It made me wonder if Nora and Em would have shot me—if Em really would have pulled the trigger, the way Nora had said. “I keep thinking about that. I hope I wouldn’t have,” Em told me, cuddling closer, not letting go.

53. THE VOICE ON THE SUBWAY; THE SILENCE IN THE ROCK GARDEN

Henrik hadn’t written Em when Nora died. I had written him after our cousin’s death, but he hadn’t responded. Henrik had always been wary of Molly; when the old patroller died in January 2006, Henrik’s inner writer was unleashed. He wrote me at the snowshoer’s East Sixty-fourth Street address, and he wrote Em twice, sending the same letter to Em’s Toronto address and in care of her New York publisher; that was why Grace saw it.

Henrik wrote that he was going to rent a U-Haul truck and come to Manchester to get his guns, or he was sending a couple of “college boys” to get them for him. Henrik offered no condolences for Molly. When we heard about the old patroller, Em and I were in Canada. We came back to the States and went through Molly’s Manchester house, with Matthew and Grace. Naturally, there were things of sentimental value. Each of us took things we wanted. We could have taken a gun or two, before Henrik or the college boys drove my uncles’ arsenal of weapons down to Dixie, but Em and I were done with guns, and Grace had never wanted one. Like most boys, Matthew wanted to have a gun, but he was fourteen; he was too young to have a say in the matter.

“We’re just keeping the guns for Henrik, sweetie—we’re not going to start a war or anything,” my mom had told me, but there were more guns hidden away in the Manchester house than I’d imagined. The old patroller had left the house to me. I knew my mother had arranged this. Except for Molly’s twenty-gauge, the guns had belonged to Uncle Johan and Uncle Martin. Henrik was champing at the bit to have them.

“That’s a shitload of lethal weapons, kiddo,” Em said, when she saw the guns gathered together. “Everyone in Vermont—not to mention, the deer—will be safer when these guns are down in Dixie.” Em and I never said the name of the southern state where Henrik had gone to college, just to play lacrosse—the same state Henrik served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Not saying the name of Henrik’s state was almost as good as forgetting it. We wished we’d never known Henrik in the first place.