Milla shielded her face until my wife and daughter were out of sight. I sat down beside her on the bench, looked out across the park.

She said, “Did you like the island?”

I turned to her. “Tell Bror the island was perfect.”

She smiled. “I’d prefer him not to know I’m here.”

She opened her leather bag, took from it a folded sheet of paper, which she passed to me. “I am sure you will do the right thing with this.”

I unfolded the paper. A color photocopy of a Post-it note. The note itself was pink, the handwriting blue, backward-sloping:

16:12

til Ephraim Tvist

“What is this?” I said.

But she was shaking her head. “Thank you for offering me coffee. That was kind.” She stood up, nodded a goodbye, began to walk from the square.

I looked at the note. I understood most of the words. The center of town. Two black-clad men. The registration number of a car. I would need Elsa’s help to be certain of what I was looking at. But already I had a fairly clear idea. The note was addressed to Ephraim Tvist. Five minutes before the town hall bomb went off.

That evening I sang my little son to sleep, my back resting against his crib, my hand trailing through the bars. Franklin held my index finger in his tiny fist as I sang to him the lullaby of mint and clover. When I felt his grip relax I slid my finger out of his. I counted to a hundred, then got quietly to my feet.

From her doorway I watched Vee as she liquidated opponents with rifles and shotguns. She was catlike and alert, talking easily with her American friends over her headset.

In the kitchen I took an orange from the fruit bowl and a peeler from the drawer. I shaved off two strips of peel, which I laid on the chopping board, one above the other. I cut the edges straight with the sharpest of our knives.

The gin bottle was frosted white from the freezer, the shaker so cold that my fingertips stuck to its steel surface.

Over the ice in the shaker I poured a capful of vermouth, then three teaspoonfuls of brine from the olives. The ice cracked. Now the gin, viscous and heavy. I stirred, counting to twenty, poured the liquid carefully down the sides of the crystal glasses. The ritual slowed my thoughts, calmed my nerves. Tiny suspended ice shards refracted the light.

Elsa was sitting on the terrace, staring out at the purple hills. She heard me as I approached and turned. “So there’s a new meme,” she said. She held out her phone. That picture of Licia, her hands locked around the pistol. Someone had added, “This is what a #feminist #fightback looks like.”

“Was she even a feminist?”