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Back Love and Other Lies
Chapters (61)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Imagine a girl
  4. Prologue
  5. The Foreigner
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. The Skeptic
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-One
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. The Spectator
  31. Twenty-Four
  32. Twenty-Five
  33. Twenty-Six
  34. Twenty-Seven
  35. Twenty-Eight
  36. Twenty-Nine
  37. The Assassin
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-One
  40. Thirty-Two
  41. Thirty-Three
  42. Thirty-Four
  43. Thirty-Five
  44. Thirty-Six
  45. Thirty-Seven
  46. Thirty-Eight
  47. Thirty-Nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-One
  50. The Hunter
  51. Forty-Two
  52. Forty-Three
  53. Forty-Four
  54. Forty-Five
  55. Forty-Six
  56. Forty-Seven
  57. Imagine a girl
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. About the Author
  60. Also by Ben McPherson
  61. About the Publisher

“What else did he teach you?” I said.

My daughter looked at me, and she saw that I understood. And in her eyes was something cold and complex and entirely without love.

She took a deep breath in through her nose. She paused, holding the breath in her lungs. She exhaled through her mouth.

“Bror planned the attacks,” I said. “Didn’t he?”

She was on her feet. “I’d like to leave now.”

I could feel my desire to tell her that all was forgiven—my absurd father’s desire to tell her we could still be a family—though I understood now what she had done and knew that it could never be forgiven.

Forty-One

Imagine a girl.

Imagine that this girl has turned her back on her parents, on everything they have taught her, on everything they hold dear. This girl has found happiness elsewhere; with a man who has offered a clear path to salvation. This is a girl with purpose now; with a sense of duty to a “race” and to a “faith.”

Imagine this girl, if you can, her head full of timings, expectant and excited, counting off the seconds until the bomb.

Imagine that this girl is your daughter.

The thought was unbearable. And so I carried on speaking. “That friend you met at the station: that was Maria Krikk, wasn’t it?”

“Friend.” She made a little scoffing sound.

“Did you meet her at the house church?”

“Not a believer.”

“I guess she didn’t have to be. You gave her your dress and your bangle because she looked like you. You let her think you were friends.”

She sniffed hard. “I met her at an outreach group. For illegals.” She lengthened the word illegals for emphasis, as if it explained everything.

“Did you give her your ticket to Garden Island?”

“I gave her lots of stuff.”

I could see that poor girl lying alone on her steel gurney under the white canvas of the tent, could see the two bullet wounds that had shattered her left clavicle; surprisingly neat; washed clean of blood by the water of the fjord.

I said, “She didn’t know you were recruiting her, but that’s what you did, isn’t it? Licia?”

“She was an illegal, Dad. A thief. She thought she was smarter than me.”

How could she speak so casually about what she had done to this girl?

I swallowed down my anger, spoke as calmly as I could: “You gave your phone to Bror so he could plant it on the island. You wanted us to believe you were there; you wanted us to believe that you had been killed. You let us carry on believing that.”

Licia’s eyes clouded. Her posture became less certain. “You were meant to know I was safe,” she said. “They sent you proof.”

“What they sent wasn’t proof.”

“You were meant to know.”