But he was silent, and I was a teeny-tiny water person in a snow globe. I pounded my hands against the glass and screamed, trying to get out—and that’s why I also said the final thing, what I knew that she didn’t know, which could be significant, which could break the glass.

“Daddy talked to Sønstebø.”

“Sønstebø?”

“He talked to Sønstebø up on the mountain, on the road, the new road, we were out hiking, they met up and nobody was supposed to know about it.”

Mommy just stared at me.

“They didn’t want anyone to see them,” I continued. “It wasn’t worth the risk, they said, that someone might see them together.”

“Bjørn?” Mommy said.

“It wasn’t worth the risk,” I said. “They didn’t want to be seen together.”

It was the night Daddy blew up the bridge—he and Sønstebø met up there in the darkness, that’s how it must have been. And maybe the lights from the truck were the first thing he saw, before Sønstebø emerged, his black silhouette splitting the light in two. Sønstebø, who had been a blaster earlier in life, he was probably the one who had taken the initiative for this—or maybe it was actually Daddy, that could be, that my full-of-rage Daddy made contact with Sønstebø, that he was the one who planned the whole thing.

But I was the one who told on him, told Mommy, and after that morning, Daddy was alone. He moved to the house by the harbor. His things, his books, wall charts, articles and lithographs of nature scenes, filled it to the brim; the smell of them filled the small rooms and made them into something familiar, even though the walls were alien.

The windows were thin. The sound of the boats penetrated them, the sound of cables striking masts in the wind, the thudding of motors, the banging of fish crates against the decks, skippers calling. The sound of his typewriter couldn’t drown out all of this.

I’m going to Mommy’s, I said when I left Daddy, I’m going to Daddy’s, I said to Mommy. My place was on the gravel road that went through the village, from the cramped house in the harbor to the hotel with its almost one hundred rooms, and back again. I remember myself as being infinitely small, lonely, plagued by guilt, and susceptible. I was just waiting for Magnus, without knowing it myself.

Chapter Fourteen: David

Chapter Fourteen

David

“Now it’s time for bed,” I said as we walked toward Hall 4.

Lou replied with a loud yawn.

It had gotten too late today. Much later than I’d planned, still no system for bedtime.