Chapter 102
“Yes. No, everything’s fine.”
Sander had set the phone on the table. Olivia’s voice came from the speaker, blaring right into the kitchen in front of Felicia and Killian, and she had no idea.
“Are you sure?” she said. “You were supposed to come back yesterday, and now you’re not coming tonight either. Is everything really okay? Is there anything I should know?”
“I’m okay,” Sander said. “It’s just this thing with Filip. I promise, that’s all. I have to talk to the police again.”
“What about?”
Killian stared at him.
“We can talk about it when I get there tomorrow. Because I will be there tomorrow, I promise.”
“Okay.” She sounded sad. “The kids are asleep. Do you want to talk for a while? I miss you.”
He couldn’t keep his voice from shaking. “I think I’ll try to get hold of the police now. I’ll be there tomorrow. I miss you too. I miss all of you.”
“Okay. Good night.”
She sounded subdued, disappointed. A click.
“No,” Killian said, an icy veil draped over his voice. “Leave it out.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Sander left the phone on the table, and Killian pulled it his way. He placed the knife on the table, right next to Sander’s phone.
“I’m not going to go to the police, Killian. I just needed something to tell her.”
“You think I believe you’d tell me the truth, over your wife?”
There was a sharp note to Killian’s tone.
“I just fucking lied to her for your sake!” Sander exclaimed, his voice harsh and loud. “Did I tell the truth? Did I say your name? Huh?”
“Sorry,” Killian said, his inner eighteen-year-old emerging again. “No, you’re right.” He reached out and touched Felicia’s hip. It was a tender, passionate gesture. “Could you walk around the house and see if there’s anyone out there?”
It looked like she wanted to protest, but she didn’t speak up. Just nodded slowly and went to the front hall, found an umbrella.
They were alone. His throat still aching, Sander stared at his friend as though gazing into a great cloud of fog.
“You choked me.”
“I had to.”
“You had to?” Sander was shocked at his words. “Why?”
“I…” Killian trailed off.
“And now you’re about to take off again.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Killian, it was self-defense. Hey—you don’t have to run away this time.”
Killian took a step toward Sander. “You think I’m going to let them pin me to two murders? That’s what would happen. You know it would.”
Everything around Sander had begun to quiver, as if reality were splitting at the seams.
Killian looked at Sander’s wrist.
“I thought you threw that away.”
“I did.”
“Then you must have come back to get it. After I took off. Right?”
Sander didn’t know what to say. All of a sudden Killian seemed insane again. He was impossible to follow, like an unpredictable pendulum.
Beyond the doorway, the hall. Sander could simply go, open the front door and head to his car, drive down to Kivik, out of this dream and back into real life, to Olivia and the children, all that was his. He didn’t have to wait, to stay. There was no need to worry.
Even so, he knew it wouldn’t be that simple. Killian stood in his way. He couldn’t have imagined this until now, now that it was so very evident.
“Do you have any idea,” Sander said slowly, “how much you meant to me? You let me believe you were dead. I could have helped you.”
The words came from way, way back in the past. Like he was calling up an image of an old monument, now crumbled.
Killian’s face was expressionless.
“I didn’t want your help,” Killian said. “Then or now. I never wanted to see you again. I hated you. Don’t you get it?”
Sander was taken aback. “Why?”
Killian’s gaze slid to the window. Rain beat against the pane.
“Where the hell is she?”
“What the hell happened to you, Killian?”
“That’s what you think, isn’t it. That something happened to me. That’s how you see me. You know what? Everything that happened to me happened here, at home. And you had no fucking clue.”
Suddenly, Sander couldn’t remember a thing. Not anymore. Hadn’t Killian just said that Sander always saw the best in him? Maybe it wasn’t so. Maybe Sander had been mistaken this whole time. Sander had been the greedy one. The one who wanted the whole world. That desire must have blinded him.
“I couldn’t even come home for my mom’s funeral! Do you know what that does to a person?”
“You could have come back.”
“To what?” Killian sounded almost sad now. “What would I have been coming back to?”
“Come on! Me, Felicia, your family. Your parents. You know, Mikael, the money, even if it was you, you were only eighteen, you could have gotten help. You didn’t have to throw your life away,” Sander tried, as a last resort.
“You don’t have to this time either. You can’t just keep running away over and over. Everything—”
“You’ll go to the police. You even said so just now, right in front of me, to your wife.”
Sander stared at him. Killian was speaking and thinking like an eighteen-year-old again. As if he was stuck. Maybe he was.
“Yes, I’m going to go to the police. But everything will work itself out. As long as you stay.”
“And you!” As if Killian hadn’t heard him, as if his rage had found another wave of strength, the accusation burst out and he grabbed the knife.
“What do you mean I threw away my life, what the fuck do you know? You got to live, and I didn’t.
You had everything, you had every opportunity, and this is what became of you?
Tell me, what exactly have you done with your life?
You didn’t even leave town, for Christ’s sake. ”
“I stayed because I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“Because I felt guilty, obviously.”
“Guilty why?”
“I…” Sander began, but the words caught in his throat.
“Just say it.”
It came from Sander’s lips in a whisper: “What?”
“I know why you feel guilty.” Killian stepped closer to Sander again. “Do you think she didn’t tell me?”
“Felicia? What did she say?”
“Just tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know what you mean. That is the truth. This is crazy, Killian.”
“Is that all you have to say? Are you that helpless? Huh?”
“But there’s nothing more to say, Killian.”
Killian glanced down and adjusted his grip on the knife, looking at it as if it had only just appeared, placed in his hand by someone else.
“Go ahead, then, talk to the police,” he said. “Go for it.”
Sander’s mind ground to a halt.
There was violence here now.