“It was Jorgen’s favorite cologne,” Apollo said.
“Go take a bath,” she said. “I need to sleep just a little before it becomes night.”
Apollo slipped out of bed and pulled the covers over her. He did need a bath, but there were even more important things that needed to be done. He picked through his pile of clothes and found the phone in his coat pocket. Emma had already fallen asleep.
He went downstairs with the phone. When Emma woke up, they were going back into the forest and, this time, marching into that cave. Maybe he’d give her the knife that had killed Jorgen, and he could heft the mattock. But suppose they never made it back out? Anna Sofie hadn’t, and neither had all those children. Who knew how many other bodies had been lost down there? He didn’t want to disappear without saying goodbye to his mother. He turned on the phone and dialed Lillian.
“MOM,” HE SAID when Lillian picked up.
“Apollo? Apollo.” She whispered when she spoke because it was either that or choke up and say nothing.
“How are you?”
“Happy to hear your voice,” she said.
Upstairs Emma slept. Apollo walked to the front door and almost opened it casually, as if this were their home, and he’d called for a weekly check-in with his mother.
“Things have gotten pretty wild,” Apollo said, the line a true achievement in understatement.
“I left you alone,” Lillian said quickly. “I left you alone, and that’s when things went bad.”
Apollo leaned against the door. He’d only meant to say goodbye, but now he shut his eyes as if Lillian were about to tell him a bedtime story.
“The last time we talked, you were so angry at me. I understood why, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about everything you said, everything I said. There’s so much I never explained. I guess I hoped I would never have to.”
“What does that mean?”
“You were so young,” Lillian said softly. “I prayed you’d just forget.”
“Then I started having the nightmares.”
She sighed on the line. “Yes. And even then I pretended that’s all they were.”
“But why? I’m not accusing you of anything, I’m just asking. What was the point of pretending my dad didn’t come back for me?”
A longer silence now, so long Apollo thought she’d hung up the line. He pulled the phone from his ear, but the battery still had plenty of power, and the two of them hadn’t been disconnected.
“I got to know that lawyer, Mr. Blackwood, once I’d been at the job for a few years. We didn’t become friends, but if you work with people long enough, you’re going to have a few conversations. At some point he told me why he’d been so hard on me in the beginning, forcing me to come work on Saturdays.
“And do you know he had a whole story about how he was trying to help me? The firm was going to be letting go of staff, and as the newest hired, I’d be the first one fired. But if I’d learned enough about how the firm worked, proved myself a hard worker by coming in on weekends, they’d probably consider me valuable enough to keep. That’s what he said. Maybe that was true, but it certainly wasn’t the only reason that man forced me to come to the firm on Saturdays. I knew it, and I thought he knew it, too.
“But by the third or fourth time he told me this story, I realized he did believe his version. If you asked him if he’d ever pressured me for a date he’d swear it never happened. That fact had left his mind. He’d done me a favor, and look, five years later I still worked at the firm and even had two promotions. He was trying to tell me how grateful I should be! I’m not saying he lied. Not exactly. But his story was more flattering to himself, so with some time and distance, that’s the story he chose to believe. I’m realizing that by telling you nothing about your father, I might have been doing the same thing. Not just for myself but for him.”
“Just tell me what happened,” Apollo said. He stood straight now and began to pace, but Jorgen Knudsen’s kitchen lay directly ahead, and in that kitchen lay a man he had killed. He didn’t want to hear this story while staring at a dead man. He stopped moving and braced himself against the door that led to the den.
“I came home from work at one,” Lillian began. “I’d brought some McDonald’s for us. I felt guilty, and you liked the French fries. But when I reached home, the front door wasn’t locked. Already that was very strange. I heard the bath running. I panicked. Dropped all my things. I thought you’d gotten yourself in there, and what if you drowned or something? I ran to the bathroom and opened the door and saw the ugliest thing I’ve ever known.”
She stopped talking. It even sounded like she’d stopped breathing.
“Brian had you…I can’t say it, Apollo.”
“I want to hear it,” Apollo told her, though he wasn’t quite sure.
“He had taken off your clothes, and he had you in the tub.”
“I thought you said the water was hot. Steaming.”
“It was,” she said. “He had his hands on your chest, and he had you under the water, and you were kicking and crying because the water was burning your skin.”
Apollo’s hand slipped and he slid down to the floor. “What?”
“Your father tried to kill you,” Lillian said. “And when I came home, he planned to kill me. Then himself.”
“Why?” Apollo whispered.
“I told you. I wanted a divorce. I was leaving him and taking you with me. Your father had a terrible childhood. His mother and father were awful people. He wanted a family so badly. He wanted to make up for everything he’d missed. He’d been telling himself stories about how it would be since he was twelve years old. But twelve-year-olds don’t understand adulthood. Even when he became a man, he still thought like a child. He couldn’t change, couldn’t adapt. I served him with divorce papers, but he had other plans.”
Apollo sat with his back against the door. “But I always thought—” he said. “The stuff in the box. The book.”
“Your father lived in terror that he’d lose you. That’s what the whole book is about. When he was young, he didn’t have an Ida who could come save him. He always felt like the goblins had stolen him and raised him and no one came to bring him back. That’s why he had it, why he wanted to read it to you. He was always going to come for you. He loved you with all his heart and he tried to take your life. I’m sorry, Apollo, but both those things are true.”
She cleared her throat. Her voice became the steadiest it had been this whole call.
“You have the right to think whatever you like about him, and about me, but at least you’ll know it all. That’s the only way to understand anything.”
Apollo pressed his free hand over his eyes. “I’m amazed anyone survives childhood,” he said.
“Apollo, you hear me? I want you to know that no matter who your father became, you’re not him. I’m proud of the man you turned out to be.”
He looked up at the ceiling, rested his head against the den’s door. “I spent my whole life chasing him,” he said. “But you’re the one who was always there.”