“Fuck,” said Elsa. “Oh fuck.” She gave a confused laugh.

I turned to the officer. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Laughter is not uncommon,” she said levelly. “People often swear.”

“She doesn’t understand,” said Elsa.

“There is no correct response,” said the officer reflexively. “You are both very much in shock. I am here”—she gave a professional half smile designed to reassure—“to help.”

“This is not my daughter.” Elsa’s eyes were blazing.

“Also a common reaction. Would you like me to call someone?”

“It isn’t her,” I said.

“Would you like to be alone?”

“You don’t understand,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “This girl is not Alicia Curtis. This is someone else’s daughter.”

At four the sun came up. At six someone brought us waffles and hot chocolate. At eight we agreed with the police that we would go home. All the while that other girl lay there on her steel gurney in her plain white tent, still and alone, waiting for parents who did not come.

After the last ambulance left we stood on the shoreline, eyes fixed on the fjord, as if something might change, as if some new and better reality might dislodge this one. And as the lights in the tents were extinguished one by one I felt a guilty, vertiginous hope take hold of me.

What if our daughter were not among the dead?

The Skeptic

Six

We thanked the policeman who had driven us home, walked the last fifty meters up the tarmac path, turned left at the barrier.

Another police car was parked on the path outside the apartment. Its doors were thrown open, blocking the way. Next to it was a gray van.

At the front of the van Elsa’s father stood talking to a detective in a dirty suit.

“Henrik,” I said.

Henrik turned, began to walk toward us. “Oh, Cal,” he said. “Elsa.”

The detective moved with him, tracking him. He was fifty, I guessed, face ugly with lack of sleep, his cuffs stained with late-night food.

Henrik and Elsa held each other, all sinews and silent suffering. I knew Elsa. She and her father would not cry, either of them. Not here in front of strangers.

Henrik embraced me. I heard him whisper, “Courage, Cal.”

I stepped away. We looked at each other, nodded. After all, we still didn’t know.

The door of the apartment building swung open. Two ponytailed female officers. The first carried Licia’s iMac in a large plastic crate, along with Vee’s gaming laptop. The other woman carried a smaller crate that contained two iPads, two old mobile phones, and my own laptop. She smiled at me as if we were friends. I saw the green drinking glass from the bathroom, spattered with toothpaste, and in the glass our toothbrushes. I did not return her smile.

Some tiny movement at the edge of my vision.