Other things had happened before. Not like that, like on the balcony, but now and then I did hit back. A little harder. If someone hurt or threatened me or got too close. Friends and classmates knew it. But I never understood why that spontaneous rage would come to life or where it went afterward.

I remember that feeling as he lay three floors below and the party kept going as if nothing had happened. One moment there’s a person with thoughts and a life, then nothing. For the first time, the nightmares and fragments started to make sense. I started to sense why my sister had stopped crying. What happened after Mom spat in the man’s face. That it was connected to all of my questions, all my images and Albanian words that had suddenly just arrived.

—

After Zaravic’s car, she headed back to the apartment building, took the stairs down to the basement and a dim hallway, which she followed to its end. This should be it—right around here, one floor up, was the apartment with a hole in the closet floor. And exactly like the boy named Hugo had told her, there was a heavy metal door with two large wheels you had to turn to open. First she stepped into a smaller passage, as if the air raid shelter had a hall, then into its heart. They were sitting there. Together. Hugo, the eldest, holding a little girl in his arms, and his little brother next to him, leaning close.

We three. Against the world.

“Hello, nice to see you again. But this time no ceiling between us.”

The two boys responded simultaneously.

“Hello.”

And then the younger one continued.

“Are you sure?”

“What?”

“That Mom is really okay. We heard gunshots.”

“I promise—your mother is completely fine.”

She was so happy. She’d made it. They were alive. They were still three siblings on their way.

“And she’s waiting for you.”

The youngest boy glanced up at the hole in the ceiling.

“Did you save her?”

“I don’t know if . . .”

“They weren’t the ones who were shooting—it was you. Right?”

She nodded. Barely, but enough.

“Then you did save Mom.”

He got up from his brother’s side, walked over to her, his arms high in the air. His hug was long and tight.

“My name is Rasmus. One time another police officer saved us. Ewert. Do you know him?”

—

Aunt Vesa’s gunshot and Lorik’s lifeless eyes were the beginning of the answers I’d been seeking all my life.

But also new questions.

Aunt Vesa, why did we have to drive on this road? Why were we in such a hurry? Why were you so scared?

Why did he want to kill me?