February 10, 2019
Thor tells them he’ll walk home. “It’s not far,” he says, zipping himself up into his snowsuit and pulling out a flashlight. Without a goodbye, he disappears into the woods. Agnes watches his distant beam of light get smaller and smaller, until it’s nothing more than a ghost image on her retinas.
Agnes lingers in the doorway, her toes going numb in her untied boots. Nora’s giving her space, she supposes. Or maybe she’s forgotten about her, too lost in her own enormous discovery. Once again, Nora has broken a new lead in a cold case. She’s found, finally, the motive for the murders, with testimonies to back it up.
Slowly, carefully, Agnes folds at the waist to tie the laces of her boots. She doesn’t think about what she’s doing much more than the simple desire to move forward. She slides her jacket over her shoulders. Nora’s flashlight is still in her pocket. Then she’s following her old tire tracks, her old footprints, in the snow. It’s difficult work. Her eyes narrow into slits when the snow pelts her face, freezing her cheeks. By the time she reaches the highway, she’s out of breath and dizzy and ruined, but at least she’s going.
Crossing the highway is a terrifying limping jog. Agnes knows that she’d get enough warning from any oncoming cars with their headlights, but still, it’s a relief to find herself on the other side. To what she believes is the start of Ingvar’s driveway.
In her car, the road to Ingvar’s house had not felt steep. Just a long, meandering curl around a hill. On foot, it’s almost impossible. Agnes has to dig her heels into the hard snow, her body bent double. She’s practically crawling. She takes breaks to catch her breath, to let her left leg rest. When she finally reaches flat ground again, her entire body is one solid, aching cramp.
She knocks on Ingvar’s front door and fights the urge to vomit.
While she’s calculating the likelihood of getting that over with before anyone sees, Ingvar opens the door. He stares down at her in disbelief.
The house beyond him lies quiet. Dark. There’s no sound of his mother. No lights on other than the ones he obviously turned on for his journey to the front door.
“I woke you up,” Agnes says, panting.
Ingvar looks around. “Did you walk here?” He ushers her inside. In the light, she can see the piles of snow that have accumulated on her jacket, soaking her jeans, her hair. “What’s happened? Are you okay?”
What Agnes wants to say is I came here because I found out my grandfather really did murder his wife and daughter and I need a friend. I need a friend and Lilja’s already seen too much of my mess today. But she can’t say that. What she says instead is, “Can I come inside?”
She’s inside, but she means farther, to somewhere she can sit.
Ingvar nods and, after watching her remove her boots, which is next to impossible to do with her frozen fingers, he leads her not into the sitting room, but down the hall, to what is clearly his office. The light is already on, so perhaps she didn’t wake him after all. Perhaps she just disturbed some late-night work. There’s a desk pressed up against the wall, facing out some windows, an office chair, and a low armchair with a cozy reading lamp hanging over its middle. Ingvar indicates with his uninjured hand for Agnes to take the armchair. The injured hand, the one in the cast, hangs limply at his side.
He asks her if she needs something. “Tea, water?”
She shakes her head. He says he does, and he disappears. When he returns, his good hand holds a glass of whisky. The other has a scratchy wool blanket draped over the forearm. He drops the blanket, awkwardly, onto her lap.
Then he takes the office chair at his desk and turns to face her.
“Nora,” she begins, overwhelmed, “she’s done it. She’s got proof. Or a motive. Whatever.” She has to say it. She has to confront the truth. It’s better to do that here, with Ingvar, with someone who doesn’t know her all that well, someone who cares, but who ultimately doesn’t matter. She’s afraid of what she’d do, if she were alone with herself right now.
Agnes jolts at the touch on her knee. Without her realizing it, Ingvar has rolled his chair toward her. Agnes stares into his eyes, so bright, so steady.
“Marie was having an affair,” she says. “With Thor’s father.” She tells Ingvar about her morning with Thor Senior, the story of Einar walking away, covered in blood. Thor Junior’s confirmation. When she’s finished, Ingvar offers her a sip of the whisky, which she takes, gratefully.
“Thor,” he says. He’s said it many times already.
“Yes. They—your mother. She knew. Did you know?”
“She doesn’t talk about that time,” Ingvar says. “But she’s been struggling. Since you visited. She told me, after you left, that she regrets her mistake. ‘I never helped her,’ she said. ‘Instead, I helped Einar.’”
I told him to take his boy and run.
Agnes stares down at her frozen fingers. Is this really her body? She tests it, flexes a finger. It obeys the impulse. Is this really her life? She feels a new touch on her shoulder. Ingvar again. Trying to get her back into her body, into the present.
“I’m sorry,” he’s saying.
“For what?” Agnes asks.
Ingvar doesn’t answer.
“Can I tell you something?” she asks him. She registers the tilt of his head and assumes it’s a yes, but she’s in California. She can see the curvature of the earth on the misty horizon, and she’s at the edge. Feeling the rush and suck of the air as the tide attacks the rocks below. She breathes with their rhythm. “A year ago,” she says, “I tried to kill myself.”
It’s a relief to say it. The words are there, and they aren’t. Ingvar is there, and he isn’t.
“When I hear about this missing woman,” she says, “when I hear about her life, I know, for certain, that she made the same choice. And it’s been messing with my head. It makes me feel so guilty, because she had more reason to. Whoever she was with, they wanted something from her. When people talk about her, they say, ‘Everyone loves her,’ but the only person that everyone loves is someone like Marie. Someone who gives themselves entirely to the other person. Who isn’t allowed their own secrets. Ása had all these reasons to do it. At the time, I didn’t really think I had a reason to do it. She wanted to. And I thought I didn’t.”
This, more than anything, is what has haunted her ever since. The lack of premeditation. She hadn’t been depressed, had never even considered it before. The decision, in the middle of the day, had been some dark impulse taking hold of the steering wheel. One intrusive thought and one split second’s mistake.
Or so she’d thought, at the time.
“My grandfather died,” Agnes says. “And I tried to talk to my dad, but he—he didn’t want to talk about it. They weren’t close. And my girlfriend, she couldn’t get it. My grandfather used to take me swimming in this small beach town. Bolinas. After he died, I went to our old spot. I wanted to feel close to him. And I don’t know how to describe it, but I was happy. I was so happy that day. And then I got out of the water. I was in this inlet, where you can hike up the cliffs. If you’re careful, there are places to sit. So that’s what I did. One minute, I was sitting. The next, I was up again. Looking down. And I—I fell.”
She hears Ingvar’s intake of breath, and she waits. But there’s nothing more.
“I was lucky,” she says. “Everyone told me so. I only shattered my leg. Some people found me and they got me to the emergency room. I told everyone it was an accident. Because it was, and it wasn’t. Does that make sense?”
Ingvar seems startled that it’s an actual question. “I think so.”
“But now,” Agnes says, her voice breaking, “now I know it wasn’t an accident. Of course it wasn’t. I did it because I missed my grandfather. And my life, after that? Ruined. Everything, gone. I haven’t been the same person since that day. And now I know that that man, my grandfather, lied to me. He killed his wife. His own child. He was a murderer, and I loved him so much.”
You’re empty, Ingvar’s mother had said.
And Agnes is. Not like Marie or Ása, empty because everyone wanted something from her, because she gave it all away. She’s empty because there’s something missing. There is nothing for her to give. She had sensed this about herself, but she hadn’t known where that feeling came from. And now she does. It was being raised with a lie.
“You’re okay,” Ingvar tells her. He’s trying to comfort her.
“No,” she says. “I’m not.”
“Einar loved you,” he says, “and that’s something—”
“I should go,” she tells him, cutting him off. She doesn’t need to hear it. In fact, she can’t.
Ingvar doesn’t argue with her. He offers to drive her home.
She accepts the kindness, even though she doesn’t deserve it.