“Följ med, Veronika,” the old woman would say. But Brand resisted, anticipating the shock of that first bare foot against the cold floor. Her protests about leaving the warmth of her bed went unheeded.
Across the crowd Brand now spotted a hunched, ancient soul—Elin Dalgren, the youngest sister of Brand's grandfather Gustav, and the sister-in-law of her grandmother, Klara. The last living sibling of the 12 or 13 that had once dominated the area. Hers had been the unintelligible scratch of a voice on the trans-Atlantic telephone call that had summoned Brand to Sweden. A shrunken, Yoda-like presence, Elin held herself apart from the hub-bub of the reunion.
Brand had the odd sense of being pinned by the old woman’s gaze. Elin's eyes were rheumy and cloudy with cataracts, but they fixed upon the American visitor with a spooky fierceness. Brand looked around. No one stood nearby, no one else who could be the possible target of Elin’s stare. She raised her hand against her chest. Me? she wanted to ask. The primordial eyes still bore down on her. Brand waved tentatively, and got no response.
It was an illusion, she decided, a product of her exhaustion. Elin Dalgren was not looking at her at all. The woman seemed to exist, her grand-niece thought, as a totem, a reminder, a last living witness of events that had occurred long ago. The large easy chair in which she sat threatened to swallow her up. One gnarled hand rested atop an artfully carved wooden cane.
Amid the gusts of party chatter, Brand noticed a figure who appeared as much of an outsider as herself, a man about her age, maybe a little younger. He stood apart, narrow-shouldered and composed. A gentle, ironic expression played across his face. She hadn’t caught his name. An odd thing, but she noticed that he would appear sitting in one of the cane chairs lined against the wall, but when Brand glanced over again a few moments later he had disappeared. Then he would reappear elsewhere, on the other side of the room. Like the innocent childhood game of musical chairs, she thought.
The formal atmosphere loosened. The dozen children present buzzed around the room. The younger ones seemed unimpressed by the visitor from America. Many of the adults wished to share drinks with Brand, pushing tiny glasses of clear liquid upon her, toasting her with red-faced enthusiasm.
“Skål!” The theme of the evening. She could not refuse. The fiery liquor ploughed into her exhaustion like a landslide in progress. She felt obliged to speak at least a few polite words to Elin Dalgren, but then she would have to find a place to sleep.
At that moment the old woman surprised everyone by rapping her cane loudly on the wooden floor. Despite how frail Elin looked, there was obvious strength in her. Though the children paid little mind, much of the adult chatter in the room stopped.
Brand took a few steps toward Elin, but Sanna formally guided the New York detective to the older woman. Brand had the annoying sense that her busy-body cousin somehow wanted to control or stage-manage the interaction. Before Sanna could say a word Elin reached out and captured one of Brand’s hands, gripping it hard.
“Klara,” she muttered.
“Nej, Elin, inte Klara,” Sanna said. “Klaras dotterdotter!”
Relatives gathered around them, eager to hear the exchange.
“Jag vet varför hon är här,” the old woman declared.
Sanna translated. “She says she knows why you are here.”
“She spoke to me on the phone,” Brand said. Summoning her.
“She’s very old,” Sanna said. She turned back to Elin and spoke a quick sentence in Swedish. “I say to her that you are here for the reunion.”
“Nej, nej,” Elin said, shaking her head slowly, still staring up at Brand. “Hon är här för att döda djävulen.”
The whole company erupted into laughter. Sanna broke in among the general merriment. “My mamma says you are here in Sweden to arrest the bad men,” she told Brand.
“Watch out! Watch out,” exclaimed Jörgen, the gent who had proclaimed himself a fan of NYPD Blue. He cocked his finger and made an explosive shooting sound with his mouth.
Elin Dalgren looked as if she very much wanted to say more. Her wrinkled, age-puckered mouth moved spasmodically, attempting to form words. It was painful to watch. She fretted and turned anxious.
Sanna intervened, made a shooing motion to the family before helping the old woman to her feet. The two slowly made their way out of the room. Before they disappeared Elin Dalgren stopped and turned, sending one more look in Brand’s direction.
Her expression disturbed Brand. The old woman is afraid of something, she thought.
4.
Later in the evening, Brand escaped the crush. She wandered the low-ceilinged second floor of the old house. The alcohol-and-Adderall mix foxed her brain. She thought that if someone didn’t put her to bed soon she would drop where she stood. The hangover from the speed darkened her mood. I should not have come, she told herself.
Seeking to clear her head, she stepped out onto a small balcony, warding off the cold with a shawl fashioned from a blanket taken from one of the upstairs bedrooms. She wanted to see the stars again.
There was no moon, and no aurora. The Milky Way swept from horizon to horizon in a celestial wake of blue-white starlight. In the yard below, deep snow sparkled like piled diamonds. The red-painted outbuildings showed dark against the white landscape.
The man she had noticed earlier, her fellow outsider, emerged onto the little balcony. “Ah, here you are,” he said.
“Here I am,” she responded. They both took a moment to gaze up at the extravagant night sky.
He broke the silence. “Barns are painted red because of the chemistry of exploded stars.”
She glanced over at him. “Is that right?”
“No, really, it’s true,” he said. “When stars collapse, they leave behind dust, what we call ferrous oxide. There’s a lot of iron in the earth. This ferrous oxide colors the paint
