We rock back and forth, slowly, slowly, the branches creak. Sitting like this, I used to swing us so fast that Marthe would scream at the top of her lungs, sometimes she’d try to get out mid-swing and would fall on her face. I feel the words on the tip of my tongue, eager to escape, they taste sweet and dark. She ought to know. She can’t go around kidding herself about things. These are the kinds of things sisters ought to tell one another, I think to myself, the kinds 122of things you’re obliged to say. You’re obliged to say these kinds of things even when it’s uncomfortable to do so, I think to myself, feeling myself straighten up where I’m sitting.

‘It’s the kind of thing you should know,’ I say. ‘When we were up drinking last night, he told me he didn’t want more children.’

‘What do you mean?’ Marthe asks.

‘He’s dreading it,’ I say. ‘Having Olea was the reason things went downhill with his ex. He hates the fact you’re pregnant.’

‘Stop it,’ Marthe says, shifting around in the hammock. ‘He couldn’t have been happier when we found out.’

‘Look,’ I say to her. ‘I know you’re angry at me. But I think I’d want to know about it if my husband was feeling that way about things.’

‘So how exactly do you think he’s feeling, hmm?’ Marthe asks.

‘I don’t think anything,’ I tell her. ‘He told me about some dinner before the summer with some couple you know, Kristian and Ann, where you’d said no when they’d offered you wine, and people had started to speculate, and he told me that all he could think was that he hoped you’d miscarry.’

Marthe blinks hard, looks down at her hands.

‘I’m sure it was Kristian and Ann,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she mumbles. ‘We went to dinner with them.’

‘I feel like you deserve better,’ I say, scratching my leg. I’ve been bitten by a mosquito, a huge, swollen bulge, I scratch it as hard as I can.

‘Why did he tell you that?’ Marthe asks. 123

Her face has frozen in some sort of grimace, as if she were in physical pain.

‘I guess he needed someone to talk to,’ I say. ‘We’d had a lot to drink. It was pretty uncomfortable, really, I was just like hey there, you can’t be telling me this.’

I look up in the direction of the cabin, Kristoffer is sitting in the doorway looking down at us. Why did they paint it white, couldn’t it have been left yellow?

‘It was pretty uncomfortable,’ I say again.