Edvard called, offering a place to stay. A cabin farther down the fjord; a place where no one would find us; two hours’ drive. We packed, Vee, Elsa, and I, nodding to each other as we passed in the hallway or the living room, touching each other’s hands, standing cheek to cheek for a moment, then moving on. We needed time to fit dead bolts and cameras in the apartment. I needed time to speak to Elsa. Vee and Franklin needed peace.

Tvist offered to send a uniformed officer with us to the cabin. We said no, but we did ask him to place officers at the top and bottom of the road as we left, to make sure that we were not seen. I drove, while Elsa sat facing backward, watching out of the rear window. No one followed us. We were certain of it.

We arrived when the sun was still high above the fjord, bought shellfish from a trawler down by the harbor wall, rowed out in a tired wooden boat to an island halfway across the sound. And later, while our children slept, Elsa and I drank cold martinis and ate grilled flounder and crab from a fire that we made on the stone beach in front of the cabin.

When I asked Elsa what she had meant about putting her cards on the table she smiled and said she didn’t want to speak about herself, not tonight, that it was all too raw, that she was frightened she would cry and never stop. And there was such sadness in my wife’s smile that I smiled too, and held her in my arms, and we sat for an age, watching the embers of the fire, listening to each other breathe.

Then we talked long into the night about our daughter Licia Curtis, who was not on Garden Island that day, and about Bror, who was.

When she fell asleep I went to her handbag, and in its reinforced side pocket I found her pistol.

I get it, Elsa, I thought. I understand that you would want this.

I stood for the longest time, looking out across the fjord toward the mainland. The Glock felt comfortable in my hand. Lighter than I expected. Balanced. I returned to the cabin. I wondered whether I should wipe my prints from the gun, but I had done nothing wrong, so I simply put it back in Elsa’s bag.

Forty-Three

I put my son in a harness on my back and walked the coastal path. Set out with my daughter in a tiny boat to catch fish from the fjord. Watched my wife across the flames as we grilled mackerel on a fire of driftwood gathered on the shore. I needed to feel the weight of the sky and the sea as they darkened, and reddened, and lightened again.

But more than that, I needed closure.