sounds penetrated down there; Albin was asleep, and Niclas was at work.
It had been easier than she expected. The girl had thought it was a fun game, to be able to take a bath with her clothes on. Naturally she had struggled when Lilian fed her with Humility, but she wasn't strong enough. And holding the girl's head under water had been no trouble at all. The only tricky part had been to get down to the shore without being seen. But Lilian knew that she had destiny on her side and that she couldn't fail. She had covered Sara with a blanket, carried her in her arms, and then tipped her into the water and watched her sink. It took only a few minutes, and just as she'd thought, luck had been on her side. No one had seen a thing.
The second incident had been merely a spur-of-the-moment impulse. When the police began sniffing around Niclas she knew that she was the only one who could save him. She had to create an alibi for him, and she happened to see the sleeping child outside Jarnboden hardware store. Terribly irresponsible to leave a child like that. His mother really deserved to be taught a lesson. And Niclas was at work, she'd checked on that, so the police would be forced to eliminate him from the investigation.
Her attack on Erica's daughter had also been meant to serve as a lesson. When Niclas mentioned that Erica told him it was time that he and Charlotte got themselves their own home, the fury Lilian felt had been so strong that she saw red. What right did Erica have to be giving out advice? What right did she have to interfere in their lives? It had been easy to carry the sleeping infant to the other side of the house. The ashes were intended as a warning. She hadn't dared stay to see Erica's face when she opened the front door and discovered the baby was gone. But she'd pictured it in her mind, and the sight made her happy.
Sleep crept up on Lilian as she lay on the bunk, and she willingly shut her eyes. Behind her closed eyelids the faces whirled past in a surreal dance. Father, Lennart, and Sara dancing round in a circle. Close behind them she saw Stig's face, wasted and thin. But in the centre of the circle was Mother. She was dancing with the monster in an intimate embrace, closer, tighter, cheek to cheek. And Mother was whispering: Mary, Mary, Maaaryyy…
Then the darkness of sleep rolled in.
Agnes was feeling sincerely sorry for herself as she sat by the window in the old folks' home. Outside the rain was pelting the window, and she almost thought she could feel it whipping against her face.
She didn't understand why Mary didn't come to visit. Where did she get all that hatred, all that rancour? Hadn't she always done everything she could for her daughter? Hadn't she been the best mother she could be? Not everything that went wrong along the way was her fault, after all. Other people were to blame. If only she'd had luck on her side, then things would have been different. But Mary didn't understand that. She believed that Agnes was to blame for the unfortunate events, and no matter how hard she'd tried to explain, the girl refused to listen. She had written many long letters from prison, explaining in detail why she wasn't at fault, but somehow the girl was unreceptive, as if she'd hardened herself to all other views.
The injustice made Agnes's old eyes well up with tears. She had never received anything from her daughter, even though she herself had given and given and given. Everything that Mary had perceived as nasty and horrid had been done for her own good. It wasn't true that Agnes had taken any joy in punishing her daughter or telling her that she was fat and ugly. On the contrary. No, it had actually pained her to be so harsh, but that was her duty as a mother. And it had produced results. Hadn't Mary finally pulled herself together and got rid of all that flab? Yes, she had. And it was all thanks to her mother, though she'd never received any credit.
A strong gust of wind outside made a branch strike the window- pane. Agnes jumped in her wheelchair, but then laughed at herself. Was she turning into a scaredy-cat at her age? She who had never been afraid of anything. Except of being poor. The years as a stonecutter's wife had taught her that. The cold, the hunger, the filth, the degradation. All that had made her scared to death of ever being poor again. She had believed that the men in the States would be her ticket out of misery, then Ake, then Per-Erik. But they had all betrayed her. They had all broken their promises to her, just as her father had. And they had all been punished.
In the end she was the one who had the last word. The blue wooden box and its contents had served as a reminder that she alone controlled her own destiny. And that any means were permitted.
She had fetched the ashes in the wooden box the night before the ship left for America. Under cover of darkness she had sneaked to the site of the fire and gathered up ashes from the spot where she knew Anders and the boys had been sleeping. At the time she didn't know why she did it, but as the years passed she began to understand her impulsive action. The wooden box with the ashes reminded her how easy it was to do something in order to achieve her own goals.
The plan had gradually taken shape in her mind as the day of their departure for America approached. She knew that her fate would be sealed if she let herself be shipped off like a milk-cow with her family as a dead weight round her legs. But alone she would have a chance to create a different future for herself. One in which poverty would be only a distant and distasteful memory.
Anders never knew what hit him. The knife sank into his back all the way to the hilt, deep into his heart, and he fell like a dead piece of meat over the kitchen table.
The boys were taking a nap. She stole quietly into their room, eased the pillow out from under Karl's head and put it over his face. Then she pressed it down with her whole weight. It was so easy. He kicked and struggled briefly, but no sound escaped from under the pillow, so Johan kept sleeping peacefully while his twin brother died. Then it was his turn. She repeated the procedure, and this time it was a little harder. Johan had always been stronger and more powerful than Karl, but even he couldn't fight for long. He was soon as lifeless as his brother. With unseeing eyes they lay there staring at the ceiling, and Agnes felt strangely empty of feelings. It was as though she were putting things back in their proper order. They never should have been born, and now they were no more.
But before she could go on with her own life there was one more thing she had to do. In the middle of the floor she gathered a big pile of the boys' clothes and then went out to the kitchen. She pulled the knife out of Anders's back and dragged him to the boys' room. He was so big and heavy that she was totally soaked with sweat when he finally lay in a heap on the floor. She fetched some of the aquavit they had in the house, poured it over the pile of clothes, and then lit a cigarette. With pleasure she took a few drags before she cautiously placed the lit cigarette next to the clothing drenched in alcohol. Hopefully she could get a good distance away before it caught fire properly.
Voices out in the corridor of the nursing home roused Agnes from her reverie. She waited tensely until they passed, hoping they weren't coming for her, and didn't relax until she heard them go by and continue down the hall.
She hadn't needed to pretend she was shocked when she came back from her errands and saw the fire. She never dreamed it would burn so hot or spread so fast. The whole house had burnt to the ground, but at least all had gone according to plan. No one had even for a moment suspected that Anders and the boys might have died in some other way, and not in the fire.
During the days that followed Agnes felt so wonderfully free that she sometimes had to look at her feet to make sure they were touching the ground. Outwardly she had kept up the pretence, played the grieving widow and mother, but inside she had laughed at how easily those stupid, simple people could be fooled. And the biggest idiot of them all was her father. She was itching with the desire to tell him what she'd done, to hold up the crime to him like a bloody scalp and say, 'See what you did? See what you drove me to do when you banished me like a Babylonian harlot that day?' But she thought better of the idea. No matter how much she wanted to share the blame with him, she would be better served by accepting his sympathy.
The whole plan had worked so well. It had turned out exactly as she wanted and hoped, and yet bad luck had hounded her. The first few years in New York had been everything she'd dreamt of when she sat in the stonecutter compound, imagining a different life for herself. But later she had again been denied the life she deserved. And one injustice followed another.
Agnes felt the rage rising in her breast. She wanted to free herself of this old, loathsome skin. Wriggle out of it like a chrysalis and emerge as the lovely butterfly she once had been. She could smell the odour of old age in her nostrils, and it made her want to vomit.
