The young woman asks me more, wants to talk, but I don’t. Because I can’t. As I sit here staring out through the train window at the Albanian landscape, so different from the forests around Söderköping, these images, fragments of memory, are becoming larger and more stubborn. They’re pounding inside my head to get out. Or maybe they want to get in? I remember it so clearly. The voices and smells that belong to this place, what I’m seeing and hearing, even though it happened somewhere else. They were in an apartment. Yes, that was it. Dad suddenly blowing out the candles. On my cake. Five candles, red and blue. He blows them out and takes my hand, squeezes it tight. It’s hurry, hurry. As if he already knows they’re on their way. He hides me in the hall, in a small wardrobe, up high on the wall, more like a cupboard than a regular closet for jackets and pants. He pushes me behind some pillowcases and towels, and just as he’s about to close it they arrive. Storm inside. Five of them. Just like the candles on my cake. Men I have never seen before. That’s why Dad only had time to hide me. And he couldn’t even close the cabinet door all the way, so I can hear, even see. When one of the men turns on the TV and raises the volume. When Eliot crawls under his bed. When Dad won’t answer their questions, and they say that in that case it will cost him. When Mom and Dad try to stop one of the men from going into Eliot’s room and pulling him out from his hiding place under the bed. When they shoot him in the head. Strange shots. Barely audible. When they sit down with Mom and Dad in the kitchen, and Dad is so hysterical that you can barely hear what he says. But I can hear what they say. They want Dad to answer a riddle. “Listen: you’re in a boat that’s about to sink. Far out to sea. It’s just you, your wife, and your daughter—yes, we saw her hiding under her bed.” Dad stands up and starts to run toward Julia’s room, but they grab hold of him, push him down, drag him back to the chair in the kitchen and to the riddle that they aren’t done telling. “Okay. We’ll continue. You’re in a rubber dinghy and it’s going to sink if all three of you stay. But—and now here we get to the riddle itself—if you’re only two, you just might make it. And you, my friend, are going to have to answer: Who will you choose to save?” All the men are waiting. For Dad’s answer. They wave the gun that shot Eliot. Wave it in front of Dad’s face and finally he answers. Quietly. Almost a whisper. “Them. I choose them and jump out myself.” The men shake their heads and laugh very loud. “No—that’s not how the riddle works. You have to choose. You have to be one of two left in the boat.” They wave their guns around again, then press one against Mom’s forehead so hard that it starts to bleed, and Dad whispers again. “My wife. So that our child, who has so much more life ahead of her, can live.” “Wrong answer again.” Now the man who’s telling the riddle stands up. And runs into Julia’s room. I can’t see him shoot her, the cabinet door is in my way, but I can hear Julia screaming and then it stops. Everything is silent. He comes back and keeps talking. “Wrong answer. A child is just one child. While you and your beautiful wife can have more.”