February 5, 2019
Nora’s winter wear is similar to Agnes’s, except her jacket and boots are far more lived in. She looks like she skis, like she goes to Tahoe or Aspen every January with her own precious equipment that costs more than Agnes’s car. Agnes follows Nora out the front door. They turn left immediately, skirting the side of the house. There’s a pathway to a pair of enormous bins—“For ash from the fireplace,” Nora tells her. “We’ll have to take our trash into town.” Then, almost instantly, they’re in the indiscriminate snow. Agnes’s feet sink clumsily into the powder. It’s like walking on a sand dune, except she can’t seem to find her balance. She’s walking on buried stones and roots and ice patches, so every step is a gamble that twists and grinds her ankle or jolts her knee, keeping her at a snail’s pace.
“Are you doing okay?” Nora asks her. She’s been quiet so far, but they’re moving so slowly, it must be getting to her.
“I’m not used to snow,” Agnes says. She slides forward and catches herself with a desperate, Hail Mary wave of one arm. “Or ice.”
“Follow me,” Nora advises. She pulls ahead, each step deliberate and light. “Put your feet where I put my feet.”
Her gait is shorter than Agnes’s, which is a blessing. Agnes doesn’t look anywhere but at the footwells Nora leaves behind in the white earth. It’s normal, she tells herself through a new bout of self-hatred. She’s exhausted, she’s injured, and she’s never done this before. She’ll get better at it.
Yeah, right.
It will always be this difficult to walk on unlevel ground with her ankle, so she should get used to it.
The path they take is meandering, cutting along bushes or irregular banks of snow. The trees, which muffle the sound so much more than Agnes thought possible, provide them a natural cover. She feels them give way, with the reentry of the wind’s touch on her skin. Nora’s footsteps stop. Agnes comes up behind her, breathless and exhausted.
There it is.
The house.
The two-story structure stands in its own clearing, a rock column surrounded by a semicircle of trees. Behind it, Agnes can see the river up close. Can hear the roar of churning water. Her father has told her stories of fishing that river in summer. Falling in and being pulled under. Thinking he would drown, that he would die, only to be yanked out by his father, who then beat him with an open palm for being so careless. Magnús has spent a lifetime since avoiding open water, which is why her grandfather was the one to teach her to swim.
The house has held steady against the elements for forty years and it looks no different from what Agnes had imagined. The small windows, boarded up. The metal roof, black paint mottled with rust.
The only proof that they haven’t traveled back into the previous century is a single line of CAUTION tape hanging from the door, drifting in a timid breeze.
“Are we not allowed inside?” Agnes asks. She wipes the sweat from her forehead. She can feel the shivers climbing up her spine, but she’s hot. So hot.
“We can go in,” Nora says. “Everyone else in town has.”
“Isn’t that breaking the law?”
Nora shrugs. “I try not to question things that make life easier for me.”
Agnes can’t tell if she’s joking. She hasn’t had much, if any, experience with the police or crime scenes, but she’s pretty sure this is illegal, or at the very least, unethical. In the end, though, what does a line of police tape matter? Agnes flew all those hours to get here, to see this house. She shouldn’t let a piece of plastic, or a vague fear of the police’s authority, keep her out.
“The interior is rough,” Nora warns her. “Especially after Saturday’s party. The house has been left alone for a long time. Thor’s started working on it, but it’s not looking great in there.” She rustles her hands in her deep pockets and produces a thick flashlight. She offers it to Agnes, then takes out one for herself, along with one of the cameras from the house. “Thor’s father, of the first generation, bought the house and the land from your grandfather and never touched any of it. Now, our Thor, of the second generation, is fixing it up. He has the best name, by the way. Did you hear it? Thor Thorsson. I love the patronymics here. Why didn’t your family follow the tradition?”
“To be Agnes Magnúsdóttir?” Agnes asks. “Well, I was born in the US, so it’s different.” Her father could have still given her his name. He could also have given her his own—Einarsson. She would’ve liked that. Instead: “They decided to give me my mother’s name.”
“And your aunt, Agnes,” Nora says, like she can’t help herself.
“Yep. No more patriarchy for me.”
“Matronymics,” Nora quips. She slides a thumb over one edge of the camera, then holds it out in front of her. “Agnes Glin. I like it.”
A wave of nausea sets Agnes’s head spinning. She has to swallow a mouthful of saliva before she can speak. “Thanks. What’s the camera for?”
“I’m a hoarder when it comes to my show. I try to document every possible moment I’m here. Everything I’m doing, I want a solid memory of it. Does the camera bother you?”
Agnes supposes it doesn’t. It’s part of the agreement, her coming here.
“The walkway’s easier here,” Nora tells her. “The soil underneath is much more level.”
Breathing heavily through her mouth, Agnes heads for the front door. Her feet slide on the back end of her stride, and she’s walking over a mess of phantom footprints left in the snow, but Nora is right. The land is much more level here. She’s able to cut across to the front door on her own. It’s not easy, though.
Agnes takes her time at the front door. The wood ages under her gaze. Reeling, she grips the doorknob for balance, realizing at the same moment that she hadn’t thought to buy gloves.
She pushes the door open. It protests, but half-heartedly, swinging back and inviting her inside. Agnes imagines herself as her grandfather when he last crossed this threshold. This had been his home from birth, the center of his universe. Left behind to disintegrate into ruins, into nothing but a monument of tragedy.
The smell of mildew, stale cigarette smoke, and old beer hits Agnes in one fetid gust, obliterating all thought. She can’t fight the nausea anymore. One moment, she’s standing in the doorway to her grandfather’s home. The next, she’s trying to walk back to Nora, trying to get away from the smell, but her vision is fuzzy and her legs won’t cooperate. She has time to wonder when the gently falling snow had transformed into a blizzard before she feels her body slump to the ground.