Silver Tears(72)

“Go away, Sebastian. I don’t want any trouble.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Yes, I think I can, actually. And you know why.”

I moved away and was getting ready to stand up and leave when he grabbed hold of my arm.

“I’m going to tell them—all of them—what happened that fucking night. How you killed them.”

I regarded him calmly. He hadn’t touched me since the rapes on the island. But he drank too much. And when he drank he talked. Got angry. Lost control. I detested him and his weakness. There was way too much of Dad in him. Sebastian was a lost cause, and now that the attention around him had begun to die down, he was going to find a new way to be seen.

“Witch,” he sneered. “You fucking disgusting witch. I hope you’re raped again. You do too, really. I know you liked it.”

I sighed, got up, and left him.

While walking through the woods, I could hear the music, the laughter, and the hoarse voices of the partygoers. I knew I would have to silence Sebastian. Mom loved him, but she didn’t know him like I did. She didn’t know what he was capable of.

The world didn’t need more men like him. Men who hit, terrified, and raped. One day, he would marry, father children, and have them in his violent grip. I didn’t intend to let that happen. I didn’t intend to let Sebastian treat his future girlfriend or his wife the way that Dad treated Mom. I wasn’t going to let a little boy or girl grow up and have to see what I had seen. I was the only one who could break the cycle.

But most of all, I wasn’t going to let him ruin everything for me. He’d had his chance. He was the one who’d opted not to take it.



I had intended to let him live. For Mom’s sake. Despite him hurting me in ways that weren’t visible from the outside but that on the inside made me lie awake, night after night, suffering from phantom pain as a result of what had been done to me. We’d held each other’s safety in our hands, and he’d robbed me of the small shard of something beautiful that had existed between our four walls.

He had taken away from me those memories that had helped me to retain a small, small belief that life contained something that was good and right.

But he hadn’t just let me down. Mom loved him too. She saw nothing but good in him—none of the darkness and the evil that he had inherited from Dad. He had been given a chance, thanks to Mom’s blind love for him. And now he had proven that he hadn’t deserved it.

Mom’s heart would break the day she realized that Sebastian was just like Dad. That the horror would continue in the next generation and that her love hadn’t been able to change that. That was why he had to die. To spare Mom that sorrow. She would never find out what he had done. And who he really was.





The red summer house was in a desolate location at the top of a cliff not far from a lake and surrounded by dense forest. It belonged to Ylva’s parents, who had long ago become too elderly to use it. It had been years since they had used the place.

Faye examined the metal handle on the front door with satisfaction before nodding and closing the door behind her.

In the setting sun, she could see contours, shadows of old furniture, could smell the dampness. She fumbled for the light switch and found it. The sound of the switch flicking was not followed by light. A fuse had probably blown, because Ylva had told her the power was usually on. She would have to find the fuse box. Fortunately, she’d brought a flashlight with her.

The floorboards creaked as she entered what appeared to be a living room.

Faye put down the jerry can on the floor, and let both herself and the old house fill with silence. She massaged her right arm, which felt tender after dragging the jerry can all the way there.

This was where she and Jack would finally part ways. Only one of them could leave alive. There was a lot that could go wrong. She might just as easily be the one who lost the battle.

How long did she have before he arrived? An hour? Two? In order not to leave any digital traces, Ylva was taking care of her mobile. Faye glanced at her wristwatch and saw it was a little after ten o’clock in the evening.

Ylva had called Jack on the mobile number he had left when he had visited her apartment. She had said in floods of tears that Faye had turned up and taken Nora away. That she had been acting crazy, muttering that she was going to take away the last thing Jack had—his youngest daughter. That she hadn’t said where she was going to take Nora, but that after she’d left Ylva had discovered that the keys to her parents’ cabin were missing.



Faye pulled the flashlight out of the bag she’d brought, switched it on, and swept the beam around, searching for the basement door. She examined the framed black-and-white photographs on the walls. The people in them looked old. They were probably dead. Other pictures showed Ylva as a child. Ylva without front teeth. Ylva on a horse. Her stomach did a somersault. How well did Faye actually know Ylva? What if she was on Jack’s side? Had she been all along?

Faye had underestimated Jack. And David. Ylva too? No, there was no chance.

“Stop it,” she murmured.

She opened a door that turned out to be the right one and she began to descend the stairs to the basement.

She caught sight of the final rays of sunshine across the treetops through a small rectangular window. When it returns, I might be dead, she thought to herself. The stairs were steep and protested at every step she took.