Grens looked out onto Kronoberg’s courtyard as he often did. The sun had moved—some of the sidewalk and a few park benches now lay in the shadows—but the heat lingered. He popped his head out through the wide-open window, leaning forward with his elbows against the frame. Thirty degrees. No air conditioning. He didn’t look forward to trying to sleep tonight with a low of twenty-two degrees, a so-called tropical night.

The green folder, her life, what happened afterward.

He held it. It wasn’t very thick, it wouldn’t be.

Registry extract with her new name. Her new social security number. Her new personal history. Photo documentation of her adjusted appearance. Her new town, address, contact person, guardians. Her new life.

Ewert Grens left the window, where no cool could be found, and returned to his corduroy sofa. On the front of the green folder there it stood in black, with a black rectangle around it.

WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM

He opened it. And then froze.

A blank piece of paper.

And then another.

And another.

An entire stack of blank paper.

A folder from the most restricted archive in the police station that was as thick as it was supposed to be.

But whatever was once inside was gone. Replaced. By nothing.

Her new life.

Someone had taken it.

Chapter 8

Blank.

Just like parts of his memory.

Ewert Grens remembered the stench, the weight of her body, what she looked like as she slept in a newly purchased bed in the safe house—a beautiful little flower with tangled hair. But he couldn’t recall her name.

His memories now were as blank as her memories were then.

“Who else came?”

“Came where?”

“To your birthday party.”

He had interrogated her cautiously. Trying to get a little closer to the truth every day. She never mentioned the assault, the shooting, the murder. She didn’t even understand that her family was gone. She’d repressed it all. She’d handled extreme trauma by pretending her way forward.

“It was your birthday. You turned five. And you had a very nice cake. So who sang for you?”

“Mom. Dad. Julia. And Eliot.”

“And after that?”

“No one.”

“I think somebody else came.”

“No.”

“One or two or three people who weren’t invited?”

“No one else.”

“But if you . . .”

“The dolly. With shiny red jacket and white shoes. Give it to me, Ewert. You can take the one with the blue boots. Let’s go sit by the dollhouse. You can have the upstairs this time, and I’ll take the downstairs.”

She turned off. Closed down. Her calendar had started over. When she disappeared from his world a month later, she hugged him and whispered that now she was thirty-two days and five years old. As if those five years were something completely different.

Grens also remembered his fury.