February 12, 2019
Agnes finds herself in the kitchen with a full glass of wine in front of her on the counter. Untouched, for now. Beside it, her bottle of pills. Unopened, for now.
She knows there are better things to do. Like, for instance, finding herself a flight home. What she wants to do, though, is swallow the first two pills with the first sip of wine. Finish the glass while she’s alert. Start the next with two more pills. Enjoy the feeling of consuming and being consumed.
There’s nothing holding her back from doing this. No more Nora. No more Einar. Just Agnes. Alone again. Even more alone than ever before.
Except there’s Lilja now. It’s the thought of her, the smell of her freshly washed sheets and clean skin, that holds Agnes back from the bottle. She doesn’t want Lilja to know that she’s the type of person who spends her days dipping her toes into absolute oblivion because she can’t think of anything she’d rather be doing. Lilja isn’t here right now, but somehow it feels like she is. The memory of her is so strong, Agnes is certain she could conjure her into the living room, if she could just concentrate hard enough.
Lilja, tucking her head into the crook of Agnes’s neck. Her breathing slowing as they slipped closer to sleep.
Lilja had whispered the words against her skin, I don’t want to spend my whole life missing Ása.
Agnes leaves the wine and pills on the counter and makes for the foyer, to her jacket. She slides the two phones from its pockets. Her iPhone. Ása’s old Samsung.
She returns to Ása’s texts. She’d translated Ása’s last messages to her mystery boyfriend. There hadn’t been any identifiable information in those final texts, but maybe there’s something more in their earlier exchanges. She scrolls farther back. There are long stretches of conversations. It’ll be tough with Google Translate, but what else is she going to do?
The bottle of pills calls to her on the counter.
She’s hesitating, torn between curiosity and temptation, when the phone in her hands signals low battery. The screen goes dark.
The bottle of pills shouts louder.
Agnes has to go now, before she gives in. She stows the phone back into the pocket of her puffy jacket, then she throws it over her shoulders. She steps outside into what she’d call a blizzard. The snow she’s seen here so far has come down in gentle, clumsy currents. Thick slices of frozen water drifting down like feathers onto her skin. But this is closer to rain, to heavy sheets of ice thumping against the ground like they’ve been thrown, hard, from the sky.
She doesn’t turn back. She just weaves, blearily, through the trees, head down to protect her eyes.
I would have loved to have a daughter like you, Thor had told her yesterday. And she’d looked away, embarrassed. She hadn’t been able to meet his eye, not until she was on his front doorstep. Instead, she’d scanned the room. Eyes snagging on the many strange details of someone’s life. Old pictures, knickknacks, scuffs on the sideboards. Just as she’d been leaving, she’d seen something. The black cord of an old phone charger. She knows from experience that her iPhone charger isn’t compatible with Ása’s phone.
But Thor has one. She can borrow it, charge Ása’s phone, and find the secret boyfriend.
The green metal house emerges from the white in a matter of minutes. She must have been moving quickly, but she’d taken the wrong way. She’s at the rear of the house, near the kitchen. When Thor had escorted her, they’d landed at the front drive. She stomps through the piles of snow, hoping he doesn’t choose this moment to look outside his window and find her hurrying past. The lights are on, so she pushes herself to go faster, not wanting to frighten him.
Reaching the front door, she knocks once, hard.
She waits.
Knocks again.
When no answer comes, she watches her hand try the doorknob as though it were disconnected from her. Watches the door swing in. Unlatched. It’s easy, she supposes, to get used to keeping your doors unlocked out here, in the anonymity of the woods.
The air inside is blessedly warm. Agnes takes a step in, and then another. She doesn’t remove her shoes. She hesitates at the threshold, listening for Thor. No one calls out. There are no sounds of human life in here, no bodies moving through the space. No breathing but her own.
“Hello?” she calls. “Thor?”
Nothing but the rush of the wind over the roof. The heavy beats of the snow landing on the metal.
Agnes wanders into the sitting room, where they had spoken yesterday. She’s here, she might as well take the charger. She searches the corners of the room, every surface. No black cords. She returns to the hallway. Checks around the entrance. Then she finds herself in the kitchen. It’s bare, similar to the one in the farmhouse. Except there are a few takeout containers here, splayed open on the countertops, their contents congealing into unrecognizable lumps.
Still no charger.
The next room is a bedroom. Thor’s room. It, too, is bare, but for the necessary bed, the desk and chair in the corner, a small wardrobe. The bed catches Agnes’s attention. It’s small, a twin, built for someone much smaller than Thor. No wonder he wants to go back to his new house. The bed in there is three times larger. And no wonder he’s regressed. He’s sleeping on what looks to be his childhood mattress. It would be impossible not to feel infantilized by that.
She slides her gaze to the nightstand. There’s the black charger, coiled up into a bundle next to a phone. An old Samsung. No case. She’s seen Thor’s cell phone, peeking out of his pocket. That one has a case. Thick, clear plastic. The type to protect it from a great fall.
Why would he take his phone out of the case to charge it?
Agnes checks over her shoulder, half expecting to find him hanging over her. Waiting for her to notice before he shouts Boo! But there’s just the empty hallway.
She picks up the phone to disconnect the charger, and the screen lights up.
A sense of déjà vu washes over her.
The phone is so familiar because she’s held one like it recently. Actually has its twin in her jacket pocket. She swipes this one open. Like Ása’s phone, there are no notifications in any of the apps. Nothing beyond the bare minimum of a home screen.
Agnes taps on the messages icon.
There’s only one conversation on this phone, too.
She enters the chat and there’s the wall of text, followed later by a single line. Agnes can decipher it, even if she doesn’t speak the language. She’d already translated it once, after all.
I hope I haunt you.