A Nearly Normal Family(42)

“It wasn’t locked,” I stammered. “Dino said she wasn’t home.”

“What is going on, Adam?”

Ulrika brought her hands to her face. Her cheeks were pale.

I didn’t understand. All I was trying to do was keep my family from falling apart.

“Adam,” Ulrika said. “Please, Adam.”

Dino looked at me, pity in his eyes. As soon as he let go of me I swung around, but I stumbled over a pair of shoes on the runner and fell backwards into the door, then landed on my behind.

“She’s lying,” I managed to say. “Amina knows more than she’s letting on.”

All three of them looked at me the way you look at someone who’s just revealed he is suffering from a fatal illness.

“I feel sorry for you two,” said Dino, turning to Ulrika. “But don’t make Amina suffer because of this.”

Ulrika nodded slowly and Alexandra put her arm around her.

“Of course we’ve spoken with Amina. She doesn’t know anything about what happened.”

“I understand,” said Ulrika. “I hope you can forgive us. We’re not ourselves.”

I got my shoes and jacket on and went out to the stairwell. My mind was unraveling. My thoughts galloped by like runaway horses; my ears were ringing and my vision was tumbling over and over. I don’t know if I said anything on the way out. I don’t remember if I shouted or muttered. It’s like a blank spot in my memory when I think back on it. Temporary derangement. I suspect a skilled defense attorney could even get away with an insanity plea.





38


I spent the rest of that weekend tucked in bed with a fever and a raging headache. Even moving from the bed to the sofa sapped all my strength, and I subsisted on soup, toast, and Tylenol.

“Maybe you should get help?” Ulrika said.

I turned off the TV. Every single sound was like a roar in my ears.

“What could a doctor do?”

Ulrika sat down on the couch and stroked my knee.

“I wasn’t talking about a doctor.”

I pulled the blanket up to my chin.

“Maybe you need someone to talk to,” she said.

“And what am I supposed to say? That I’ve done everything in my power to keep my family together? That I’ve gone against everything I believed in, all my moral principles? I lied to the police and tracked down witnesses at home and harassed them. I have done everything for my family, but now my wife is convinced that I’m losing my mind.”

“I never said that. We’re in the midst of a crisis. It’s no surprise that we’re on the brink of a breakdown.”

“We?”

Ulrika was no longer looking at me.

“We all handle crises in different ways.”

Early Monday morning, she flew to Stockholm for a few meetings, but also to get the keys to the apartment. I received a text with a selfie and a promise that we would make it through this. She wrote that she loved me and that we would handle it all together.

That morning I called Alexandra and Dino and begged a thousand times for forgiveness for my actions. Could they pass on my apology to Amina? They were understanding and said they hoped this hell would soon be over.

I slowly woke from my torpor. I staggered around the neighborhood with cloudy vision and gelatinous thoughts. Each person I encountered stared at me brazenly. A grizzled man in a duffle coat grunted and shook his head, but when I asked what he’d said, he looked at me, affronted, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

Ulrika had stacked the entryway full of boxes. She’d already started packing the essentials. I stopped and stared at them, opening one box and rooting through it. A whole life, as I knew it, in eight banana crates. My chest gaped with emptiness.

Three weeks earlier, we had been a perfectly ordinary family.



* * *



On Thursday I waited for Ulrika outside the station. She stepped off the airport bus and smiled, squinting into the sun.

We hugged for an eternity, standing there as if in a gap in time, just holding each other—two bodies that belonged together, linked by love, by time and fate. By God? There among swerving buses and bell-ringing cyclists, late students with steaming cups of coffee, academics dashing here and there in pressed clothing, secondhand middle-class citizens. I don’t believe we were created for each other, that there was a plan drawn up ahead of time for me and Ulrika, but I believe—no, I know—that time and love have bound us together forever, until death do us part.

We walked close together across Clemenstorget and down to Bytaregatan. Paul’s words echoed in my head: He who doesn’t take care of his own has abandoned his faith in Jesus.

“How are you feeling?” Ulrika asked.

“Dreadful,” I answered honestly.

“I love you, Adam. We have to be strong now.”

“For Stella,” I said.

Later on we found ourselves once again in the easy chairs in Michael Blomberg’s office. He was wearing a baby-blue shirt with big rings of sweat under his arms.

“I’ve managed to get the preliminary investigation against Christopher Olsen,” he notified us, not without a certain hint of triumph in his voice. “The court bought my line of reasoning, although certain details remain confidential.”