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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

February 7, 2019

The fireplace flickers to their sides. Agnes pulls off her hoodie, leaving herself bare in shirtsleeves. Ingvar, in a sweater, seems unconcerned. Nora and Agnes have switched roles. Earlier, Agnes had been the one to melt into the background, watching, while Nora had been running the show. Now, Agnes does her best to emulate Nora’s strength. “Do you want to tell me,” she begins, “about the day you found them? The bodies?”

Ingvar scratches his beard with the hand of his injured arm, his fingers poking out from the white cast. “I was six years old,” he says. “At the time, I knew Marie as well as my own mother. I must have spent every day with her, in school or at her home. My mother and Marie, they supported each other.”

“They took turns, though, right?” Agnes asks. “Your mom watched you and Magnús here, right?”

“Yes,” he says. “My mother says she raised Marie’s babies more than Marie did. I don’t remember much time spent with Magnús, though. He was old enough to be on his own. But I remember the baby girl.” There’s more underneath the surface, something Agnes can’t quite see.

“Were you and Magnús friends?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

A shrug. “Magnús didn’t like me.”

Agnes thinks of her father. The stories of his isolated childhood. The time spent alone, playing in the fields. She had never thought it had been by choice. “Why is that?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Did something happen between you two?”

“Some people,” Ingvar says, “you just don’t like. To me, he was a wild hero. He would explore the fields on his own for hours. Return with stories of capturing fish with his bare hands, of going out until he couldn’t see any sign of civilization. He told me he climbed the crater by himself. Now, as an adult, I wonder if he really did go that far on his own, or if he was telling those stories to scare me. But as a child, I envied him, and I think he envied me, for his mother’s affection.”

“She doted on you?”

“Yes.”

“Someone told me that everyone was in love with Marie. Is that true?”

“She was beautiful,” Ingvar says, as though it were that simple, as though beautiful were an objective term everyone can understand in the same exact way. “She was the brightest thing in the room. Every room.”

“You loved her.”

“Very much. She wasn’t my mother, but she was.”

“A second mother,” Agnes says, thinking of her grandfather, the way she referred to him as such only a handful of hours ago. The parent who isn’t a parent. The parent who you feel more freedom loving because they are further removed, because they aren’t the ones who shout at you for breaking a glass, who ask you if you’re pretending not to understand long division to punish them. Who, perhaps for that same distance, feels more freedom to love you.

Agnes focuses on Ingvar. “How would Marie care for you that was different from her relationship with her son?”

“She would send Magnús out,” Ingvar says. “He was driving her crazy. With me, though, she wanted me there. She brought me treats. Made sure I was comfortable in the living room with cookies and Magnús’s record player. Later, when the baby came, she would ask me to watch the baby for her. Marie said I was her best friend.” There’s an edge of understanding in his voice, the adult recognizing the hyperbolic praise, but it’s a faint outline to a child’s heady pleasure, the gratification of a special relationship with an adult who isn’t a parent.

“It was a big shock when she disappeared,” Ingvar continues. “I cried to my mother for a day, because I thought it was my fault that I couldn’t see her. I begged my mother to let me join the search party.” He recounts the day. The fear of being lost, discovering the woman buried in the snow. The throat. The silent, blue baby, the one he had cared for all those many months. His voice cracks only when he speaks of the baby.

“My mother,” he says, collecting himself with a long inhale, “she took me home. The police came soon after. They asked me how I found Marie. They asked about my days alone with her. They asked if I ever saw anything suspicious. I told them about my time with the baby. That Magnús ran wild. That sometimes he had bruises on his arm, from his father’s hands.”

“You saw Einar hit him?” Agnes cuts in. She’s heard this before, straight from her father. Mostly in comparison to how gentle Einar was with Agnes. How he’d softened over time. That Magnús used to be punished, harshly, for childish mistakes.

She’d heard of sharp words. The occasional strike of an open palm. She’d never heard of bruises on her father’s arms.

“No,” Ingvar says. “When Einar came home, my mother would get me, or Marie would take me. I wasn’t supposed to be there when he was home. I was always told it was because he worked so hard. He wanted to eat dinner with his family. But Marie worked just as hard. Harder. And the only time alone she had was when I would watch the baby—or if my mother could take us both.”

“How did the police react to your testimony?”

“How much influence does a six-year-old boy have?”

“What do you think happened?”

“Your grandfather killed them.”

It hits her, yet again, like a fist to the stomach. It’s the intimacy of the accusation— your grandfather —that winds her. Luckily, Nora takes over. “Why?” she asks. “Why are you so certain?”

“Because Marie was afraid of him,” Ingvar says. “His own son was afraid of him. Children understand fear, even if they don’t understand the complexity of a marriage, or death. I understood that he frightened them.”

“But why would he kill her?” Still Nora.

“I don’t know.”

“If you had to guess.”

“I don’t know of any reason why someone would kill a baby, let alone their own. I don’t know why someone would want to kill that woman.” There’s an undercurrent of rage in his voice now, a rising red hue along his cheeks. “But you would have to be a dangerous person to do it.”

“He has an alibi,” Nora says. “He was at the university most of the day.”

“He left. He said nothing.”

One of the logs in the fireplace crumbles on itself, sending a shower of sparks into the air. Agnes, startled, shifts out of its reach. “There’s now another woman missing,” she says.

“Yes,” he says. “A tragedy.”

“Is it bringing up old feelings?”

“I don’t know her,” Ingvar says, “so it’s different. But I worry for her.”

“What do you think happened now?” There’s an undercurrent of rage in her voice, too, but she can’t help it. She enjoys its taste on her tongue.

“I can’t say.”

“And you don’t know her.”

He shrugs.

“It’s a small town,” she says. “Very small. Wouldn’t you run into practically everyone here?”

“I recognize her,” he says. “But no, I do not spend time with the students. Either I am here or in Reykjavík.”

“What are you doing in Reykjavík?”

“Going into the office. I used to work full-time. But now…” He trails off, meaning his mother’s condition has changed everything.

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Her anger has the opposite effect on him. He chuckles. “Not anymore,” he says. “When I moved here, I lost her. I don’t have time now to go looking.”

Agnes thinks of the woman she saw him with in town, just outside ása’s building. How old was that woman? Agnes can’t remember. But she’d heard the tenor of their conversation. The flirtation. Ingvar doesn’t have to go looking—the women find him. Agnes opens her mouth to say more, but she hears her name. She finds Nora standing at her side, one hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Nora says to Ingvar. “But I think your mother’s calling for you?”

He is up and out of the room before Nora finishes her sentence. Leaving her to stare down at Agnes, clearly debating saying something.

“What?” Agnes asks.

“You went into crime show detective mode,” Nora says. “I could see it. You were like a shark. You had the bloodlust.”

“He goes into Reykjavík,” Agnes says, casting her voice to an angry whisper. “That’s where óskar thinks ása was going with her secret boyfriend. It would make sense that they’d keep this relationship a secret, wouldn’t it? He’s twice her age.”

“Bloodlust,” Nora teases.

“You did the same thing with óskar,” Agnes says. “You treated him like a suspect. That was you in crime show detective mode, too, right?”

Nora surprises her with a laugh. “Because he is one,” she says. “He’s lying to the police. Of course I’m going to have to manhandle him to get him to talk to me. But Ingvar wasn’t at the party, and he’s never met ása. It’s different.”

“So he says,” Agnes counters.

“I know it hurts to hear people accuse your grandfather of murder,” Nora says. “But that’s the name of the game. Right? This is just a conversation. Be soft.”