We Know You Remember (43)

Eira spun around in her chair. August was standing in the doorway, his fringe slightly messy, wearing jeans and a cornflower blue shirt. A damn nice color.

“How does a beer at Kramm sound?”

She realized she was still wearing the clothes she’d had on in the forest, dirt and needles clinging to her sweater, and became aware of a taste in her mouth that could be bad breath.

“I have to go over the interviews,” she said, running a hand through her hair. Her fingers got caught on a tangled twig.

“All night?”

“If that’s how long it takes.”

“OK. Another day, then?”

Her shadow stretched out across the floor in the slanting evening light. If she raised her hand, it would touch his leg. She had to reply, to say something breezy and not too keen, nothing that made it sound like she thought there was anything going on between them—which she didn’t, of course. But before she managed to utter a word, her phone rang.

Unknown number. A man who sounded relieved to have got hold of her.

Eira was already on her way out through the door, and had to run back to grab her keys, before she managed to put his name to the face of a neighbor who lived by the river, near the old customs house.

“It was my wife who spotted her, she was wandering around one of the houses near us, the blue one with the white corners, in her dressing gown . . .”





Chapter 22





She thought she could make out the scent of August already. Almost a month away, but late summer was approaching, minute by minute. The darkness always came as a surprise, so suddenly. And then it was autumn.

Eira was sitting on the porch, wrapped in a blanket. It wasn’t at all cold, but the things she was thinking about were. Frost, the winter chill. If Kerstin went wandering in her slippers then, in the kind of darkness where no friendly neighbors would spot a pink silk dressing gown fluttering between the houses . . .

They had been sitting in the kitchen when Eira got home, chatting over a cup of tea. Kerstin had insisted, the neighbors told her. The worst of her confusion had passed, but they didn’t know how long she had been out, or why.

“It’s a difficult decision,” the woman, Inez, had said as they were leaving, patting Eira’s hand. “To take away from a person like that.”

Once Kerstin had fallen asleep, Eira was far too worked up to go to bed herself. She was so tired her body was aching, anxious that the number of hours until she had to get up again was getting smaller and smaller.

This couldn’t go on. How long had she known that, yet been unable to bring herself to make any changes? Kerstin always said no. She wasn’t going anywhere. This was her home, end of discussion; she knew where everything was, and it wasn’t expensive to live there. As the need for her to move grew, the thought of it became increasingly frightening.

Her stubbornness more unyielding.

Other days, she said “but I’m just a burden,” and Eira had to reassure her that she wasn’t at all, until the discussion came to a standstill again.

A difficult decision, to take away from a person like that. Eira peered out into the night. Making decisions on behalf of her mother, against her will, taking that right away from her. Every fiber of her being screamed that it was wrong, yet it was also where every logical thought led her.

And if she made that decision and it didn’t work out?

She felt like curling up in the blanket, wished it were an embrace. Someone who could hold her, give her advice, or at least have an opinion on the matter.

Eira reached for her phone, didn’t even need to scroll to find his name. It was right at the very top, despite the fact that she hadn’t called him in so long. It was late, it was night, but since when had that mattered to Magnus?

She’s your mum too, she thought. You can’t leave me all on my own in this.

There was a click, and then she heard a tinny voice in her ear.

“This number is no longer in use.”





Chapter 23





GG didn’t seem to have slept particularly well either, his eyebrows grayer than usual, his skin dull. Eira decided not to mention the stain on his shirt. She didn’t want to know what he got up to at night.

“We’re not going to give them a telling-off,” he said once they were sitting in the car. “We’re not angry with these local patrols for taking over twenty-four hours to get in touch.”

Eira could have taken the quicker route via the Sand? Bridge, gaining a few minutes, but they weren’t in a hurry—they were simply going for coffee and a chat with a couple of people who collaborated with the police—so she chose to drive upstream instead. She took the Hammar Bridge over the river, meaning she didn’t have to go back the same way she had just come. The local patrol was made up of volunteers who drove around the area at night, keeping an eye out for anything unusual but not getting involved themselves. Eira had interrupted a breakin thanks to them, caught car thieves.

“We wouldn’t stand a chance without their eyes and ears, not over these distances,” GG continued. “But there’s always the question of what we notice, what we actually see while observing something.”

They pulled up outside a brick house. A few gnomes and elves in the garden, a small sculpture of a deer.