Melinda tucks her shirt deeper into her pants as she stands at the corner of the small property trying to decide which door to use. At her left, uninviting, is the proper and formal front door. The lawn has not been cut all summer and the flat stones are obscured by the overgrowth. The pots on the steps are cracked and empty and the doormat is rotted and weather-worn.
To her right is a set of steps leading from the driveway to a screen door. They are shorn of paint at the edges as a thousand ascents have worn them through, exposing the soft wood at their centers and leaving them bare and unprotected.
Melinda looks behind her and Irv nods her up the stairs.
At the top Melinda grasps the aluminum handle of the screen door intent on opening it so she can knock on the wooden door behind. Instead she finds it held in place by a tiny slide lock woefully outclassed by the hostile world it faces.
Irv and Sigrid join her on the landing and stand behind her.
Melinda raps gently on the sheet metal as if to alert the people inside of their presence but not wake any listening spirits.
When the door is opened and the screen unlatched, a tired black woman with a drawn face looks out at them. She does not open the outer door immediately. Instead she looks at the three white faces through the rusty screen. Cops on her doorstep have never had good news for anyone. Her countenance is stone behind the flimsy screen that separates them. She looks to be beyond the insincere use of words and pleasantries now; words she may once have valued for their kindness and civility. Irv removes his hat as the woman opens the door without ushering them in. Melinda crosses the threshold first, her eyes cast to the kitchen floor.
Sigrid walks into the house behind Melinda. She looks at Mrs. Jones as she passes her. Their eyes meet but there is no connection. No unity. Sigrid has met people in Oslo who have lost family members before. But she has not met a woman who has lost a grandchild and—immediately afterward—a daughter. There is a sourness to the air inside the kitchen. Takeout foods, processed and oversalted. The woman’s face is gray. Her clothing is gray. The light from the sun through the kitchen window and the door behind her is gray. The truth of this world has leeched away all its color.
They are led through the living room. The air is dusty with an institutional oppressiveness. The ancient shag carpet is worn bare in its trafficked paths. The window curtains are drawn.
A silent glowing television flickers. No one is watching it.
As Sigrid turns into the dining room she sees a table of heavy maple and two photographs in its center—a Christmas photo of Jeffrey and a half-body shot of Lydia in a mortarboard hat and a full professorial gown speaking from behind a podium.
Sigrid has seen two photographs of Jeffrey. One from his mother’s Facebook page, which was used extensively by the media, and the other from a birthday party. In this new one he is looking down at a present he is unwrapping. He is wearing black pants and a white dress shirt, but—as with all children—he’s a bit disheveled because the shirttail has come untucked. The photo captures him at a moment of recognition; the moment he realized that the present was exactly what he wanted or else was even better. The wrapping paper blocks the view of the object, but it doesn’t matter: He is the subject. Behind him are two clapping adults whom Sigrid takes to be his parents—Lydia’s sister and brother-in-law. Their empathy is obvious. They are feeling what he feels.
In the other photo, Lydia is standing at a podium before a microphone. She is a slight woman but one hand is braced firmly while the other gestures dramatically. She is smiling and her eyebrows are raised as though inviting her audience to accept her argument. It is the photo of a person aloft, soaring at the full height of her emotional strength and rhetorical power. Her face glows with purpose and the promise of possibility.
A ring of votive candles burns around the photos.
Mrs. Abigail Jones leads the three visitors to the table. Sigrid notices Charles, the father, hanging back in the hall without entering the room. He does not extend a hand to the police or to Sigrid.
They are led to the dining room where they sit around the images of the dead. Sigrid studies the candles and wonders whether they were lit before Melinda called.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” Mrs. Jones says, looking at Irv.
“Why is that, ma’am?”
“I think we both know why.”
Sigrid touches Irv’s leg beneath the table. He is not expecting this and it works as Sigrid had hoped. Instead of responding, his confusion keeps his mouth closed.
“Reverend Green explained the situation to us,” Mrs. Jones continues. She leans forward onto the table, her forearms flat against the dark wood. “How do you live with yourself, Sheriff, knowing that you have within your soul and your station the power to make things better, but you choose not to?”
Sigrid has experienced these sorts of confrontations before. Junior officers freeze, and experienced but foolish ones take a defensive stance. They think their honor
