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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

February 11, 2019

“Just the woman I hoped to see,” Thor Junior says. “May I come inside?”

Agnes hesitates in the threshold. “Could we go somewhere else? A walk, maybe? I’ve been inside all day.”

Thor looks delighted. “Would you like to see my other home?”

Anything to get outside. Agnes drags her jacket over her shoulders and shoves her feet into her boots. She hasn’t properly layered up for a walk outside—she’s still wearing the leggings she’d slept in—but she doesn’t want to be here anymore.

Thor leads them to the right, through the trees on the other end of the driveway. It’s a short walk. The two houses are closer than she’d thought. Thor’s childhood home is the opposite of the building she’s staying in. This structure is old, traditional. The exterior is some kind of corrugated metal, painted a mild mint green. There are patches of rust eating away the paint. This long, low bungalow has only a few windows interrupting the green.

Thor leads Agnes inside, apologizing for the state of the house. “This is my childhood home,” he says, without an ounce of affection in his voice. “When I am finished with your family’s house, I will tear this down.”

“You don’t like it?” she asks. It’s old-fashioned, but if he replaced the furnishings, like the hallway rug that’s lost its pattern to thousands of footsteps, it would be nice.

“It’s a shrine to unhappiness,” Thor says. “It shouldn’t exist.”

Agnes imagines his father would have something to say to that, but she doesn’t blame him. She follows him down the hallway, to the sitting room. There’s an old misshapen couch in one corner, a narrow upright piano in the other.

“Do you play?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “My mother.”

Agnes takes a seat on the couch, suddenly aware of what she’s wearing. Her leggings and a hoodie. She hadn’t even put on a bra.

Thor sits beside her. “I owe you an apology,” he says. “I saw how much I hurt you last night.”

He waits for Agnes to speak. To confirm that yes, he did hurt her. Or perhaps for her to say, No, you didn’t hurt me. I’m fine. It was a shock to hear that my grandfather did, in fact, kill his wife and daughter, but that’s not your fault. She has no voice to say either. She still doesn’t know what led her to this moment. Was it the split-second decision, on that cliff’s edge, when she saw the water and she thought of her grandfather, gone, and she decided to jump, to see what was on that other side, only to discover it was more life, more pain, more grief?

Or was it the day her surgeon prescribed her fifty tablets of oxycodone and told her to take the pills before she even felt pain, so she could stay on top of it? Was it the day she ran out of the refills, when she spoke to the same surgeon and asked for yet another prescription and he finally, finally said no?

Or was it forty years ago, when her grandfather took the knife to his wife’s throat, when he held his infant underwater until neither of them existed?

Thor mistakes her silence for anger.

“I’m so sorry,” he tells her. “You didn’t believe it.” Then: “Are you afraid of your father?”

The question startles her. “No,” she says. Her father intimidates her, but he doesn’t frighten her. He never has.

“Your mother?”

“No.” Her mother is sea glass. The hardship of her life didn’t destroy her. It rubbed her into a new, edgeless shape.

“Brother? Sister? Bully at school?”

Agnes says no to them all. No siblings. No bullies. She went to small progressive schools in the Bay Area. The worst she got was loneliness.

“Good for you,” Thor says. “Truly, you have lived a wonderful life. Not easy, of course. But you don’t know what shaped me. You can’t understand the fear in your head. You can only feel it in your gut. That’s where it lives.” He wants her to understand something, but she can’t figure out what. “I didn’t help,” he explains. “I didn’t help Marie. I didn’t help the baby. I didn’t do anything, because I knew my father was guilty.”

He’s apologizing, she realizes, for not speaking up. It’s an apology to the wrong person. The apology should go to her grandmother, not her.

“You cannot imagine the way I lived,” Thor tells her, “when I was a child. How much I hated my father, for driving away my mother. He took her away. Please don’t hate me for what he’s done.”

“It’s okay,” Agnes says, more to get Thor to stop talking than because it’s true. She’s said this phrase so many times in the past few days, about so many things that were not, were never, could never be okay. “I appreciate what you’re saying. But you have nothing to apologize to me for. What I’m dealing with is… something else. I grew up with my family’s story as just that—a story. It never felt real to me. And I never believed it. Learning all these secrets, hearing the truth, it’s like I’ve lost my grandfather, all over again. That’s what I’m dealing with. Not you.”

She watches the relief wash over him. “We all have secrets,” Thor says. “Some more terrible than others. You must have secrets that you would protect, too.”

Agnes nods. Her hands are shaking because she hasn’t swallowed a few of her secrets today. She’s limping on a secret.

“I want you to know,” Thor says, “I know. And it is fantastic, Agnes.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Your girlfriend.”

Lilja? But—“What’s wrong with that?” she asks, more dumbfounded than confrontational.

“Nothing,” Thor says quickly. “I hope I’m not putting my foot in my mouth. When I was walking to dinner last night, I saw you in the car. Kissing your girlfriend, yes? You’re a lesbian, yes?”

“Sort of,” she says, still confused. “But why is that a secret?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he says. He flounders in his embarrassment. “She didn’t come to dinner. Some people don’t know how other cultures will react to these things. You shouldn’t feel ashamed, though, or like you have to hide her. This is a very accepting place in general and I myself—I think it’s great. What a wonderful woman you are. I never had children. I would have loved to have a daughter like you. You are who I pictured, always.”

“Thank you,” Agnes says. She pushes herself to standing. “I should go.”

Thor stands with her. “Did I put my foot in my mouth?”

“No,” she lies. “I just have to go.” What else is she supposed to say?

“I will walk you home.”

“No,” she says again. Not too quickly. Not too forcefully. Softly, to be kind. “I like to think while I walk.”

He accepts this, but not gracefully. She stares at anything but him on the way out. Thor helps her into her puffy jacket, asking if she’s sure. She is. He points her in the right direction, hovering close enough to be useful.

“Thank you for what you’ve said,” she tells him, and she means it, even if it’s made her uncomfortable.

Agnes retraces the path of their footsteps, back to the house. She needs to get a flight home. She’ll see Lilja again, and then she’ll get out of here. This is enough now.

She stops short at the driveway. Parked behind her rental car is a new car. Empty. No one’s standing at the front door, waiting for her.

Agnes hadn’t locked the front door when she’d left. With a grit of her teeth, she limps the rest of the way to the entrance. She hears the voice calling to her from the trees, but she doesn’t stop, not until she has her hand on the doorknob.

“Hello!” It’s Hildur. Pink-faced and grinning, dressed in a sweater and jeans, on the path leading to the farmhouse. She reaches Agnes quickly. “Is now a good time to talk?”

“Not really. What were you doing?”

“I came to see you. Nora tells me you are leaving in a few days, so it really is now or never for you and me. When you weren’t here, though, I thought I would visit the Murder House, say goodbye before Thor changes it completely. Were you on a walk? Alone? That seems risky.”

Agnes opens the front door. “Nora isn’t here.”

“I know.” Hildur follows her in without an invitation. She starts down the hallway, but Agnes stops her with a hand on her arm. The muscles underneath her grip flex, and they surprise Agnes with their rigidity, their bulk. Beneath her elegant sweaters, Hildur’s hiding a serious physique.

“This isn’t a good time,” Agnes tells her. It’s nothing personal—or maybe some of it is. It’s the way Hildur looks at her. Like she’s a celebrity, not a person. She’s objectified Agnes.

“Listen,” Hildur says, resting a hand over Agnes’s, “I didn’t know Marie well, but I did know Einar. He was very kind. He helped me, did you know? He was friendly with my parents. They begged him to help me with my mathematics. I was awful. I didn’t understand any of it. He gave me lessons. I wrote my book, after, to understand what he did. I couldn’t believe that the man who was so kind to me could do something like that. He brought Marie’s cookies to every session. He told me I should associate learning with happiness. I didn’t want to think of him as a monster. But—” She doesn’t finish the sentence. But he was. “We are not only one thing. Monster or man. You knew him, as I did. The man. Not the monster. And I have always wondered, what was his life like in California? What did he do, when he left? Who was he, after the killings?”

Agnes reaches for the doorknob again. “I’m glad to hear that you cared about him,” she says, pulling the front door open once more. “I appreciate your words. But I can’t handle this right now. I really can’t.”