Page 5

CHAPTER FOUR

February 5, 2019

At the center of the living room, there’s the enclosed, freestanding fireplace, its bright orange flames dancing behind the glass. On one side of the fireplace, there’s a pair of deep, inviting couches. On the other, there’s a table the length of a minivan, half of it covered with gadgets and wires. The technology draws Agnes forward. She spots a couple of handheld cameras, a few GoPros, but the rest is a jumble of machinery and cables. She supposes there must be microphones in the mix, but she can’t locate them. There are, however, quite a few expensive laptops. It’s a costly operation, and it occurs to her, as she catalogs the many tangles of equipment, that there should be more people here.

Nora’s voice echoes down the hallway. “Help yourself to whatever you want from the kitchen. The power went out this morning, so I haven’t had time to put any lunch together. Are you hungry?”

Agnes calls back, “No, thanks.” She can’t remember ever being less hungry.

She pulls a seat from the end of the table and falls into it, admiring the lunar landscape outside the living room windows while she waits for Nora. Listening to the rushing flow of the fire, Agnes tries to picture growing up in this country, its foreign magic made ordinary because it’s all you’ve ever known. She wonders how different she’d be if she’d grown up somewhere like here. If she’d know all the names for the plants, the creatures, the constellations in the night sky, if she’d be infused with the lyricism of the language. She wouldn’t be this gnarled oak tree born of California’s hard, fertile soil. She’d be something much softer, much more elemental. And the anger, the resentment crawling inside her, melts momentarily into regret. Her father had grown up like that. And then he’d left. He has both places inside of him. Or, more likely, he has neither.

Nora enters the living room carrying an armload of folders and loose papers and notebooks. She sets the pile down in front of Agnes.

“My research,” she announces. “Thought you’d want to see some behind-the-scenes action.”

“You’re old-school.” Agnes picks up the top folder. It’s a plastic envelope, the type she had in sixth grade to organize her homework assignments. Inside are pages and pages of printouts. They look like medical records, but she can’t be certain because they’re not written in English. “Do you speak Icelandic?”

“No, they didn’t have that option at my high school,” Nora says dryly. “I have a friend in town who’s helping me to translate the bulk of it all.”

Agnes replaces the folder on top of the pile, unimpressed.

“I’m picking up some of it,” Nora adds. “I try to immerse myself as much as possible in the case, by whatever means necessary. And that’s with other, less important cases. I mean, cases less personal to me. This story… your grandmother’s case… it means a lot to me. It was my first exposure to true crime. Did I tell you that? It was my sister. She was seven years older than me, so obviously I worshipped her. Everything she did, I did. She went through a serious Bjork phase, and then it became an all-out Iceland mania. She said she’d come here as soon as she had the money to. She had the photo on her wall, like I said. The Frozen Madonna. I always thought, maybe—” Nora stops abruptly.

She must have seen Agnes’s skin crawling.

“Is that too much information? Probably, right? I just think it’s important for you to know, before we begin any formal interview, before I turn on my microphone and you start thinking of me as Nora Carver, podcast host, that this case is intensely personal to me. I may be a stranger to you and your family, but I don’t feel like one.” One hand lands close to Agnes’s, as though she can’t decide if it’s appropriate to touch her. It finds the pile of papers again instead. “And not to be too sentimental, but I really do hope you understand how much I appreciate you coming here. This is a gift, one that I can only hope to honor.”

She’s waiting for Agnes to say something.

“Oh,” Agnes says. Then: “I don’t—”

“Too sentimental,” Nora confirms. “I’ll contain myself.”

This tears a laugh from Agnes’s throat. She can’t imagine this woman contained. She should really be thanking Nora in kind, for paying for her car, letting her stay in her place. It’s generous. Trusting. It’s equally generous to acknowledge the enormity of what she’s doing here.

But it’s yet another “thank you.” Agnes has been so taken care of in the past year. There have been so many meals prepared for her. So many schedules realigned. Hands guiding her in and out of chairs and medical offices and clinical eyes on her body, judging how she’s moving, how she’s improving. Her father’s half-hearted attempts at meals. Bananas, protein shakes, toast. The consideration, every wash day, to guide her in and out of a routine that used to be mindless and private. Part of Agnes feels infantilized, a child impotently reaching for a too-high counter. And part of her feels so unbelievably tired of saying “thank you.” Burnt out on the gratitude and the care and the appreciation. Nora’s generosity touches Agnes. But it exhausts her, just as much, if not more.

So she says, “Are you really alone here? No one else?”

“I have that contact in town,” Nora tells her. “And there’s Thor, the owner of the house. He’s not too far away. But yeah, I’m flying solo for this project. I’ve got my assistant and my producers back in LA, but this is largely a one-woman operation. It makes for a leaner, more adaptable machine.”

“You don’t feel nervous,” Agnes says, haltingly, “interviewing all these people, by yourself? Isn’t it dangerous?” A woman alone, inviting herself into strangers’ houses and lives and poking around the most delicate of subjects. Agnes had thought there would be more people here. Backup for this tiny woman.

Nora wanders up close to the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Even though I’m researching a particularly brutal set of murders,” she says, unaware of Agnes’s flinch, “Iceland as a whole is a very safe place for me. And even if it weren’t, I’ve been in far worse situations alone, believe me. For most people, the pageantry of an interview, with my official-looking equipment and my reputation, is enough protection. I’m like a security guard at the mall. We’ve both got Tasers and a veil of authority.” She beckons Agnes to join her. “Want to see something cool?”

Agnes closes the distance between them, trying to bend her knee at the right moment, at the very nadir of her stride, straightening it casually, not like she’s thinking about it, hard, the way she’s become accustomed, but it doesn’t work. The limp is there.

Nora points at the glass at an acute angle. “You can see the old farmhouse from here,” she says. They crane their necks to catch a glimpse of the corner of a black, rusted roof.

“It’s so close,” Agnes says, her heart beating faster. That was home. “Can we get there easily from here?”

Nora hesitates, her breath fogging up the glass. “There’s no path, so it can be tricky in the snow… but no, it’s not far.”

Translation: easy for me. Not so easy for someone who can hardly manage a concrete floor.

“I’ll be fine,” Agnes says, her voice stiff. “I shattered my kneecap and my ankle, among other things, but I’m pretty much all healed up. It’s not painless to walk on in general, but I can handle a walk in the snow.” She hopes.

“If you’re sure,” Nora says, wincing sympathetically. “How’d you hurt it?”

“Surfing. A wave took me into some rocks, and I hit them, hard.”

Nora sucks in air through her teeth. “When was this?”

“About a year ago.”

Nora tells Agnes she once tore her shoulder in a car accident. “LA,” she says, by way of explanation. “The recovery from the surgery nearly drove me insane. I wasn’t sleeping. It was my right arm, and I’m right-handed, so I was useless for a while. Believe me when I tell you, I went nuts .”

Agnes pretends to care, but privately she wants to laugh. Nora has no idea what she’s talking about. Her recovery probably lasted a couple of months, at the most, during which time she could walk, leave her house, and hell, go to the bathroom by herself. And now she’s fine. She doesn’t need oxycodone to be able to think about anything other than her ankle.

“I’m okay,” Agnes tells her. “Really.”

Nora nods and returns to her pile of papers at the table. “There’s something else I wanted to show you.” She pulls out a printout and brings it back to Agnes. “I thought you’d like it.”

What she holds is a Xerox of an old photo. The resolution is grainy, the ink a bit too harsh in places and in others, too light. But this adds to the realism of the portrait, as though the woman were passing under fluorescent bulbs.

It’s her. It’s Marie. But it’s Agnes, too. The woman in the photo has her hair, as far as the printout will allow. It’s almost white. There are some notable differences, though—her grandmother’s eyes are far more tilted, her cheekbones far more prominent. Her smile is much more open. Agnes’s face is closed. Rounder. But Agnes sees the resemblance, just as she recognizes herself in the mirror. Why hadn’t she seen herself in the Frozen Madonna before? Had it really been the quality of the photo? Or had it been willful ignorance?

“It’s nice to see her alive,” Agnes says.

“This was her immigration photo,” Nora tells her. “Denmark to Iceland. It was… difficult to track down. I thought you’d want to see something new. Or—” She lets out a nervous laugh. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Agnes says. She stares down at her reflection. “I’m a year older than her when she died. Can you believe that?”

Her grandmother only reached twenty-six. It’s not enough time on earth. Agnes feels like she’s hardly begun.

Nora shakes her head. “And she’s a kid in this picture. Already married, probably already pregnant. She’s got less than a decade to live after this was taken. She was never allowed to be anything but young.”

Agnes holds the photograph close to her body, as though she could protect its subject. Nora catches the action, and they share a look. A zap of sudden understanding. Agnes can finally, for this one brief moment, see Nora. Underneath the polished veneer of a crime-solving podcast host, Nora is decent and determined, burning with a righteous passion like Joan of Arc.

“I really am sorry,” Nora tells her, “for how I reacted when we first met. I was keyed up, both excited to meet you and worried sick about your drive up. Then, seeing you… it was a bit of a shock. It was clear you were uncomfortable, though, and I’m responsible for that.”

“I guess it was a shock for me, too,” Agnes says. In spite of her fatigue and her skepticism, she finds herself appreciating the other woman’s boundless energy. Agnes can feel it propping her own mood up.

“In our defense,” Nora says, “not that there is much of one, the resemblance is so uncanny. And for someone like Thor, who was eighteen when your grandmother died, he’s going to remember her well. When he sees you, the spitting image of her, my god… It probably brought up a lot of long-buried memories and feelings.”

“That we’ll discuss over dinner with him,” Agnes says. “Right?”

“That, or something else. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I just want the three of us to sit down together. Something interesting’s bound to come up.” Nora turns back to her pile of research. “You sure you’re not hungry?”

Agnes doesn’t answer. Instead, she resumes her seat at the dining room table. “Now that we’ve cleared the air,” she says, “I have to ask: my family’s case. What do you think happened?” She catches herself before she adds, Do you think my grandfather’s innocent? She wants the truth, not what Nora thinks she wants to hear.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Nora says. She drags out a chair so they’re directly across from each other. “The world believes your grandfather did it. That, at the very least, he killed Marie, after discovering that she killed their daughter. What I believe generally doesn’t have any place in the conversation. I follow facts, I trace rumors to their source, and if I have any strong feelings either way, that will create a bias in my reporting. I don’t want that.”

“That’s fine,” Agnes says, tamping down a burst of frustration. “But that’s not an answer. This is just us, right? Before we get into official business. As a person who grew up with the case, you must have an opinion. You must have your own private thoughts.”

“You want to get into it?” Nora asks her, suddenly giddy, like they’re playing a game of Truth or Dare. Agnes doesn’t blink. “Okay, let’s get into it. The signs point to your grandfather. They do. Even without any evidence, his behavior was that of a guilty person. Not speaking up once in his own defense… I can understand why people think the way they do. I’m not saying it’s right, but the logic is pretty sound. If you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit, you’d argue against it, wouldn’t you?”

Nora doesn’t wait for an answer. “Usually, the most obvious explana tion is the right one. Most likely, Einar did it. But if you want my honest opinion? No, I don’t think he did. Not because he wasn’t arrested, let alone convicted—I’ve been at this long enough to see many murderers walk free—but because of Magnús, your father. His survival knocks out both parents as the murderer, if you ask me.” She holds up a finger. “For Marie: postpartum psychosis tends to have the highest risk associated with the birth of the first child. Nothing I’ve read has said that Marie suffered from postpartum depression or psychosis when Magnús was born, so it’s unlikely that she experienced it with her second child.”

Nora holds up another finger. “For Einar: by all accounts, he adored Marie. I’ve never heard of a reason why he would kill her, other than the throes of rage and grief at the death of their daughter—but again, I don’t buy that. And if he did have some other reason to kill his family, why spare Magnús? Most fathers who kill their families don’t pick and choose. They either annihilate everyone and themselves, or they annihilate everyone but themselves so they can start fresh elsewhere.” She waves her hand in the air, as though that settles everything.

Agnes can’t find the words to respond. The relief washing through her is too overwhelming.

Nora grins. “Not what you expected, right?”

Agnes shakes her head.

“The job requires me to keep an open mind,” Nora warns her, “so I’m going to have to look into him, regardless of what I think. Okay?”

Agnes finds her voice. “Fair enough,” she says. She feels herself returning Nora’s smile, and the feeling is foreign to her. When was the last time she genuinely smiled? “So, uh, how does this whole thing work? With you and me?”

“Ordinarily,” Nora says, “we would sit down together, much like we are doing now, and talk. I have you for ten days, and there’s so much I want to know… It would be a series of conversations. Ordinarily, these conversations would get less and less formal. Less of an interview and more of a friendly chat. I just want to talk to you about your family…” She trails off.

“Ordinarily,” Agnes echoes.

Nora runs a hand through her wild hair. “Things have changed.”

Agnes waits for her to elaborate, but she seems unable to start. “What’s going on?” she asks. “It’s still okay for me to be here, right?” Could her father have done something? Followed through on his threat to sue Nora?

In answer, Nora digs into her pocket, dragging out her cell phone. It’s an enormous iPhone, one of the latest models that seems closer to a tablet than a cell phone. Nora taps through the screen and passes it to Agnes, having to palm it with both hands so it doesn’t fall. On-screen is a brief article, all in Icelandic. Agnes can’t decode it. Front and center is a portrait of another young woman with hair so blond it’s colorless. Another open smile, but that’s where the resemblances end. This isn’t her grandmother. This isn’t Agnes. This woman has a pointed, narrow face, with eyebrows like semicircles.

“This just happened this weekend,” Nora says.

Agnes returns the phone. “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know Icelandic.” She does know, though, that she won’t like whatever comes next. The woman looks all too familiar.

“This is ása Gunnarsdóttir,” Nora says. “She’s a student at the university here. She was reported missing yesterday, and I have reason to believe it’s connected to your grandmother’s case.”