February 10, 2019
When Agnes emerges from the bathroom, hair dripping from her shower, Thor Junior is there, in the living room, sipping a glass of red wine on the couch and pointing to the different details of the house. “I have dreamt of a home like this,” he says, winking at Agnes, “my entire life.”
To his right is Hildur. They’re on one of the couches, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Agnes isn’t surprised. Isn’t anything except tired.
“You built it yourself?” Nora calls out from the kitchen. “I could never.”
“I am an architect,” Thor says. “It would have been the greatest shame to bring someone else into my own house. I suppose I did have help, but this is mine. Much as the farmhouse will be.”
“That amazes me,” Nora says. “I tried to hang a painting in my office, and I somehow tore off a chunk of drywall.”
Everything is picture perfect. The blizzard surrounding them, the warm food, everyone in sweaters. Like a commercial. Agnes accepts a glass of wine from Nora and tries to imagine a world in which she belongs in such a scene. She chooses a seat on the couch across from Thor and Hildur. They could be an old married couple. Or siblings, with their matching hair and eyes. But where Hildur’s grin is so sharp it’s almost predatory, Thor simply seems pleased to see Agnes.
Agnes downs half her glass of wine in one swallow and resists the urge to chug the rest. She hadn’t been able to resist a couple more pills, just before the shower, to take the edge off the evening. Too much wine will make her drowsy. But as she tells herself to slow down, she’s already taking another sip. It’s hard to care about temperance right now.
“Is it weird for you,” Agnes asks Thor, wiping her mouth, “having us here in your home? Cooking for you? Sleeping in your bed?”
This is her first time seeing him in regular clothes. Underneath his snow suit, he’s a lean form with a bubble around his gut. He stretches his long legs from the couch, wearing wool slacks and a turtleneck. He is the next doll down in the Matryoshka set from his father. More suited to soccer than football.
“It’s like having friends over,” he says expansively. “And I do rent this out many times a year, so it comes easily. It is odd, though, that this evening, I will not be sleeping in my own bed.”
“I would say you’re welcome to it,” Nora says, now fussing with the serving dishes at the kitchen island, “but that room is too incredible.”
“Soon,” Hildur says, “there will be space for all of you. Thor’s reconstructing your grandfather’s house, Agnes, so there will be three homes here. One for each of you, when you visit. More, hopefully.”
Thor shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes. I have been wanting to discuss this with you, Agnes.”
“Nora told me,” she says. She tries to recall her previous outrage at the idea of her family’s ancestral home becoming a tourist attraction. At this point, she’d rather burn it all down. “You’re going to turn it into another vacation rental, right?”
“It was my idea,” Hildur says. “When I saw what Thor could do … With his gift, he can transform the town. We have the university, sure, but we should have more visitors.”
“Have you lived here your whole life?” Agnes asks, certain already of the answer.
“I was born here,” Hildur says, “and I will die here. I didn’t leave. I never will. Unlike some of us.” She pulls Thor in for a hug—or a wrestling move, Agnes can’t tell which.
Thor pulls himself out of Hildur’s grip, cheeks red. “I came back.”
“Did you grow up together?” Agnes asks. It’s as though she’s caught in the middle of a fight between siblings.
“I don’t remember a time we weren’t together,” Hildur says.
Nora invites them to sit for dinner, indulgently listing out their feast. The salad bowl filled to the brim with greens and colorful vegetables, large slabs of baked fish, piles of steaming white rice. Nora waves away their compliments. “Don’t be too impressed,” she says. “Dessert is grocery store candy.”
Agnes negotiates her way to a seat that has some distance from Hildur. It doesn’t resolve much—at opposite ends of the table, Hildur can and does watch her every move—but at least she can’t engage her in conversation. This lands Agnes beside Thor, however, and across from Nora. Nora, she realizes, who has spent the day driving and cooking and cleaning. Her equipment, normally scattered across the table, is gone. Agnes feels a curious pang of guilt. She could have helped Nora. Nora, who has helped her so much. Who has tried to help her, anyway. It’s not Nora’s fault, Agnes supposes, that she’s ruined her.
Thor doles the fish out to each woman’s plate. “I am the only man in a room full of women,” he says. “My favorite kind of party.”
“Is this a dream come true for you, Thor?” Hildur asks.
“I must have had this dream a thousand times,” he says, grinning. “But it probably won’t end the way I’m hoping.” This earns him a guffaw from Hildur. Thor turns to Agnes. “So how are you liking your return home? Do you feel your soul calling to this place? Or is it the other way? Do you feel this place calling to your soul?”
Despite everything, Agnes feels herself smiling. This is his field of wild strawberries. “Part of me does,” she says. “But I don’t feel like I belong.”
“It’s the language,” Hildur says, knowingly. “You shouldn’t let that stop you. You can learn.”
“Yeah,” Agnes says, thinking of Thor Senior and Óskar. Go. Leave. “That’s probably it.”
“But it’s in you,” Thor insists. “The language. The place. This is where you should be. This is where you were made.”
“If you were a piece of clothing,” Nora jokes, “your label would say MADE IN ICELAND.”
Cheeks burning, Agnes swallows more of her wine. She doesn’t love the spotlight. Doesn’t love the feeling like she’s being analyzed and teased, even if it’s all meant kindly.
“Are you two related?” she asks Thor and Hildur. They look so similar, it’s not a ridiculous question. And it takes the spotlight off her, in an instant, as though the lightbulb had exploded.
Hildur chokes on her food. She thumps a hand against her chest, waving away Nora’s help.
“No,” Thor answers for her. “What I told you before was a joke. Not everyone is so closely related here.”
Hildur clears her throat. “That would have been disgusting.”
“You two dated?” Nora asks. She’s the only one drinking gin. Agnes is in no position to judge, but she wonders, suddenly, at the amount of alcohol she’s seen Nora consume, every night she’s been here. It’s not insubstantial. I’m a mean drunk, she’d said. “Or,” Nora says now, delighted, “are you two dating?”
“Once upon a time.” Hildur shoots Thor a speculative look. “I thought I was in love with him. You should have seen him. So handsome, without that belly he has now. All the girls followed him around, but he was so respectful. I was the most persistent. But—”
“But I broke her heart moving away,” Thor concludes. He pats Hildur’s hand. “I’m sorry I ruined you for all men.”
Hildur switches to Icelandic with a laugh. It’s a rapid-fire exchange that mystifies the two Americans, but the banter is easy enough to follow in tone. The mock outrage, the playful apologies.
In English, Thor says, “Hildur’s boyfriend is a prince among men.” He flexes one biceps. “Bigger than us all, handsomer, nicer. She’s done well for herself.”
The conversation shifts over to Nora’s work. The glories and responsibilities of being a true crime podcast host who actually managed to solve a case. Agnes focuses on her wine and tunes the rest out. For once, she realizes, she has an appetite. She avoids the fish, but she shovels the rest in, because she needs it, and because it keeps her from having to talk.
When the meal is finished, Nora instructs everyone to sit in the living room while she clears up. She waves away all offers of help. “I’ll be with you in a second,” she says. “Please. You’re my guests.”
Thor turns to Hildur, suddenly serious. They speak again in their shared language, only this time, the tone is much less decipherable. In the end, Hildur announces, in English, that she must get going.
“You and me,” she says to Agnes. “We have to speak soon.”
Agnes lifts her glass in a mock salute. “Fine.” She’ll be out of here soon enough.
When the front door shuts behind Hildur, Thor drops into the couch cushions beside Agnes with a sigh. “I asked her to leave,” he tells her, pitching his voice low so Nora won’t hear. “You forget when you leave home, how much baggage there is. I became another person in Denmark, and then I come back and no one lets me be that person.”
“I’ve been living at home for a while, too,” Agnes says. “I regressed so fast.”
“Regressed,” he repeats. “That’s exactly it. I am eighteen once more. Only in a slightly, slightly older body.” He pats his stomach and Agnes laughs.
Nora sets up the microphone on the coffee table in front of Thor. Agnes takes this as her cue to find another seat. She chooses the kitchen island, where she has access to the candy and wine. This is such a different setup from all the other interviews Nora’s given. They’ve been drinking and socializing like friends. There isn’t much professional distance.
Thor underlines this dynamic by clinking glasses with Nora. “You’ve been here two months,” he says, “yes? Does your husband mind? That is a long time to be away from home.”
Nora takes her seat across the couch from him. “I don’t have a husband anymore,” she says. “I have no strings, Pinocchio.”
“Strings?”
“No partner, no pets, no plants, even,” she says. “Mark took a lot in the divorce. So I’m now responsible for no one but myself. And my podcast, of course. I’m a pirate captain. Married to the sea.”
This makes Thor smile. “What does that feel like?”
“Free,” Nora says simply. “Aren’t you the same? I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’re single, too. Divorced, right?”
“Yes,” he says, unbothered. “As of a year ago, yes. I guess I’m free like you in that way. But I have so much responsibility for this town, I don’t feel free.”
“You’ve lived here your whole life,” Nora says. “Now it’s my turn to ask: what does that feel like?”
“No. I was born here. I left when I was eighteen, and I didn’t return until three years ago. If you count the years, I’ve spent more of my life in Denmark than Iceland. But this place has a hold over me. It’s in my body. When I was in Denmark, I wasn’t the same man. I had to become the person who lived there. Now that I’m back, I see how much I missed being this person.”
“Why did you move to Copenhagen?” Nora asks. “Why become someone else?”
“I came for the schooling, and then I came for the women.” Thor laughs at his own crude joke. He’s the only one. “That was ugly, sorry. I wanted to leave. I wanted to see who else I could be. I wasn’t done with school. Here, we have a different system from yours, we call it menntaskóli, and we don’t finish until age nineteen or twenty. But my mother was gone and I was miserable. I couldn’t survive living alone with my father for another two years. I chose Denmark almost at random. I finished my studies, I got a job, I got married, and the next thing, I realize I’m not who I want to be. Sometimes your life takes on its own shape, without your guidance, or even your knowledge. I’m trying to fix that.”
Agnes feels a sudden, strong sense of kinship with him. She knows she’s made choices. No one’s forced her. But she’d never understood how those choices would lead her here.
“What brought this on?” Nora asks. “This change of heart?”
“My father could no longer live on his own,” Thor says. “I set him up in a facility in the city. And then…” He spreads his hands, indicating the rest.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Thor takes a sip of his wine. Agnes has lost count of how many they’ve all had, but she knows he’s had more than her. And yet he looks absolutely fine.
“It’s a lot of loss in a short span of time. Realizing your parent needs care like that is its own type of loss. The beginning of the end. Then a divorce … even the most amicable divorce is a tremendous loss.”
“I’m used to it,” Thor says breezily.
“How so?”
“My mother left my father when I was young. Which meant leaving me, too. She couldn’t take me with her, she told me, because she didn’t want my father knowing where she was. I heard, only after I came back three years ago, that my mother had died a decade before. Parkinson’s. My father … it’s good to have him out of here. Good for me, good for the town. He didn’t hit my mother, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t so easy as that. For a long time, I didn’t understand what it was that drove her away. My father was not a kind man. Far from it. But he saved most of his anger for me.” Thor takes a long swallow of his wine. “I thought about it, though, after, and I realized, he didn’t have to hit her to make her afraid of him.”
“What did he do?” Nora asks.
“Sometimes,” Thor says, playing with his wineglass, “I think of Ingvar. How he is the only one of us out here who has a good father. Hildur—well, you’ll have to ask her. But Ingvar and Karl. That was a kind father. It explains why Ingvar is so popular now with women. Out of all of us, he was loved, and loved well.”
“Popular with women?”
“I have seen you,” Thor tells her. “You love him. All the girls do. Marie did, even when he was a baby. He has the ability to make women love him.” The raw envy in his voice surprises Agnes. Between the two of them, Thor and Ingvar, she’d have called Thor the ladies’ man. But she supposes Ingvar’s charm is more subtle, more accessible. Thor is quicker, more prone to dominate the conversation. She likes them both. They’re just different.
“What do you mean, ‘us’?” Nora asks. “Who else had a bad father?”
“Magnús,” Thor says. “Surely you have heard the stories of Einar as a father.”
“Tell me.”
“Why do you think he spent so much time outside? With Júlía and Karl? He was afraid, as I was. My father used to tell me he could do whatever he wanted to me. No one would ever know. My mother and I both left when we could. I used to resent my mother for doing it. I see now that she had to keep herself alive. No matter the cost.”
“It cost you a lot.”
“In some ways, yes. But I am older now. I accept what has happened. You have to move on. Leave the past where it is buried.”
“That’s admirable,” Nora says. “But it would be understandable if you couldn’t forgive her, or your father.”
“I didn’t say I forgive my mother,” Thor corrects her. “I accept it. Forgiveness means it’s okay. I don’t forgive either of my parents. But I have moved past it. I am nearly sixty. It is time to stop being eighteen.” The message is clear: I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
Nora persists, “How did your father react to your mother leaving him? I can’t imagine a man like that would take it well.”
Thor’s demeanor doesn’t change, but something about him sharpens. Agnes wonders if Nora can sense it, too, can feel the edge of the man’s patience. There’s a silence that stretches on long enough for Agnes to consider speaking up, to ask Nora to change the subject, to please free them from this awkward prison. Finally, at her breaking point, Thor says, “You talked to my father. You know how he reacted. Why don’t you ask me the real question?”
Agnes feels the same crackle of adrenaline that comes before her surfboard would catch the wave’s current, when she fought the pull, the breathless yank upward. Trying to maintain control on the surface of something beyond control.
Nora doesn’t falter. “What’s the real question?”
“My father is a brute,” Thor says, as though she hasn’t spoken. “The world will be better once he is dead. But he is an old man, and you shouldn’t confuse him, dragging up these memories.”
The board slips from beneath Agnes, leaving her in that drop to the water, to the rag doll spiral through its spin cycle as it races toward shore, to deposit her on the sand, half-dead and disoriented. Here it comes. Once again.
“What’s the real question I should ask you?” Nora repeats.
“Was my father sleeping with Marie? Did Einar know? Yes.”
When Agnes had hit the sand that shattered her ankle, that halved her kneecap, that tore her ligaments, that subsequently changed the entire course of her life thus far, at the very least it had knocked her out, too. It had only been for a moment, so she’s been told. But that brief lightning bolt of pain, of her leg crumbling to pieces beneath her, had been so overwhelming it had short-circuited her system. She woke in a state of shock that smothered the pain.
This moment in Thor’s home offers no such relief.
How was she the only one who didn’t know the truth?
Nora clears her throat. “How do you know?”
“I saw them together. There is so much space here, but there is nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go but to each other. I was home at the wrong time. There they were. If I saw this, then Einar saw. If I knew, then Einar knew. Why do you think they were fighting all the time?”
“And you believe Einar killed Marie, because of the affair.”
“No,” Thor says again. “I know. My father is not a liar. He saw Einar with the blood on his hands.”
“Did Einar confront your father?”
“No.” Thor finishes his wine. “He knew what he did. He needed a way out, and my father gave it to him. That is the best thing he has done, and the worst. Letting the murderer go.”
Agnes should never have come here. She made a mistake. So many mistakes, she now realizes.
“Why not go to the police?” Nora asks Thor. “If your father has this evidence. If Einar killed the woman your father was sleeping with. Why would he let her murderer go free?”
Thor wipes at his mouth. “That is his business.”
“Why wouldn’t you go to the police?”
“You can’t understand,” Thor tells her. His voice is so gentle Agnes can almost pretend like she can’t hear him. “You say you have nothing, and you feel free. No family, no responsibilities. You don’t understand what it’s like to have these things and then lose them. There is no freedom, there is only what you once had. The police don’t bring them back. Einar got to leave, and he got to live. But he had to live with what he did. That is punishment enough.”