So they drove on and he stopped near the wooden church and Per walked with them into the churchyard. The snow had gathered even more within the churchyard, covering it in a deep blanket, but Per knew it too well, and pointed to Maria’s grave, and to the newer plot, just a few yards away diagonally.
Maria’s had a stone, but Redford’s had only an unmarked wooden cross, and as if embarrassed that the community might be seen to have sold his heroism short, he said, “This is just temporary, of course. There will be a stone, with his name, now that we know it.”
Dan nodded and both he and Inger looked down at it.
Per looked on, and perhaps sensing a different dynamic between them this time, he said, “Well, I’ll leave you for a moment. I’ll wait in the car.”
He walked off, his boots crunching softly through the snow.
Inger had been quiet since they’d left the Nystr?m house, but sensing his gaze, she looked up now and smiled a little, her cheeks flushed red with the cold, her beauty almost overwhelming.
“What are you thinking?”
She shrugged, but said, “I was just wondering, how he could have been here all this time and never even speak to her. He knew her mother had died, yet . . . it just seems selfish, not his final act, obviously, but all these years.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I think it’s the most selfless behavior I’ve ever encountered. He thought they’d catch up with him sooner or later, that they’d find him, and he didn’t want her involved in that. Imagine the agony of being that close to her, yet never knowing her. He wanted desperately to be with her, in his own way, but he knew with the life he’d lived, there could never be any more than that. I’m just full of admiration for the guy—if you think about it, that bus ride every day must have been the happiest and most difficult thing imaginable.”
She continued to stare at him, nodding slightly, taking in what he’d said, but she’d taken even more meaning from it than he’d intended, and after a little while, she said, “You’re not moving to Stockholm, are you?”
She wasn’t angry, just resigned and sad, understanding the reasons too well.
“Would you want me to, until I know?”
“Will you ever know?”
He let out a sigh, acknowledging the truth of that. He tried to tell himself that he hardly knew her anyway, that they’d spent so little time together, but he was left feeling sick in the heart all the same. She made to say something else, but stopped herself, and then said more casually, “Okay, we should get back to the car.”
“Yeah, we should.”
He reached out and took her hand in his, but they didn’t move, only stood there, their feet static in the deep snow. It was time to get back to the car, and to everything that symbolized, but they stood silently in that quiet corner of a rural churchyard, an anonymous grave before them, and neither of them moved at all.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Deborah Schneider and all at Gelfman Schneider and ICM. Thanks also to Emilie Marneur, Alan Turkus, Victoria Pepe, and all at Thomas & Mercer.
There are many moments and chance meetings and briefly glanced places that go into the making of any book, and this one was no exception, but it started in a very particular way. Many years ago, I was traveling on a bus in northern Sweden. It was autumn and the sun was low in the sky, blinding the driver. There was a timber truck coming in the opposite direction . . .
Thankfully, the bus did not crash, except in my imagination, and A Death in Sweden was the ultimate result. Among the very few passengers on that sunny morning was a girl whose appearance I stole for the Siri who appears in these pages and so, in exchange for that theft, I dedicate this book to her.