Caroline Eriksson - The Missing

Then she helps me up, and we start walking, her arm around my waist, my arm around her neck. Our bodies pressed together from shoulder to hip. We haven’t stood this close in a long time.

We’re already out on the front steps when I hear a sound from the hall. Mama turns her head, her eyes fixed on something right behind us.

“I have one last question. Was it worth it?”

Mama hesitates. She looks from the psychologist to me, her gaze lingering on me for a moment. I don’t turn around. I don’t meet my mother’s eye. I’m waiting.

“No,” says Mama. “It wasn’t.”

She steers me toward her car and helps me into the passenger seat. Through the window, I see my own car. I half listen as Mama tells me she’s going to have it towed from here as soon as possible. She’ll figure it out. I shouldn’t worry. I won’t need to come back here. Ever. She’ll see to that.

She walks around the car and gets into the driver’s seat, closing the door and fastening her seatbelt. Then she sits there without turning the key. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t say anything.

“Mama?”

For a long time, she stares straight ahead.

“That man… Alex,” she finally says. “The way he treats her… Does he treat you like that too?”

What should I say? Should I tell her about the silk tie? Mama is chewing her lip. I try to sound reassuring, convincing.

“I left him. I told him never to come near me again.”

She thinks about this for a moment.

“What about the child?” she says then. “Your child. What are you planning to do?”

I wait, forcing her to turn toward me and read the answer in my eyes. Slowly, she nods. She reaches out her hand and cups my unbruised cheek.

“If he ever contacts you—you or the baby—if he in any way…”

Sooner or later, Alex is going to find out that I got away, that his wife let me go. How will he react? I don’t want to even try imagining that. But no matter how strong his reaction, he’ll probably think twice before contacting me again. There are certain advantages to being a mystery. There are certain advantages to not telling Alex the whole truth about Papa.

I think about what he said to me at the end of our latest—our last—phone conversation. And about what I let him believe. That I was the one who delivered the fatal shove on that night an eternity ago. What I’m capable of.

I raise my hand to place it over my mother’s hand on my cheek. I hope she’ll know what I’m trying to say. I hope she can feel the strength of who I am. My mother’s daughter.

“If he does, I’ll deal with it.”

Mama listens, lets the words sink in. Then she removes her hand and smiles. That smile tells me that everything is as it should be.

“Wait here a minute,” she says. “I forgot something inside.”

She unbuckles her seatbelt and resolutely walks around the hedge that encloses the cabin we’re about to leave.

I lean back and take several deep breaths. Leaving this place. At last. I think about how good it will be to go home. I decide to look for a new apartment as soon as possible. Somewhere he’s never been. Maybe I’ll even move to a different town. But the very first thing I’m going to do, as soon as I’ve gotten patched up and I’m feeling better, is call Katinka. And ask her if she’d like to meet for coffee.

At that moment, I see her. She’s approaching hesitantly from the other side of the road. Black, shapeless clothes, her long hair hanging loose. I open the car door, and she comes over, stopping a few feet away. She stares at me mutely, her eyes shifting from the cuts on my face to the big bruise.

“My mom talked to the police,” she says at last. “They said something about a woman with an ax. I wanted… I just wanted to see if you were okay.”

“I’m okay. What about you?”

She brushes her hair out of her face and stares down at the ground. A worried mother whose daughter was purportedly threatened with a knife by her boyfriend. That’s what the police officer had said.

“Your mother reported him?”

The girl named Greta looks at the ground, at the road, everywhere but at me.

“So fucking stupid,” she finally mutters. “She has no idea what she’s talking about.”

I have a sinking feeling in my chest. So she’s taking Jorma’s side? Even though he tried to attack her? I want to shake her, protest, ask her if she heard anything I said when we met in the forest clearing. But then I glimpse my mother coming around the hedge. When she catches sight of Greta, she walks faster. Quickly, I reach out my hand and hear the words of the policewoman echoing from my own lips.

“There’s help available.”

The girl looks at my hand held out toward her. For a moment, she doesn’t move. Then she raises her own hand and her fingers brush mine. They’re ice cold.

“Hello there. Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

Mama’s voice is loud and commanding. The girl yanks her hand away. She looks into my eyes one last time. My voice is barely more than a whisper.

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

Without another word, she runs off. I feel my own hand fall away. Mama opens the car door, gets in, and fastens her seatbelt. When she asks me about the girl, I shrug. She doesn’t persist.

“Sweetheart,” she says instead, “there’s something I was thinking about.”

I close the car door and look in the mirror. I see a small, thin figure disappearing. Soon, she’s no more than a line in the distance. Then she’s swallowed up by the earth. By Marhem. Mama turns the key, and the engine starts up.

“I hope you know that I’d do anything for you. Anything at all, Greta.”

I nod. I do know.

“You’re going to need a lot of help. It’s no easy thing to be pregnant. And later, after the baby arrives, it won’t exactly get easier. As a single mother, you’ll need all the support you can get. I want you to know that I…”

She comes to a halt. I fumble for her hand resting on the gearshift.

“Mama. Thank you.”

She turns to look at me and smiles. That special smile of hers.

Then we drive off.

I didn’t manage to strike a good blow with the oar. The angle was wrong, the force of the blow too weak. You passed out, but that was mostly due to the already-pitiful condition you were in. Maybe I should have used the ax while you were lying on the floor. Before she arrived. The person who turned everything upside down. Your mother.

I recognized you as soon as you opened the door, knew that you were a former client, but it took a while before I was able to place you. Then I remembered the strange story about your father falling out the window. The story that never had a proper ending. I was so sure, back then when you sat across from me and talked around the issue. I was sure that you were the one who pushed him. Everything about you—your body language, your tone, your facial expressions—indicated as much. So when you wanted to end our meetings without fully unburdening your heart, I tried to stop you. Do you remember that? You probably don’t. My words can’t have meant much to you. You left my office and never came back. And I moved on too. I haven’t given you a thought since that day. Not until now.

I stand in the kitchen and look out the window. Even though I can’t see you, I know you’re still out there. A moment ago, I heard a car door slam. In a few seconds, the engine will start up, and I’ll stand here listening as you and your mother disappear. Will I have any regrets then? Will I regret that I let you go, that I didn’t use my bare hands to yank out of you what is growing inside?

It’s for your mother’s sake that I’m letting you go. After she shared her story with me, I can’t lift a hand to her daughter. I thought I’d already been through the worst, but now I have a feeling something even bigger is just around the corner. Something both frightening and powerful. The biggest challenge of my life. Something that will set me free.