Page 97 of The Living and the Dead

“Yeah.”

He missed Albin and Josefin the minute he was away from themfor more than a few hours. He always had, and he wondered if it would ever stop. Parents of adult children often said you never got used to it, you always missed your kids. It was just that the way you missed them changed. Or maybe that was only something they said, and you really did get used toit?

A person can get used to just about anything. He’d learned that much.

Now he remembered. Their life together was coming back to him. Both of them had studied at the college; teacher education for him and nursing for her. They saw each other every morning and evening, spending nights together in their student apartment on Bolmengatan. Hours of desperate intimacy, as if they were trying to free themselves from chains neither understood, followed by arguments and silence, absence.

She took a part-time job at Hemköp, working the cash register, ringing up groceries. She found it pleasant, only having to say one thing, and saying it over and over.

They had been bound together, Sander and Felicia; when Killian died, Sander made a promise to himself always to stay by her side. It was a salve for his conscience; he could pay off his survivor’s guilt by filling the hole left by the dead. No one else knew about this promise, perhaps not even Felicia. He’d never mentioned it, after all. The most fervent and significant promises are seldom spoken aloud. But he figured she knew anyway.

She glanced at his wrist.

“You kept that. The bracelet. I can’t believe it’s held up.”

“It’s pretty worn by now, but it would feel strange to take it off.”

“He’s the one who made it, right? For a Christmas present?”

“Yes.”

“He told me you threw the package at the wall. You must have changed your mind.”

Twenty years,he thought. Twenty years since they’d last walked side by side. So bizarre. His arm naturally brushed against hers now and then.

“I don’t blame you for how things turned out,” she said. “I used to, of course, but not anymore.”

“You mean…”

“Olivia. You don’t even have to say anything.” She laughed as though an absurd thought had come to her. “Oh my God, what were we? Nineteen? Twenty? We were doing the best we could. How long does it take to cheat on someone, a second? Two? And it’s done. But the path there, leading up to that moment, it’s a lot longer. I was angry because you didn’t mention anything during that time. I was wrecked. But after a while, I realized it was about me too. About us. How we couldn’t talk about the important stuff.”

Words she got from someone else,Sander thought.

“I suppose that’s true,” he said.

He had other memories as well. They showed up like phantom pains.

And then he thought of his recurring dream. It must mean something: the landslide debris, the pressure in his chest, something unfinished. The sound of his own voice as he called out for his dead friend. Then the impulse to dig, all the dirt and muck coming up, the pain in his hands, and he finds something. The shirt Kjell Östholm’s dog took a bite out of. He stares at a mask of a face, but not a real face. Suddenly the eyes fly open, and he recoils under Killian’s terrified gaze.

“You’re at Vallås School, I heard,” Felicia said.

“Yes. I ended up staying. Where do you work again?”

“Åhléns.”

“That’s right. I think I heard that somewhere.”

They were walking along the edge of the old landslide. If you forgot about it for a moment, you could see it in the foliage, the growth younger and more tender. Like a scar.

“I thought you were supposed to head back yesterday,” she said then.

“Right after the funeral, was the plan. But…now Filip, you know? I had to call Olivia this morning to tell her I have to stayanother day, to talk to the police and stuff. It’s just weird that it’s happening all over again, somehow.”

He was walking around with a feeling in his chest, a sense of something unfinished. He couldn’t quite grasp where it came from, but he knew he didn’t want to subject Olivia to it, much less the kids.

“That’s why I quit nursing, I think. I wanted to help people, thought I would be good at it. And I probably was. But I couldn’t handle it.”

“I never believed it was him.”