February 11, 2019
The snow is no longer actively falling, but there are dark, heavy clouds hanging above the house, weighted and bulbous like a pregnant woman’s belly reaching the end. Nora and Agnes spend the morning in the living room, both on their own respective couch, speaking, officially, for the podcast. Agnes recounts memories of her childhood with Einar, as though she weren’t really the one speaking. She focuses on the distant past, and when Nora presses for more recent memories, Agnes shakes her head, wordless.
Nora concludes the interview with a hug. “You did great,” she says. Then, stretching and assessing the weather outside, she tells Agnes she’s going to head into town. “Ideally I’d like to speak with Júlía again,” Nora says, “but if that fails, I’ll find Óskar again. I can’t lose the thread.”
“It’s better if I stay behind,” Agnes says. “I confuse Júlía too much.”
She can’t face Ingvar. Not now. Not after what she told him last night.
Nora understands, as she always does. “Hey,” she says from the front hallway, “what time is your flight on the fifteenth? It’s coming up, fast.”
Agnes says, “In the evening, I think,” even though she still doesn’t have a ticket. She’d forgotten about this lie, but she supposes she should get one now. Other than Lilja, there’s nothing left for her here except more misery.
Nora leaves with only a vague promise to check in with her in a couple of hours.
Alone now, Agnes pulls up her phone. She supposes she should call her father. Tell him what she’s learned, before the show comes out. It’s the right thing to do. But she can’t bring herself to do it.
Why do you think we left, Agnes?
He already knows.
And she can’t talk to him. He lied to her. Her whole life, he lied to her. He let her love Einar, and be loved in return. He let her find the truth, out here, all on her own.
She taps to her text exchange with Lilja. This morning, Lilja had sent her an apology. Busy today. Tomorrow? When do you leave? How long do I have you here?
Agnes replies, Not sure, actually. Let’s do tomorrow. Please.
She paces the living room. The fireplace, the couches, the kitchen. She tries to talk herself out of it. Don’t look for more. You know too much already. But when has she ever listened to that rational voice in her head?
Nora’s room is magnificent. There’s a view of the mountain, the river. A massive bed. Stacks of papers. Agnes has already looked through those, when she’d searched for information on Thor Senior. What else does Nora have tucked away in her room? Agnes pulls open the dresser drawers. Clothes. Folded with expert precision, of course.
Agnes reaches for a photograph on the nightstand, thinking it will be a photograph of Thor and his ex-wife.
It’s a photograph of two young girls. The smaller one has a mass of wild, tangled hair and a button nose, and she’s wearing a too-big Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and too-small pants. Hand-me-downs, most likely. She’s holding the hand of a preteen girl, pint-sized, awkward in her posing. She isn’t smiling. She’s wearing checkered flannel and motorcycle boots, the uniform of an angry teenage girl.
They’re outside, skin overexposed in the brilliant sunshine. Surrounded by tall pines. In the far distance, a rocky outcropping thrusts into the blue sky. Agnes brings the photograph closer. It looks like Half Dome in Yosemite. She camped there, once.
This must be Nora and her sister. Chloe. The girl who introduced Nora to the Frozen Madonna. The girl who disappeared.
Agnes isn’t aware of sitting on the edge of Nora’s bed, or of the way she clutches the frame so possessively. Has Nora ever used her prodigious skills to find out more about Chloe’s disappearance? What is she doing here, in Bifröst, worrying about Agnes’s family, when she could be in California, looking for her sister?
Agnes replaces the frame in its original position, on the nightstand, where Chloe can watch over her little sister.
Then she opens the drawer beneath the photograph. It’s empty but for a phone. Agnes reaches for it, her stomach sinking. She recognizes that phone. She picks it up, and the screen lights up at her touch.
There’re Ása and Lilja, their heads tipped toward each other.
Ása’s phone.
It’s almost out of battery. The little icon in the top corner of the screen flashes the dangerously thin sliver of red in its outline.
Why hasn’t Nora taken this to the police yet?
Did she forget about it? It has been an eventful couple of days, sure, but isn’t this important?
Agnes taps the home button. There’s still a security lock. Either Nora hasn’t figured it out yet, or she’s memorized the code. It’s an older Samsung, many iterations behind the current models. Agnes’s old coworkers used to trade notes on how to hack into smartphones. For this model, she thinks there’s a security flaw in the software. Agnes doesn’t think about it. It’s a matter of a few taps and then she’s bypassed the security lock.
There are no new messages, no emails. The phone has service here, so the messages should load, but nothing comes through. No one has called Ása, or even texted her. Yet more proof that this isn’t her primary phone.
Agnes knows she should call the police now. While she still has some plausible deniability. She and Nora have been holding on to the missing woman’s phone, to sensitive information that could very well change the course of the investigation, for days.
But she can’t help herself. She opens the messages app. There’s only one conversation to choose from. There’s no assigned contact name.
The last messages were sent by Ása. A long paragraph of text, followed by one sentence, sent later in the night. Agnes types the words of the last text into her own phone to translate. It’s slow going, particularly with the different characters used in the Icelandic alphabet. But, finally, it comes clear.
I hope I haunt you.
Ása’s last words.
There’s no reply.
In fact, there are hardly any texts from the other number. Most recently, there are only one-word texts. Yes or no, to a proposed date and time.
Agnes hunches over the two phones and types the rest of the long paragraph into Google Translate.
I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be responsible for you anymore. Not for your happiness, or your anger. I can’t be your savior. Think about who you are, because it is sick. You are sick. Take your anger and choke on it. I hope you understand what you have done. You’ve lost me. I hope this hurts you, the way it has hurt me.
Then, hours later. I hope I haunt you.
Agnes clicks into the conversation itself. Earlier on, there are links, sent back and forth. Songs.
To the photographs. Sunsets. Vista of the town. Mostly, though, there are selfies of Ása. Body shots. Her breasts pressed together. The curve of her hip, against the soft fabric of her bedspread.
Nothing from the other person.
Agnes squeezes her eyes shut. She shouldn’t have seen any of this. Not the pictures, not the texts. Not the phone itself.
She turns off the phone to conserve the battery, and to keep the images locked away.
Why wouldn’t Nora give this to the police? Does she really believe, after the Lopez case, she is a real investigator, better than the actual detectives?
That has to be the reason, right?
Nora isn’t the person who fell in love with a young, vulnerable student. She isn’t the one who gave the student a secret phone for them to communicate with, the high-tech equivalent of a walkie-talkie. She isn’t the one who received those nudes but never sent her own, because she knew, deep down, that those could be used against her.
Right?
I’m nothing, she’d said. Married to the sea.
Divorced. All she has is this podcast.
Agnes can feel panic building through her body. The shallow way her chest moves with her breathing. Notice things, Dr. Lee would say. But she can see only Nora’s face, tending to her over the toilet. This might sound twisted, but I kind of like taking care of you.
The knocking causes Agnes to leap, briefly, out of her skin. She looks around, wildly. The knocking has to come again, for her to understand what’s happening.
There’s someone at the front door.
Agnes stows the missing woman’s phone in her jacket pocket. Let Nora come find it, if she discovers it missing. Let her explain why she wants it back.