Page 151 of The Living and the Dead

He went inside and up to the children’s rooms to press his lips to their foreheads. They were fast asleep, tangled up in blankets and dreams. He hoped they would be able to stay there for a long time.

He kissed Olivia on the cheek and said he was going out for a while, would be back later.

“Everything okay?”

He smiled and nodded, although he wasn’t entirely sure.

—

The right ashes were placed in the right grave. It had been an exhaustive task that ripped up more than just soil. Hampus Olsson’s mother was still alive. The media ran sweeping, bombastic think pieces, demanding to find out who was responsible, interviewing locals. It was excruciating.

But in one sense, it was very simple. They changed the date of death on Killian’s gravestone. They were all there to witness it together.

One year erased, another in its place. That was that.

Correction: everyone but Sander was there. But now, as he finallystepped into the cemetery in the twilight, he didn’t hesitate, he had climbed out of the car and simply put one foot in front of the other. Simple as that.

He’d died, Killian, and he’d come back. And died again. It was confusing and left out a lot of important details, but that was the short version of the story.

Many things would continue to be left out of the story. No one knew what Killian experienced during his years of invisibility. There should be a word for that sort of thing, but there probably isn’t.

Sander remembered the way to the grave. When he reached it, he simply stood there gazing down at it. If he was thinking any particular thoughts, he couldn’t say what they were; he only remembered the words that came out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t expecting a response.

From the pocket of his jacket, he took a photograph. The last one he’d found in Killian’s backpack, of the two of them, eighteen years old. Inseparable.

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No dreams, just rain. He’d often mused, in recent days, that rain is forgiveness. A tiny piece of heaven falling to the earth.

He sat before the grave, breathing in and out. Thumbing the photograph of Killian in his white T-shirt and black jeans, Sander in his pale blue jeans and flannel button-up, green with pale stripes of blue and yellow.

He would linger here for some time, he knew.

He turned his gaze to the sky again. It would probably start to rain soon.

Not yet. But soon.

And in the very back of his mind, somewhere in the murky corners Sander seldom visited, it felt as though the truth had always shadowed him, ever since he’d lost his best friend one Christmas Eve over twenty years ago. A tattered figure moved from tree to tree, always edging closer, luring him in:Turn around and follow me, come away into the darkness. Into the unknown, with its unfamiliar paths.