hardly breathe for the panic building in her. She paces through her empty home, her heart breaking when she thinks about Magnús. When was the last time she saw him? This morning? Had she even said goodbye to him? Had she tucked him into bed last night? Or had she just called out good night to him from across the hall, like a stranger?
She feels, suddenly, like she’s been on a long trip, and she’s trying, desperately, to come home. But there is no home to be found. It’s vanished into thin air.
Where is Magnús?
Marie opens the back door and shouts for her boy. She can’t imagine he will hear her over the roar of the rushing river, but she screams all the same.
When nothing moves, nothing but the changing light in the sky and the water racing toward the ocean, she returns to the kitchen. To the phone. She has no other option, not if she wants to see her son.
She calls Júlía. Even though she’d told herself she would never speak to the woman again, even though she can feel the woman’s judgment oozing on her skin like oil, she calls Júlía because if Magnús isn’t here, then he’s probably there. With his nicer mommy.
It isn’t Júlía who picks up the phone, though. It’s Karl.
“’Lo?” he answers, his voice gruff.
Marie doesn’t announce herself. “Is my boy with you?”
“Which one?” Karl jokes. “Ingvar or Magnús?”
“Magnús,” she says, and suddenly the whole arrangement makes her sick. What has she been doing? She’s known from the very beginning that it was a mistake. Many mistakes, rolled into one. What’s wrong with her, that she can’t stop?
“I don’t know,” Karl says. “I just walked in and picked up the phone. It’s good to hear you calling, Marie. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you. Have you gone into hiding?”
“Magnús,” she repeats, pressing the receiver into her skin until it hurts. “Is he there? Can you look?”
There’s the sound of a sigh. Then the man’s voice calling into his house. “No one’s here but me,” he reports back. “Would you like to come over and help me look?”
“Are you sure he’s not there?”
Magnús has taken to roaming. She doesn’t know how to help her son. Her childhood had never been so lonely as his. She’d grown up in the apartment blocks in Copenhagen, playing with the big groups of kids like they were her family. Her fellow soldiers. They played at war, a group of marauders pillaging the other neighboring kids’ camps. By the time she was Magnús’s age, she could’ve shouted out her kitchen window and heard ten other children returning the battle cry. Marie tells her son to go play, and he goes, dutifully. But he plays by himself.
Next time, she will go with him. If he can’t find anyone to play with, it will be her. It should be her. What more is there to life? What could be more fun than spending time with your own son?
“Marie?” It’s Karl. She’d forgotten about him. “Is everything okay?”
Marie considers her daughter, her little body curled in the blankets like a pastry. Marie has never felt so lonely. “Fine,” she says. She clears her throat. “Where is everyone?”
“Júlía should be back from Borgarnes soon,” Karl tells her. “Do you want me to send her over to you? Help you look for Magnús?”
“No,” she says sharply. “I don’t want her here.”
The sting of their last conversation hasn’t faded. In fact, it’s gained strength. You’re making a fool out of yourself.
If only Júlía knew how much of a fool Marie has been.
“Why don’t I come over?” Karl suggests. “It seems like we should talk.”
The baby scrunches up her face, tightening her little features into an angry ball. Her fat fists gather at the sides of her head, her curved legs springing up to her stomach. She twists and fusses. She’s coming awake. The crying will start again.
“No,” Marie says, and she hangs up the phone without another word.
She reaches for her baby. Her beautiful daughter. Agnes. Beautiful only in sleep. In wakefulness, she rages. She rages at her mother, her father, and she rages at her life. Marie loves her daughter. She feels it inside her, the love populating every cell of her body. But sometimes, in the late hours of the night, she finds herself thinking what terrible luck it was to have her. What terrible luck Marie has had in her life. Meeting Einar, letting him convince her to marry him, to move all the way here, to have Magnús, all when she was young, so young. In these dark, sleepless nights, she tells herself it was all out of her control. Fate.
But what she’s done now, that’s not fate. It’s her own mistake. She’d sought out that man. She’d asked him to kiss her. She’d taken him to her bed. She’d started a relationship with him, hoping for what? To hurt Einar? To prove that she could choose for herself?
Her daughter stares unseeingly up to the ceiling. Her cloudy blue eyes glimmer for a moment, and her gaze touches, briefly, on her mother. Then the rage begins. The screaming, twisting, unholy rage.
Marie gathers her daughter into her arms, and she paces the length of the kitchen. She holds her baby tight to her chest and she feels herself crying, too. The truth is, she has chosen this life for herself, every part of it. Her husband. Her daughter. Her son. Her lover.
In the living room, she bounces her daughter in her arms while she looks at her wedding pictures on the wall. Marie is so young in these pictures. A child. But, she sees now, so is Einar. She touches a hand to the record player she and Einar had bought for Magnús. She doesn’t even know what his favorite record is. She’s made a mess of things. It’s time to come home. Time to make everything right again. Starting with her son, who needs her the most. Marie feels something raw and exhilarating tear through her. Something like strength.
She hears the door open. It’s not the front door. Marie can see the front door from where she stands, and it’s closed.
The gust of wind, the momentary rumble of the river, tells her it’s the back door.
Magnús.
Marie’s so relieved she feels her legs buckling. “Maggi,” she says, calling out high above the baby’s rages. “Come here.”
She wants to touch her son’s hair. The fine white-blond silk, so much like her own father’s. She’ll tell him she’ll go out and play with him. She will swallow her pride, she will crawl on her hands and knees if she has to, and give Agnes to Júlía for an afternoon, so it can be the two of them. Maggi and Marie. Playing marauders in the snow.
But the voice that calls back to her isn’t her son’s. It’s a man’s.
Marie tightens her hold on her baby, and for once, the screaming stops. As though Agnes, too, can sense the danger.
“Marie,” the man says. His voice is so soft in the sudden silence. “We have to talk.”