“How is work?” her mother asked.

“Fine,” Jana said, looking at her.

Margaretha straightened her back, picked up the silver spoon and ate a bite of cake.

“I heard that you’re in charge of the investigation of the dead woman on the train.”

“Who did you hear that from?”

“Jana, you know he’s always been interested in what you’re doing.”

“She died of an overdose.”

“Yes, I heard that, and that her friend is gone.”

“She disappeared, yes.”

“You can’t find her?”

“We don’t know where to look.”

“So awful, the whole thing,” her mother whispered.

They fell silent. Jana looked out the window again and saw it was completely still now. She thought about the missing girl from the train. She had probably, like her dead friend, been exploited by a drug trafficking ring by swallowing capsules filled with drugs. Just as she herself had once been exploited by being made into a child soldier, forced into the game surrounding the drugs, the same drugs that the Thai girls were smuggling in their bodies.

The more she thought about it, the more her neck itched.

She was just about to push her hair to the side to scratch it but paused when a question popped into her head. It was one of the many questions she had never asked her mother.

“Why did you adopt me anyway?”

Her mother froze, food still in her mouth, looking at her. She sighed and slowly laid her silver spoon on her plate.

“Because we wanted a child so badly, of course. And I was getting older,” she said, smiling.

“But why did you make it a closed adoption?”

“How do you know that?”

Jana thought she heard the front door opening and closing.

“I have to go,” she said quickly, getting up.

“Jana?”

She got up from the table and went out into the hall without answering. Her mother followed her, and Jana was acutely aware of her gaze as she located her shoes on the shelf by the door.

“Please, can’t you stay a little longer?”

Jana glanced at the glossy, carefully shined shoes. She saw the wet spots on the rug and guessed it had been her father coming home. But he wasn’t alone—a pair of thick-soled, steel-toed boots stood there, too.

She turned toward her mother.

“Goodbye, Mother.”

“Will you come for Christmas? You can, can’t you? For my sake?”

Jana hesitated, her hand on the door handle.

“Okay,” she said, “but only for your sake.”

She smiled her practiced smile and stepped out of the door.

* * *

Henrik Levin walked with his hands in his pockets, looking at the row houses and the advent candles in all of the windows. The evening was dark and cold. The snow crunched under his feet.

He unlocked the door and took off his shoes. Emma’s and the children’s shoes were gone from the shoe rack, and their jackets were missing, too.