That was a good kill, Karl said.
Was it?
We drove home to Sigtuna with the elk tied onto the roof of the car, secured by Karl with the thick rope he’d brought along.
Did you enjoy it? he asked.
I’m not sure, I said.
He asked after Merry.
I hate her, I said. I hate her so much, I want to kill her.
He sucked in his cheeks, shook his head. Either in disapproval or empathy.
I’m not kidding, I said. Women. They’re so good at lying. We don’t stand a chance.
He looked at me. But men lie.
Maybe, I said.
Come on. We’ve all done it. Maybe not lying outright, but for sure not telling the whole truth. Omissions. Revisions.
You, I said. The ultimate Swedish alpha male.
He gave a cold laugh. Things are not always what they seem, Sam. Even here, he said.
Especially here, I thought.
It was pitch dark by the time we returned home. Karl pulled the car up outside the larger of his two barns. He left the lights on to illuminate our way, and hopped out to prop open the barn door with a log of wood.
Now it’s carving time, he said.
We maneuvered the elk from the roof and hauled her into the barn. We had to turn the carcass sideways to drag it through the door. The cold had all but frozen her stiff. Or maybe it was just the fact of her death, the slow and precise shutting down of the system. Beating heart, pumping blood; everything that separates the living from the dead.
I couldn’t help but recall the image of Conor on the bed, laid out on his back as though he was doing nothing less benign than taking a nap. His stiffened corpse, his face white and blank and cast forever in expressionless, cold death. How was it possible to fit so much horror into just one day?
A few strands of golden-brown hair stolen from Conor’s hairbrush and secreted away inside a plastic bag. A doctor in Stockholm who offered same-day results for paternity screening. That very day. A confirmation that he was not mine.
And then, just like that: dead. Child no more. I could see why Merry would have wanted him gone. That day I wished him gone too.
Inside the barn, Karl had meat hooks, saws, a giant freezer, a plastic-lined table for carving the animal into pieces.
Looks like a serial killer’s dream, I said.
Karl flashed me a smile. The trick, he said, is removing the innards first. It’s less bloody. Better for the meat, too.
He set to it, carving, scraping, a surgeon at work. When the guts were out, he handed me the knife. Here, he said.
I hesitated. The knife was heavy in my hand, slicked with blood and death.
Start here, Karl said, then follow this direction. He showed me with his hands.
I sank the blade in, felt the resistance of the flesh, the click of metal on bone. Slowly I carved, piece by piece, through fat and sinew and muscle, reducing her down to a sum of bloody parts. Karl used a saw to cut through the rib cage, divvying up the carcass into steaks for the grill.
When we were done, we used the vacuum sealer to package the meat, enough for the whole winter. As we were cleaning up the last of the blood, Freja came to the door to see what was happening. She did not flinch at the sight of the entrails and bones. Karl said something to her in Swedish and she smiled and nodded.
She wants elk burgers for dinner, he said.
He loaded up a bag and handed it to me.
If you need more, you know where to find it, he said.
I was filthy. Exhausted. I could taste the blood. I reeked of slaughter.
In the kitchen, Frank sat under the dim light of the oven, drinking a mug of tea. She startled when she saw me.
I looked down. Everywhere stained with red.
Let me help you, she said.
She lifted my arms to pull off my bloodied T-shirt. She ran water in the sink and used the soap to scrub my hands. Her hands in mine, rubbing against the water, working her fingers around my own. Standing close, smelling the way she smells, her long hair in my face, brushing against me back and forth, back and forth.
She was in a nightgown, skin barely covered. I could see everything through the satin. I could see even more when she leaned forward.
They are all the same. All of them. You turn to them to be filled, you leave emptier than before.
I could still smell the dead elk on me. Heat was in the air, and daggers. Sharp and lethal. I recalled those nights under the stars. Frank and her longing. What did she want? What did I want?
I gripped her to me, pressed my mouth into hers. Her eyes were dark pools. You could not see the bottom. Hands on her flesh, the warmth and smoothness. I wanted more. I wanted to go back to before.
Wordlessly, Frank stepped away from my grasp. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and retreated slowly back into the darkened house.
Merry
Lior in Tel Aviv, the pediatric nurse who leaves her toddler alone in the bath. Verity in Perth, who keeps the balcony door open just a crack.
If not you, then who? The detective is trying. Maybe she doesn’t want to believe in murderous mothers after all.
I don’t know, I said. I just don’t know.
Think, Detective Bergstrom said. Who you know? Who knows you?
I shook my head. The people around the baby had only love for him, cuddles and kisses. Daddy and Aunt Frank, the friendly neighbors, Karl and Elsa and little Freja. Pure devotion. It was only me and my broken parts.
I don’t know, I said again.
I can’t think of anyone but me who would’ve wanted him gone.
Detective Bergstrom was not taking any notes. But she did appear to be listening.
I had confessed everything to Sam. Well. Not everything. Some things. Only what I had to. Now I was repeating myself for the benefit of the detective.
I told her how I sometimes felt alone and frustrated and isolated, like I was a prisoner in Sigtuna, like it was some form of punishment. I told her that sometimes I had suicidal thoughts (you have to throw that in, don’t you) and that, from time to time, I had thoughts of leaving Sam and the baby. I told her that once or twice, I squeezed him a little too hard out of frustration, to try to get him to stop screaming, that I had felt so terrible it made me think he’d be better off without me.
She nodded as I was speaking. It was what she wanted to hear. I always know what people want to hear.
She mentioned the forum. They’d checked the laptop, the browser history.
Yes, I said. Because I felt so alone. Like I was a defective woman.
She looked at me with something like sympathy.
I repeated the part about leaving the baby by himself in the clearing while I ran. That’s what happened the day he died, I told her. I returned from the run to find him cold and unmoving and already dead. I told her that I had picked him up and tried to resuscitate him, that it was all in vain.
It was the worst moment of my life, I said. The worst.
This part was true.
Yes, it was clearer now. I had remembered; separated things into their proper boxes.
I told her I had thought at first it was my fault, that he’d been ill or feverish or that he’d caught a chill. I didn’t want Sam to know how I left him alone; I didn’t want the police to know, either.
So I lied, I said. I lied because I didn’t know what else to do.
So what you’re saying, Merry, she said, is that someone else murdered your son.
Yes.
Not you.
No.
It was true, wasn’t it? This was it. Lies. Lies but not murder.
Maybe.
You didn’t do this, she repeated.
No.
All the evidence, all we’ve discussed. And you are denying that it was you.
It wasn’t me, I whispered. It wasn’t.
She sighed. I want to believe you, but you’re making it very difficult. You lied once to the police. You lied to your husband. Ho
w do I know you’re telling the truth now?
Because I have to, I said. Because I was a neglectful, terrible mother. Yes. Yes. I’ll take that. I’ll own it. I’ll burn on a stake for it. But I did not murder my son.
She studied me a long time, saying nothing, just looking.
I appeared distraught. Yes, I thought, the performance of a lifetime. But weren’t they all? With Christopher it had been too much. It had pushed him over the edge.
Detective Bergstrom nodded. She left the room. When she returned, she had a map of Sigtuna.
Show me, she said. Where you ran. Where you were. Show me where he was found.
I looked at the map. I’m not good with this sort of thing.
Try, she said.
I marked it with a pen. Here, from our house. To around this spot. Maybe here. There’s a cabin. It’s boarded up.
What time, she said. What time did you leave home? What time did you find Conor?
What else, she said. Anyone who saw you. Anyone you talked to. Anyone who might have seen something else.
I shook my head. No one, I said. No.
She opened the file. She checked a few pages.
This might help, she said. We have a time of death. A small window. If we can place you well enough away from him at this time, you may have something.
But think. Something, anything that might be useful.
She snapped her fingers. One of those heart rate monitors, she said, the ones that track you while you run.
I shook my head.
Phone? Tracking on your phone?
I don’t know, I said. I had it with me.
Good, she said. Good. We’ll check that.
She looked up at me. Merry, she said. This is a long shot. I’m going out on a limb here. Understand?
I nodded. She was being kind. Showing mercy. She bought it, the broken-down mother, the cruelty that seeps out of desperate, lonely women. It didn’t seem right, to be forgiven, or understood. To escape punishment.
Who would hurt a child?
Me.
The answer had been me.
Merry, she said. You’d better not be lying again. Do you hear me? Because then I’ll come after you with full force. And it won’t be so friendly. It won’t be friendly at all.
Frank
I’m growing tired of our nocturnal trysts, Karl and I, alone in his cold and dusty barn. He is thrusting vigorously away, himself a little distracted this evening, though knowing him, he won’t want to stop until it’s done.
Regrettable, that this is now a thing. The first time served its purpose, but now it’s only tiresome.
Yes, yes, I cry, to hurry things along. I stick a finger where he likes it. I fold my breasts into his face and shift myself so that it’s less uncomfortable.
I try to picture Merry behind bars. A criminal. Being punished for her crimes. How curious life can be, the places it can take you. Sam the other night, pawing at me with his bloodied hands and stale breath. I did not notice it before, how rough around the edges he is. How unappealingly bullish and common. I am accustomed to a better-caliber man than that.
What was I thinking? Really, my judgment is sometimes quite flawed. Well. I have been through my own traumas, haven’t I, these recent months, with their cruel blows. Some nights when I cannot sleep, I wander into Conor’s room, smell his blankets, trace a finger over the place where he once lay. Feel the pang of grief in my heart.
There was a night when Sam had arrived home late. I’d been rocking Conor back to sleep in the old armchair in his room. Aunt Frank, Sam had whispered, the fairy godmother. I smiled at the idea then. Now I can think only of the godmothers who cast spells and curses. The ones who send children into hundred-year slumbers, or steal them away altogether.
Karl takes me by the throat, pulls, holds. My thighs ache but I dare not stop. Yes, yes, yes. He finally comes, inside me this time.
It’s okay, I lie. I’m on birth control.
Elsa suffered another miscarriage a few days ago, he sighs.
She is distraught.
I have to hold myself steady, to keep from slapping his face.
He zips his trousers and leaves me on the cold cement floor.
Merry
Merry. Merry, do you hear me?
I longed to close my eyes. To disappear, cell by cell, fading into nothingness, allowing everything to give way to obliteration.
I’d had this thought before, once or twice, in New York. To just lie down in the street, or on the tracks of the subway, lie down and close my eyes and let it happen. Swoosh. A surrender. Not death or suicide. Only a way to give up the fight, the exhausting business of being alive.
I looked up and tried to focus.
Merry.
It was Detective Bergstrom, neatly groomed as always. Hair cropped and dyed a ferocious platinum blond. Had it been like that since I’d arrived? She was chewing gum. I could smell mint. Her breath must be stale. I cupped my hands to check my own. Wretched.
Merry, she said. We are withdrawing the charges against you.
What?
You will be free to go, she said.
I don’t understand.
We were able to track down a witness. Someone to corroborate your story.
How? There was no one—there was no one I saw.
Yes, she said. There was. The cabin you mentioned. We found the owner. We went to interview him. Turns out he has a son, a teenager who’d decided to use the cabin as a meeting place for his girlfriend and himself. On the day of Conor’s death. He had a stash of weed with him, some alcohol he’d stolen from his father’s bar—that’s why he didn’t want to come forward. But he saw what happened. Or at least, enough to get you out of here.
He saw, he saw who killed the baby? He was there? I said.
She shook her head. No, unfortunately—or possibly fortunately for him, not.
When we talked with him, he told us that he arrived at the cabin shortly before you did. He saw you come up to the stroller, he saw you pick up the stuffed toy—like you said. He saw you scream, and lift the baby, and try to perform mouth-to-mouth. He saw you crying and hysterical, in shock. He wanted to help, he says, only he was afraid of his father finding out about the cabin.
Detective Bergstrom was looking at me, not smiling, not scowling.
This is good news for you, she said.
It felt like the opposite. An injustice. How could it be anything else?
Did he see anyone else in the woods? I said.
No. He didn’t get to the cabin too long before you did. And he must have come from the other direction. The girlfriend, too. They saw nothing.
She did that stretch again, arms up above her head. I heard her shoulders click.
The team looked at your phone, too. They traced your location using the photos you took; the times and places match everything that you told me. Given the estimated time of death, there’s enough room to suggest that you wouldn’t have been able to do it.
The photographs, I said. I had forgotten. The light and colors of the lake, the enchanting mystery of a shimmering world below. I had stood there a long time, quite transfixed.
Merry, Detective Bergstrom said. I believe you. I believe that you did not kill your son.
I nodded. I shuddered. I’m free to go, I repeated.
Yes.
But it doesn’t solve anything, does it?
It solves a lot for you. For the case, we are looking into some other possible scenarios. Now that we have a potential crime scene. The forensics team is working the area around the clearing and the cabin. They’ll find something. Trace evidence, fibers. Something will turn up. And we will find out if someone did this to your son.
I sat looking at her.
So I just go home.
Yes, you are free to go home.
Home. Sam. Sam and his monstrous rage, let loose upon me. The wife who deceived him. The wife who hurt his son. It would be his right. It would be his revenge. Unstoppable, he would be.
She stacked her files. She slipped her handbag over her arm. She seemed eager to leave, or be rid of me.
I was so tired. I felt small and foul, something stuck on the bottom of a shoe.
I’m a monster, I said, aren’t I? Even if I didn’t kill him.
She stood up and opened the door. No, Merry, she said. I think you are a woman like many others.
Frank
Merry is back. I woke up and found her in the kitchen, casually brewing the morning coffee like nothing has happened. Like the past few days have been voided.
You’re home, I said.
I was not sure whether to hug her or run from her.
Hello, Frank.
What happened? How is it that you are back?
You seem disappointed, she said. Her hair was wet; she was dripping little puddles onto the floor.
God, no, I said. It’s great you’re home. I just mean, what happened that they let you go? We heard nothing, Sam and I, we just thought they were still busy with the questioning, the, you know, how it was possible it was deliberate, trying to figure out what happened—
I’m innocent, she said. That’s what happened. You believe me, Frank, don’t you? You believe it wasn’t me.
Of course, I said. Of course. There was never a doubt in my mind that you could be capable of such a thing. Oh, Merry, what an awful, unimaginable thing. Isn’t it. Isn’t it just beyond sense. The shock of Con’s death—and then this. This terrible, terrible news that it was—
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