February 5, 2019
Agnes inches along the highway, waiting until she sees two trucks in her rearview mirror before she slows to a skidding stop on the shoulder to let them pass. And then she can’t bring herself to keep driving. She had been too focused on the icy road to take in the view, to appreciate just how beautiful and how foreign this landscape is. Just beyond the highway, mountains after mountains, massive and alive like snow-covered giants, touch their toes to the sea. When yet another truck passes her, she forces herself to move on.
At a certain point, the road curves away from the sea, toward the mountains. Agnes passes through small towns that call to her to stop in. Start over. Forget about her broken life behind her in California, forget about the mission awaiting her. Find some cheap room on this stretch of highway, live off cheese and fresh bread and black licorice, and count the seasons based on their absolute darkness and their absolute sunshine. Maybe she’d be happy here. She thinks she would be.
She keeps going, though, if only because there’s a free room awaiting her. And then it becomes just her and the white again.
She hasn’t reached Bifröst yet when the GPS alerts her to turn off the highway. There’s no difference in the road, no houses visible among the vast fields of snow and rolling hills, nothing but a slight indentation to her right, indicating, perhaps, tire tracks, but the GPS tells her to go, so she goes. And she finds herself on a makeshift road in the snow, dipping down then forward. She threads the car carefully through a vibrant blue gate that she hadn’t noticed from the highway. You wouldn’t see it unless you were looking for it.
The GPS chimes with approval. She’s here. On the land. Her grandfather’s land. Though she’s not sure if they’d managed to sell it or not—it’s not something that’s ever really occurred to her before now. The logistics of picking up the remains of your life and starting over. Her father certainly hadn’t told her.
Snow stretches out on either side of her, engulfing her. And there are trees. Agnes had read somewhere that Iceland doesn’t have many forests, but these are pines. Tall, towering Christmas trees, interspersed with something else that she can’t identify, their thin branches bare. The road extends and curves between their trunks. It drops into a small crater, then flattens into a tunnel of pine trees. There’s privacy here.
Soon, the tires touch a new kind of road. Agnes pulls up at the edge of a curving driveway, stunned by the elegant house in front of her. Stopping the car at a careful distance from a truck with wheels so rugged they look like they could scale the side of a mountain, Agnes sits back, leaving the engine running. Snowflakes drift onto the windshield, soft and relentless. The house before her is large and impossibly modern. This isn’t the house of her father’s childhood. It’s too big, built out of glass and concrete. It’s an art museum, not a rural farmhouse.
She’s at the wrong address.
A light comes on over the entryway. The front door—an enormous sheet of metal—swings open.
Nora Carver, in the flesh. Agnes recognizes the mass of brown hair, curly and voluminous, a medieval halo surrounding the woman’s narrow frame, and the characteristic round glasses with neon-pink rims, from her headshots. She’s smaller than Agnes would ever have expected, though. Her hair seems to make up most of her height.
Nora races to the car, not slipping once on the snowy drive. She’s in a sweater and jeans, and she doesn’t even seem to notice the cold.
Trailing behind Nora is someone Agnes doesn’t recognize. A man, lanky with short-cropped white hair, wearing a thin jacket. He takes his time following, hands in his pockets.
“I was just about to call Search and Rescue,” Nora says, reaching for the car door. There’s that voice. Low and resonant in recordings. In person, it’s far more elastic and expressive. “Thor,” she calls back, “look who’s made it here in one piece!”
The man chuckles. “Yes, I see.”
“I didn’t know I was on a deadline,” Agnes says weakly, thrown by the fanfare. She hadn’t expected a welcome wagon. She allows the other woman to pull open the door while she attempts to unfold her aching limbs from their set position. Nora extends a hand in greeting. Agnes grasps it, briefly, then clutches it for balance when her leg, cramped and clumsy, gives out at the knee. Nora, a head shorter than Agnes, catches her.
“Steady?” Nora doesn’t release her until Agnes assures her, yes, she can stand on her own. “There’s been so much snow this past week, I was worried they’d closed the roads on you. I had all these visions of you, flipped, and no one would know where you are and—I’ll stop, sorry. I worry easily. It comes with the territory.”
“It’s an incredible drive,” Agnes says. She doesn’t apologize for taking her time. She does hear herself say, “Sorry for worrying you,” if only to get Nora to stop fussing over her.
Nora laughs. “I was a ball of anxiety before I started this job, and now I feel like putting location tracking devices on all my loved ones.”
Now that she’s stopped moving, Agnes feels her fatigue settle over her, heavy on her limbs. She swallows, unconsciously and forcefully, her mouth already watering in anticipation of a couple pills. She’d taken her last full dose nearly six hours ago. She’s read that symptoms of opioid withdrawal tend to set in six to twenty-four hours after the last use, but that timing depends on the user’s habits. Agnes hasn’t exactly been tracking her usage. It’s more like taking the pills whenever she feels like it, which is often. Which is also why, she thinks, if she were to relax her throat right now, her three coffees and one egg sandwich would slide right out of her, just the same way they came in.
It doesn’t help to focus on that, though. Notice what you’re noticing, is what Dr. Lee told her. There’s the rushing sound of the river, somewhere beyond the house. The cool touches of the snow to her cheeks, like chilled fingertips. The coiling and uncoiling of her stomach. The sharp, twisting pain in her ankle, now that it has to accept her full weight without any help from the pills.
There’s the man, approaching them so slowly. Too slowly, Agnes thinks. Thor. He’s attractive for his odd features, his face so much like a skull. Thin eyes, sunken cheeks, narrow jaw. He’s older, perhaps in his fifties, but he carries it lightly. He’s saying hello to Agnes, polite and distracted. He starts to look away from her, but he doubles back in an instant.
“Oh,” he says.
“You see it, too,” Nora says. She’s staring at Agnes, her hazel eyes wide open and seemingly counting every pore on Agnes’s face.
“What?” Agnes asks, alarmed.
“You look exactly like her,” Thor breathes. He opens his mouth to say more, but no words come out. He shakes his head, roughly, as though to clear it. Then he extends a hand to Agnes. “I’m Thor,” he says. “Thor Thorsson.”
“Agnes Glin,” she replies automatically. Then: “I look like who?”
“Sorry to stare,” Nora says, “but you didn’t mention this on the phone.” She gestures at the entirety of Agnes. “You’re your grandmother’s twin. It’s uncanny.” She waits for Agnes to speak, to laugh, maybe, as she is doing. When Agnes doesn’t join in, she apologizes again. “This is inappropriate, isn’t it? It’s just—I’ve studied the photographs for so long. I grew up with the Frozen Madonna plastered on my sister’s wall. It’s wild to meet you. It’s like meeting her. Isn’t it?” She turns to Thor, who appears mostly recovered from the shock of seeing Agnes.
“Grandmother,” he echoes. “How strange. Time moves so fast. And it left her behind, preserved like you are now. But no, you are Agnes, not Marie. And I’m Thor. You will be staying in my house.” He indicates the fortress behind him. “I hope it’s to your liking.”
Agnes says, “Right.”
Nora hears the discomfort in her tone. “We made it weird, didn’t we?”
Agnes aims for a smile. It feels more like a grimace. This isn’t what she expected. A welcome wagon and a fangirl of her family’s tragedy. “It’s just nothing I’ve heard before.”
Nora looks like she’s dying to say more, but she holds back, out of respect. And because she’s noticed Agnes’s shivering. “Let’s get you inside before you freeze. Thor, thank you for the help.”
“No problem,” he tells her, flashing a gap-toothed grin. He checks his phone, taps something on the screen. “I must go,” he tells them. “But I hope to see you both again very soon.”
“We’ll have you over for dinner,” Nora offers.
“I am counting the seconds,” he says. With one last lingering glance at Agnes, Thor turns and walks away. Not down the driveway. Not to the other truck here. But into the forest.
“Where’s he going?” Agnes asks. The tree cover isn’t so thick that she can’t track his progress, but soon he’s nothing more than the suggestion of a man, obscured by the falling snow.
“He’s got a place nearby,” Nora says. “Incredibly useful on days like today, when the power in the kitchen went out and I couldn’t find the breaker box. But come on, you look like a human Popsicle. Let’s get you inside. This might sound unbelievable to you, but you get used to the cold. After two months of living here, this is actually warm for me.” At Agnes’s look, she adds, “I know, I hate me, too.”
“Only two months?” Agnes asks, reaching into the car to grab the keys. Nora’s reputation is for staying so long on location that she integrates herself into the local community. Two months doesn’t seem long enough. Is this time an exception, or is her reputation an exaggeration?
“I celebrated the holidays in Reykjavík,” Nora says. “But otherwise yeah, two months here in town. I think it’ll be another month or two, in all. I would love to stay longer, but there are other things demanding my attention back in LA.”
“Other things?” Agnes leads Nora to the back of the rental car for her suitcase. She regrets, pulling the little rolling bag out, that she only packed two pairs of jeans and not nearly enough socks. She’d packed for a ten-day visit, the length of time she agreed upon with Nora. She hasn’t told Nora yet that she didn’t buy a return ticket.
“Oh, you know,” Nora says, waving a hand through the air, “they’re getting ready to start the trial for Adriana Lopez’s murderer.” She insists on carrying Agnes’s suitcase and Agnes, ankle screaming, doesn’t fight her for it. Together they hustle through the falling snow to the front door.
“You must be so out of it,” Nora says once they’re inside. “Jet lag kills me. It’ll take you a few extra days to adjust from the West Coast, especially with the minimal daylight here. I’ve got a lot of melatonin and vitamin D, though, so that should get you through the worst of it. I’m just so excited to have you here. I can’t wait to show you around. This is your first time in Iceland, right?”
Agnes nods, but she doesn’t elaborate. She can only really focus on the house. The front hall gives way to an expansive view of the land—and the river she’d heard, shockingly close—beyond. The living room’s luxurious furnishings, its elegant, plush couches surrounding a freestanding fireplace, seem more suited to the lobby of a four-star hotel than someone’s house.
Nora had told Agnes she’s practically living in the farmhouse. “This,” Agnes says, even though it’s obvious, “isn’t my grandfather’s home.”
“Yeah, no, it’s Thor’s,” Nora says, arching an eyebrow. “We’re on your grandfather’s land, of course, but this is a new structure.” She beckons for Agnes to remove her boots, then she leads them through the open living room down a long hallway that also has one wall of concrete, the other glass.
“When your grandfather left,” Nora explains, “he sold the land to one of the quote-unquote neighbors, and that man’s son—Thor, who you just met—built this house a few years ago. He rents it out occasionally as a luxury vacation home. He’s given me a very good price. I almost never get an opportunity like this—staying in the place, near the place, where it all happened.” Close to the end of the hallway, Nora stops in front of a metal door. “This one will be your room.”
Overwhelmed, both by Nora’s presence, massive for such a small person, and the words where it all happened, Agnes steps wordlessly into the bedroom. She’s fighting that same sense of unreality that hit her in the café. Notice what you’re noticing. The room is far quainter than the rest of the house would suggest. The walls aren’t glass or concrete, but a soft, grainy wood. Agnes reaches out to test if it’s that eighties wallpaper she remembers from friends’ homes or real, and of course it’s real. The bed, a large twin, wears a thick, inviting duvet. There’s a window, a rectangle almost above eye level, the size of a porthole, facing the drive. Behind her is a wooden chest of drawers and a writing desk.
“This is great,” Agnes says, feeling distinctly outside of herself. “Thanks.”
“I’m happy to have you here,” Nora tells her. “For many reasons. One being that it can get kind of quiet, all the way out here by myself, in the dark. Your bathroom’s just in there.” Nora indicates the door to Agnes’s left. “Why don’t I let you shower and get the flight off of you? I know I don’t feel like myself until I take a post-plane shower.”
Agnes performs, to the best of her ability, the role of someone who is polite and easygoing and not at all freaked out, and assures Nora that she’ll be out in a few minutes. “It’s the middle of the night for me,” she says, even though she doesn’t have to. Nora’s already leaving, but still, Agnes hears herself making excuses. “I don’t know which way is up.”
Closing the door behind Nora, Agnes breathes out a shaky sigh. It’s been such a long day, and it’s not even over yet. She gathers her toiletries and shuts herself in the bathroom. Like the rest of the house, it’s luxurious, with a deep bathtub and a separate shower, but Agnes doesn’t have the energy right now to enjoy it. She’s got to save herself for Nora. She imagines the podcast host will have questions for her, and Agnes has a lifetime of memories to share, most of them unremarkable to her, but maybe fascinating to an outsider. But Agnes worries that Nora will open like a job interview. So … tell me about yourself.
Should she tell her about how she’s spent the past year destroying herself? That if her life were a house, she’d have it down to rubble, and she’d still be hacking away at the foundation?
Or should she tell her she knows nothing about Einar’s life in Iceland? That she doesn’t even know what Marie looked like, outside of her death mask? That Agnes has only ever seen the famous photograph, but has never noticed the similarities between her face and that of her grandmother’s? She’s only noted the suggestion of white-blond hair, a slim figure, but that could be anyone.
Under the hot spray of the shower, Agnes scrubs at her skin and tries to swallow her anger. She may not have noticed the similarities between herself and the Frozen Madonna, but her father sure would have. Isn’t this something any other father would have mentioned? You look like my mother.
Yet another secret. Yet another wall between them.
As much as Agnes has withdrawn from her life, her friends, and him in the past year, that’s nothing compared to how he’s withdrawn from her. After his father passed away, Magnús seemed to become his own sort of ghost.
She doesn’t know why, but she doesn’t feel the same anger toward her grandfather. She finds she can’t blame him for not mentioning it. There is no before. My life began when you were born. Magnús’s life had been ruined, of course, just as Einar’s had. Both men had chosen to keep their grief locked away from the world. The difference between them is that Einar hadn’t held back his affection for her. His pain had transformed into an effusive love.
Agnes pities her father for his pain. And she resents him for it, in equal measure.
There must be photos of Marie somewhere. Her grandfather had to have taken them with him when they left, and her father must have them now. But Marie had never been on display in Agnes’s household. Her death portrait had lived on album covers and book jackets and the bedroom walls of countless strangers, but within her own family’s home, she’d probably been buried in a box in the basement.
Agnes steps out of the shower. The warm water has done something to ease the throbbing in her knee, the constant electric rumble in that cobbled-together joint, but there’s no helping the pain in her ankle. She dresses herself quickly, choosing an oversized sweatshirt to hide the tremors running through her skeleton.
Having something to do helps, that’s what Dr. Lee says. Agnes has spent the past year locked inside various rooms, first in Emi’s apartment, then her father’s home, recovering from the loss of her grandfather, her mobility, her independence. Your mind is not a bone, or a joint. You can’t heal it in stasis. You have to move. That’s what she’s doing. Right?
It’s time to talk to Nora, but Agnes doesn’t make it to the door. Instead, she sits down on the bed and hoists her backpack on her lap. Her hands seem to move of their own accord, unzipping the side pocket, digging down to the bottom, and grabbing for the yellow bottle filled to the brim with small white tablets. NO REFILLS, the expired prescription reads. Agnes wipes the sweat from her forehead, her skin hot and feverish despite the shower.
The withdrawal symptoms are worst at the start, that’s what she’s read. Not life-threatening, just unpleasant. Back in Berkeley, she’d promised herself she’d go cold turkey. She has to be alert, if she wants to do this, and she can’t imagine any other way to separate herself from the pills.
But still, she’d packed the bottle.
For a moment, the enormity of what she’s trying to do here overwhelms her, and she doesn’t think she’ll be able to resist. The empty promises rise up within her. She’ll go cold turkey tomorrow. She’s in pain. She’s overwhelmed. Plans change.
Her mouth’s watering. She can practically taste the pills on her tongue.
Her clammy hand slips off the childproof cap, and it’s this one pathetic maneuver that brings her back to herself. How many times in the past year has she tried, and failed, to go clean? She’s lost count. The empty promises are just that—empty. She’s made it this far, hasn’t she?
With a tremendous effort, Agnes returns the bottle to her backpack and leaves it behind.