I snitched on Daddy. When I told Mommy about him and Sønstebø, that was the beginning of the end. I bore the guilt, I bear the guilt for my own loneliness. I have chosen it myself, am condemned to be free, can’t shirk my responsibility. But it was him, it was the two men who attached the sticks of dynamite to the bridge. That was actually what happened first. I was a chubby little girl with a voice just a bit too loud. I was stuck in a snow globe and merely did everything I could to escape.

You didn’t know a thing, Magnus, about the bridge, about that night, that brought us together. I was alone, you were an interruption in all my years of solitude, but maybe everything would have been different if our fathers hadn’t blown up the road. Perhaps the hiatus would have lasted longer.

Or maybe we wouldn’t even have found our way to each other. And I would have been without that hiatus, without the years we actually had.

Would I rather be without them?

Would I rather be without Magnus?

Stop it. Stop it, Signe.

I have to raise the sail. I take hold of the sheet again, bend over, and am about to pull when I make a clumsy movement, hitting my knee against the cockpit bench. The pain radiates from my knees, hot shocks in my feet, up along my thighs, through my entire body. I sob, it hurts more and more, and I can only think about the physical pain. For a while that’s all I need to think about.

Chapter Twenty-Six: David

Chapter Twenty-Six

David

We could smell the smoke long before we saw the entrance to the camp. It was so brutal. Familiar. The harsh smell of fire. It had been there all along. The smell of smoke was something massive that had infiltrated and inhabited me. The stinging in the throat, eyes, the pressure in the chest.

Marguerite started to run. I took Lou by the hand and ran too. When we arrived, people were running in all directions, carrying away the few personal possessions they had or running toward the fire, hoping to help.

Caleb pointed. “It’s the sanitary barracks,” he said. “Someone has set the sanitary barracks on fire. It’s those bastards from up north, I’m sure it’s one of them.”

“Is that the women’s shower?” Lou asked. “Daddy, is the women’s shower burning?”

We ran closer, Christian, Caleb, and Martin in the lead. I followed right behind them, holding Lou by the hand. Marguerite took up the rear. And we stopped only when we could feel the heat of the blaze.

For the time being only the barracks were burning. It looked harmless. It looked like something that could be controlled.

“No, the trees,” Christian said.