Chapter 88
As they drove through Halmstad, everything seemed distorted. Killian was in the passenger seat with a can of beer in his hand, watching the edge of the road. He leaned against the headrest and said, more to himself than to Sander:
“Oh, so this is how it looks now. It’s all so different.” He frowned as if this were an important realization. “At least, I think it is. I don’t actually remember what it used to look like. It feels weird to come home.”
“Quite a bit has changed,” Sander confirmed, mostly just for something to say.
“Home,” Killian went on, as if pondering the word itself. “When we were eighteen, it was such a simple word. Wasn’t it? Not for you, maybe, since all you wanted was to leave.”
He said it without accusation, just a statement of fact.
“But I stayed,” Sander said softly.
“You did.” Killian took a sip of beer. “It’s nice, though. Seeing you, I mean.”
“Same to you.”
Sander didn’t know if he meant it.
“Do you have kids?”
“The jackets you saw in the hall are a little too small for me,” Sander said, but when Killian didn’t seem to catch on, he clarified: “I’ve got two.”
“Wow.”
“Are you surprised?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t picture you with kids.”
“Me neither, but then I grew up.”
They were approaching Oskarstrom. The sun was slowly sinking, but dusk was still hours away. The drive leading to the cemetery parking lot was narrow, and Sander slowed down. No cars here now. Killian straightened up in his seat, preparing himself.
“Have you seen it?” Killian asked as they climbed out of the car. “The headstone.”
“Many times.”
“So you know the way?”
Sander hesitated. “I mean, I haven’t been here in real life.”
“So you haven’t seen the stone?”
“Not for real, no.”
Sander squinted at the sun and drank his beer.
It was lukewarm by this point. He’d drunk alcohol and driven his car, and now he was drinking again.
He would never drink and drive otherwise, but it was like he was underwater, or in a fog, and everything was dreamy and slightly distorted by waves and white veils.
Maybe that was why he wasn’t afraid of being caught, wasn’t scanning for police cars or other people who might spot them, recognize them, break the two of them apart again.
They stepped down into the cemetery and began to walk among the gravestones.
Sander read: Rest in peace. We miss you.
Beloved grandmother, mother, sister. Beloved son, father, grandfather.
Beloved grandma and mom. Beloved wife. Beloved husband and father.
Beloved son. Beloved papa and brother. Beloved father and grandfather.
Beloved mother and friend. No beloved soul got out of this place alive.
After searching for a while, Killian looked up and said: “That must be it. My stone.”
“Killian, are you sure you…you don’t have to…”
“I am.” He looked at Sander and, as if to reassure him, reached out and touched his friend’s arm. “It’s okay. I think I need this.”
He rested alone here, not far from his mother. Killian Persson, 1981–1999, in a long line going back through generations.
“Weird,” he said simply. “Soon Dad will be lying around here somewhere too.”
So many times Sander had imagined this: standing before the grave and reading his friend’s name. He had always held off, as if he weren’t quite ready yet but would be someday. Now he was here, but it didn’t feel real. These were circumstances that didn’t belong to any reality he recognized.
He understood it was a lovely headstone, but he couldn’t see it that way.
Instead, he was about to be overcome by a sudden, burning fury.
What he read on that stone was a mistake, and he didn’t understand how it could have come to be, whose fault it was.
He twisted the leather bracelet like it was chafing him.
Killian sank down on the grass in front of the gravestone tailor-style, his sturdy long legs surprisingly flexible.
“I just need to sit down for a minute. Want another beer?”
Killian had a few more in a bag. Sander sat down next to his friend and was given a can. They drank and stared at the grave without saying anything.
In his mind, Sander returned to the short stretch of county highway that wound through Esmared.
He had thought of it often, how it lay there smooth and slippery on that Christmas Eve night.
The flames blazing forth and the moaning, solitary wreck of the car.
More than once, years later, he had almost gotten in his own car and driven to that spot, just so he could say he had been there, to the place where his friend met death. But what would he do there?
“I just don’t understand how the fuck you can be sitting here,” Sander said at last. “We buried you. You died.”
Killian chuckled, a sound void of happiness. “I sure did.”