February 10, 2019
Nora eases the truck into the senior center’s parking lot. Even the weather feels hungover. The morning sky is a steely, uniform gray, with no hint of yesterday’s sun. Dark rings line Nora’s eyes, but she otherwise appears alert. Caffeinated and ready to start in again on Thor Senior.
“We’ll stop for more coffee,” Nora tells Agnes, who isn’t nearly as alert, “when we leave here, okay? I’ve invited Thor Junior to dinner tonight. I want to compare and contrast father and son.”
Agnes agrees. Her tongue feels like something dead and rotting in her mouth. At the bonfire, Lilja had told Agnes that she had to stay with Óskar. It’s easier this way, she’d said. We have to talk. In the moment, Agnes hadn’t argued. It hadn’t felt like her place to ask for more. But Agnes only has so many nights here, and this is one less now. She’d spent most of the night in her hotel bed, awake, overloaded with spiraling thoughts, about Einar, Lilja, Óskar, Ása, and Nora, a swirling mass of half-finished connections and strange feelings, and she seems to have reached morning with nothing left.
On the way in, Nora asks her one more time, “Are we good?”
“Yeah,” Agnes croaks. She can tell this doesn’t satisfy Nora. “Honestly, if I seem like … this … it’s not about you. You get that, right?”
Those hazel eyes miss nothing. “Okay.”
Agnes trails behind her while they go through the same choreography as yesterday’s visit. Talk to the security guard. Go up the elevator. Knock on 201.
Thor Senior appears at the door. “You,” he says to Nora, one innocuous word becoming an indictment.
“Good morning, sir,” Nora says. “I understand how you must be feeling about me right now. It’s why I’m here to apologize. May I come in?”
Thor Senior doesn’t step aside.
“It was not my intention to accuse you of anything,” Nora continues. “You see, I care a lot about the women I document on my show. That tends to make me aggressive at times, when I shouldn’t be. I can lose sight of who I’m talking to, and I know that isn’t an excuse, but I felt—maybe I should have said before—I feel a particular connection to Marie. Because I grew up with her story, her tragedy. And because I know her granddaughter.” She indicates Agnes. “We didn’t properly introduce you yesterday. I’m sorry for this, too. Another example of how I can get carried away. This is Agnes, Einar and Marie’s granddaughter.”
The old man stares at Agnes, his expression wiped clean of any emotion.
“Hi,” Agnes says, resigned.
Thor Senior steps back into the shadows of his home. Agnes prays that he will slam the door shut behind him, blocking them out. But then he reappears, his face slack with shock. “You are her,” he says. “I didn’t—I thought—Magnús?”
“Yes,” she says. “My father.”
He allows them inside his home. Agnes sits on the edge of the couch, the farthest from Thor Senior’s chair. He falls into it with a grunt.
Nora comes in last. She’s removing her bulbous microphone, her camcorder, before she’s even seated.
“Where is Einar now?” Thor Senior asks Agnes.
“Dead,” she says. “He passed away a year ago. My father and I live in California.”
“I never knew where he went.”
Agnes doesn’t speak. Nora takes the lead again. “Like I said yesterday, you are an invaluable resource. I’m sure the police must have spoken with you many times, as Einar’s closest neighbor. As a family member, however distant. I—”
Thor Senior holds up a hand, cutting her off. “I thought about what you said.” He resettles his long, aching bones in the recliner, the better to face Nora. “I have thought about this. I have something to say, and then you will leave. No more talking, from anyone.” He casts a wary glance at Agnes, as though checking to see she’s still there, not a nightmare his mind conjured up for him.
“I did not like Einar,” he continues, “but I cared for his father, Páll. I was there when he died. Not Einar. Páll died without his family. So I was there. Páll asked me to help his son, if he needed it. Help him, because we are family. On his deathbed, he holds me and he asks for my help. So I say yes. So I did.
“That is why I did not tell the police what I knew. Because of my promise. But he is dead now, and my promise is complete. He was protected.
“I know Einar killed his wife and his child because I saw him, walking on my property. With blood on his hands.”
Agnes wants to go home. But no, that’s not right. Not where the memories of her grandfather live. She wants something, anything that isn’t this. But Thor’s still speaking, in that measured, calm voice, the truth coming in relentless, inescapable waves.
“It was the morning,” he’s saying, “before she goes missing. I see him walking by the river. His mouth open, hollow. I call to him. ‘Einar!’ I want to know if he’s hurt. But he keeps walking. And I let him go. I did not know it was serious, not until they found Marie. And then I knew.
“I did not tell,” he says, “because of my promise.”