My heart is cut in two.
Merry, Merry. I walk around her. I can’t bring myself to touch her skin. I clench and unclench my fist.
Not yet. Not yet.
I haven’t called my mother. I sat with my phone in my hands and found her number. I stared at it but did not press call.
Your grandson is dead.
Conor is gone.
I have some terrible news.
My mind is a cloud. Too many moving parts, too many questions without answers.
I loved him, he was mine and I loved him.
Son. My son. And now, no more.
A double blow. And which is worse?
Natural causes. Sudden infant death, the paramedics said, but what is natural about a baby turning up dead?
It is all a confusion.
And where were you, sir?
I lied without hesitation; this is how easy it is. The instinct to cover up the truth. The refusal to name your shame.
There was a noise—ringing, screeching bells. Furious and shrill.
I looked up. Through the glass, I saw two policemen outside the front door.
Frank
They came for Merry. They took her away.
They did not cuff her as they ushered her into the back seat of the waiting car. She did not scream or resist.
What’s happening, Sam said, what’s going on?
We need to talk to your wife, they said. In connection with your son’s death.
But why are you—
Sir, they said. You can follow us to the station.
Now we are here. My hand on Sam’s arm, gentle and reassuring.
We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll figure this out.
He is reeling in shock; of course he is. We all are.
As if what happened with Conor wasn’t wretched enough. Now this. Devastating. Unthinkable. The most inconceivable information to process. No, it is not to be understood. Not at all.
I watch Sam’s hand, clenching and unclenching into a tight fist, knuckles white, veins throbbing, wanting to shatter something. Someone.
Let me go and get you a coffee, I offer.
I don’t want a fucking coffee. He pulls his arm away, stands and paces the floor, click clack of flip-flops on the linoleum; he’d grabbed the first pair of shoes he could find in the hallway when the police came to the door.
It isn’t as bad as one imagines, the police station. Well lit and recently refurbished. Clean. Modern. Absent of shrieking hookers and bleeding addicts. A poster calls for new members to join the Swedish Police Choir.
I watch the other people in the waiting area. An elderly woman, laughing into her phone. A young couple whispering as they fill out an official form.
Another poster, Sweden Welcomes Refugees. Earlier, a policeman hauled in a drunken man clad in leathers. He had a swastika tattooed on his neck, and wore dark glasses as though he were blind.
Sam sits back down again. Jesus, he says. It’s like the fucking Twilight Zone, the last few days.
I think I know a lawyer I could call, I say.
He shakes his head. I don’t need a lawyer. I need some fucking answers.
They won’t tell us a thing. They have Merry somewhere, locked in a room. They won’t let Sam see her yet. Perhaps that’s for the best.
A policeman passes by the waiting area and Sam calls out to him.
Officer, please. Can someone explain to me—
I’m sorry, sir, he says. They will come to you as soon as they are able to give you more information.
He sits. He reeks of alcohol, cigarettes. His clothes are pungent with sweat, his breath foul. I pity him. Even after the way he has treated me, I pity this man.
His whole world has been shattered.
The bubble is burst.
Merry
The detective asked one of her colleagues to fetch her a bottle of water. When it arrived, she set it down in front of me. She smiled kindly. She had very short nails, no wedding band, no jewelry.
It can be very difficult, can’t it?
What?
Motherhood.
I watched her.
Alone, so isolated over in Sigtuna, a new baby. Yes. Very hard indeed.
I swallowed a sip of water. I looked up at the fluorescent lights.
Cancer, I said. These lights will give you cancer.
The detective opened a file. New York, she said. That’s where you and your husband moved from, before you came to Sweden.
Yes.
It’s a wonderful city, New York. Very vibrant. Always something to do. The city that never sleeps, right?
I nodded.
Well, Sigtuna must be quite the change, I’m sure. Maybe not the best choice.
She sighed. There are not so many Americans who move here, she said. Not many at all. Culturally, I imagine it is just too strange. We are very different people, the Swedes and the Americans. Chalk and cheese. Day and night.
She shuddered slightly. I couldn’t live in the States, she said. I know I would absolutely hate it. I would want to run away any chance I could get.
She looked at me. She read something in her file.
Do you feel strange here, Merry? Lonely. Depressed. Desperate?
I looked at her.
It would be completely understandable if you did. It would be absolutely normal.
The room was silent, not the slightest interference from the outside world. I wondered if Sam was on the other side of the walls. Waiting. Worrying. Fuming. What had they told him? What did he know?
The truth will set you free. This is what they say. But what is the truth? I cannot even recall.
I don’t want a lawyer, I told the detective when she asked. She looked surprised, but not displeased.
She sighed now. Mrs. Hurley. It will really be in your favor to talk to me.
What did you say your name was? I said.
Detective Bergstrom.
Yes, now I remember. Detective Bergstrom.
Merry, she said. I want to help you. Understand?
I shook my head. I was cold. I was shivering. I wanted to go back home.
Home. Where the heart is. Where you belong.
Merry, she said.
I looked up. I don’t understand at all. My son has just died. I don’t know why I’m here in a police station.
My mother slapped me across the face every time she caught me out with a lie.
I hate liars, Merry.
Well, you married one, I said, or sometimes, if I really wanted to be cruel: Your whole face is a lie.
I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t really mean it.
The detective was watching me, the way they do, sizing me up from all angles. Making judgments about what I might be capable of doing. I doubt she could tell. You seldom can.
The baby, dead and cold, in my arms, his breath extinguished. Just like that, he doesn’t exist. Problem solved. I think that was my first thought.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Was that my mother too?
I was shaking.
I had gone for a hike. A run. I was happy. It was a good day, wasn’t it? Wasn’t I feeling good? Frank. Frank would leave. I would stay. I had won. I had Sam. Me and Sam. Just us, always better when it was just us.
A clean slate, a do-over. No more secrets.
It was not possible. It could not be. In my mind, there was the forest clearing, but it would not clear. I ran hard. Felt the muscles stretch and burn, running away, running toward. From above, I’d looked down at the lake, a ghostly mirror to the overcast sky, no line to separate one from the other, water from horizon, beginning from end, good from bad. A dance of light and matter; a shimmering horizon that’s so close, almost within reach and yet so unbearably far away. Always retreating.
Hiraeth, that’s the word, Welsh in origin and untranslatable in English. Hiraeth, a poem on the tongue, beautiful and wretched. Homesickness for a home you can never return to, or that never was. Yes, yes, t
his is the feeling. I was trying to get back, wasn’t I, to some earlier version of me. Of us. The emptiness would go.
Once more I would exist. Me. Me!
Yes, that was it.
Wasn’t it?
The detective leaned forward. Merry, she said. Listen very carefully.
Why was she still talking? Why did she have so many questions?
Merry, she said. You’re here because we think that your baby was murdered.
Sam
The police have asked me for names and numbers to confirm my whereabouts at the time of death. I showed them my parking receipts.
Sir, we’d still like those names.
Murder. The autopsy points to a possible murder. Autopsy, murder. These are words now. These are words in my vocabulary.
Homicidal smothering. Death by suffocation. This is what they say. A pillow, a hand. More than likely, the blue baby blanket that was in Conor’s stroller, keeping him warm in the woods.
What are you saying?
Mr. Hurley, when it comes to infant deaths of this nature, it is very difficult to distinguish sudden infant death syndrome from deliberate suffocation.
Deliberate, I said.
The medical examiner has found evidence of petechial hemorraghing, which in itself is not necessarily enough to rule your son’s death a murder. But it is also enough to warrant further investigation.
Murder, I said again.
We think someone may have intentionally killed your son.
How many hours had passed? Was it the same day or the one after? I looked at my shoes. My feet were cold. My breath was rancid. Things in my brain floated, collided, shattered on impact. Nothing would stick.
From the other side of the table, the questions kept coming.
Sir, was your wife, to your knowledge, depressed?
Sir, was she on any medication?
Has she had any issues in the past? Depressive episodes. Psychotic breakdowns. History of violence. History of mental illness. Was she bonded to the baby?
Was it unusual for her to take him into the forest?
What was her behavior in the days leading up to?
What were her words when she called?
Merry, Merry is a suspect. The one who was with him at the time of his death. Also: something about evidence of prior abuse. Merry. Perfect maternity incarnate. Everything I wanted. Everything I thought I had.
The last few days morph into one horror after the next, a kaleidoscope of too many terrible things.
The policeman left the room.
Hello, I am Detective Bergstrom.
A woman came in, shook my hand. She was wearing a gray pantsuit. She did not smile.
I’d like to ask you some questions, she said.
I’ve just answered a whole fucking load of questions.
I have only a few more.
She sat down opposite me. The chair creaked.
You do understand what’s happening here, Mr. Hurley.
No, I said. I really fucking don’t.
Right, she said. Okay. Well, we have reason to suspect that your son, Conor, might not have died from natural causes. We think he might have been murdered.
Son. Every time they say it I wince.
You said you were out of Sigtuna at the time, she said. And you were where?
At a meeting. For work.
She looked at me. She made a note.
Your wife was the one who was looking after your son. This is what she said.
Yes.
So you understand why we’re questioning her about your son’s death. Your son’s suspicious death, she added.
I waited. She was watching me, tracking every movement, every flicker of the eye, every twitch of the facial muscles. Eyes up and to the left, a lie. Eyes down and to the left, a memory. Nonverbal communication, the truest kind. The body can’t lie. It hasn’t got a chance.
Mr. Hurley, she said, can you think of any reason why Merry might have wanted to harm your son?
I clenched my fist, shook my head.
Was there any behavior you noticed that was suspicious? Was she doing anything strange or unusual, anything that concerned you? Were there ever any signs that she was deliberately hurting your son?
I shook my head. I could not speak.
Did you ever notice any bruises, any signs he was injured?
Jesus, I said, I think I’m going to be sick.
One final question, sir. Would your wife have had any reason to want your son out of the way?
Merry
Do you see how we’re confused, Merry?
The detective is exasperated. She wants me to say it. She wants to go home.
I do too. There is a lot to do. Today must be a laundry day. It’s time to sow the seeds for the turnips and the radishes. I think Frank has her flight booked to leave.
Detective Bergstrom pushes a file in front of me. An X-ray.
Let’s talk about this. This is your son’s arm. His right arm.
See here. She points with her pen. It’s a slight hairline fracture to the bone of the right ulna.
I wince. I look away.
No, please look at it, Detective Bergstrom says.
This is old. The medical examiner thinks it goes back a few months. Is there anything you can think of that might explain it? An injury. A day he got hurt, a day he fell. Off the bed, out of his crib. These things happen, of course.
I shudder; I shake my head. I feel that familiar twist inside. Poor baby. Poor little boy.
Merry, Detective Bergstrom says, there were other things the medical examiner discovered during the investigation.
She looks at a photograph on the table and then turns it over.
I won’t show you, she says. There is no need, perhaps.
He found bruising, Merry. Signs of trauma. Again, these were inflicted some time before his death. They appear to be… deliberate. Beyond the usual childhood scratches and scrapes. Something done with the intention to hurt.
She leans in close, too close. I smell her lunch. Onions and fish.
Merry. I’m sure you see where I am going with this. What this looks like for us. The conclusions we are drawing. I’m sure you can see why I need to hear the truth from you.
Hold it together. Do not crack. Do not break. Do not let anyone inside.
She takes a sip of coffee. She offers to have someone fetch me a cup.
No, thank you.
They are so civilized here. Even in a police station. The room is small and bright; table, chairs, no windows for a desperate person to throw themselves out of, no pens left lying about to launch into a jugular. A box. A coffin, throbbing with white noise and questions.
Let’s go back, she says. To the beginning. Your move here, what was it—a year ago?
A little more than that.
You were pregnant.
Yes.
You wanted to move here.
I swallow. No.
Your husband’s idea.
Yes.
He had talked about it for a while—this was something he always planned to do?
No.
So it was because he lost his job at the university.
No, I say. He wanted to leave. To do something else.
She shakes her head. He was fired. Dismissed for—what does it say here?—repeated misconduct with female students…sexual harassment, accusations of inappropriate sexual relations.
Does this sound about right?
I open my palms and stare. A short heart line, I was told once. I don’t recall what it means. I pull on the skin to lengthen it; a different fortune now.
This is the official statement from Columbia University, she insists.
I say nothing.
The wife always knows, right? The wife always has that sixth sense.
Still I say nothing.
You have friends here? A job?
I shake my head.
And your husband. He works. Travels a lot, he said. It wasn’t unusual, was it, tha
t you were left alone with Conor?
I guess.
She makes a note. Might he be having an affair over here?
I bite my lip.
So, husband has an affair, loses his career, packs you off to a new life somewhere far, far away. You have no friends, no job, no family around—correct? No one else is here in Sweden?
I don’t need anyone. I don’t need more.
She ignores this.
So you’re alone. Stuck out on that reserve—which, let’s be honest, is okay in the summer, but God help you come the winter months. Well, even the best of us would go a little crazy, don’t you think? So isolated. So cut off from everything and everyone.
I say nothing.
Detective Bergstrom nods.
I would. I would for sure. And I think maybe you did too.
Crazy. A madwoman who needs to be locked away. A woman who harms her child. Filicide. Infanticide. Which is it? What will it be called? Monster Mom! No doubt that will be the headline. They like alliteration, in these cases. Something catchy.
Did you, Merry? Did you love your baby? Did you want him?
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