She found the bathroom, set the towels down on the counter, and listened for a second. She could hear that he had the TV on. It was playing the BBC, and a news anchor was talking about a large terror attack in Amsterdam—80 dead, 142 injured. Parts of the city lay in ruins.

She came out of the bathroom and looked around the corner into the living room.

He was standing with his back to her, listening to the speaker’s urgent, horror-struck voice. He had his arms crossed, his attention focused on the pictures on the screen, pictures of pulverized buildings, blood, and panic.

Anna was about to take a step toward him when she spotted it.

The suitcase.

The red, wheeled suitcase lay open on top of the bed and hadn’t been unpacked yet. She scanned the contents.

White lace was peeking out. A dress with some sort of animal print.

A woman’s swimsuit.

A wave of panic flooded through her, and she felt trapped, cornered. She was about to turn around and leave the room when she heard the sound of a key card in the door behind her and knew it was too late.

The woman was in the room before Anna had a chance to react.

Anna recognized her from old pictures taken from a time when she must have been happy. And from pictures taken outside Holmen Church, where she had stood beside the hearse that would carry her son away. Her face had been crumpled up back then, tormented.

Now she just looked broken, old and joyless, like a person who felt trapped in a life she didn’t have the strength to escape.

Anna stood still as the woman approached. She reached her hand around behind her and grabbed the knife handle, waiting, ready.

When the woman looked up, her face stiffened midmotion. Then she stopped in the middle of the entry hall.

Anna held the woman’s gaze.

Neither of them said anything. The two women stared at each other while the sound from the TV in the living room filled the hotel room and surrounded them.

Questions filled Anna’s head.

How much did the woman know about her husband? Did she know what he was capable of—what he had done? Did she know who had ultimately caused her son’s death?

“Ellen,” he called from the living room. “Come see what happened in Amsterdam. There was a terrorist attack.”

The woman looked over toward the opening to the adjoining room. Then she turned her eyes to Anna again, and she nodded very slightly in acknowledgment. Like a blessing.

“I’ll be right there,” the woman said, without breaking eye contact with Anna.

Then she turned around and exited the hotel room.