He picked up the phone and dialed a number he knew by heart, even though he’d never called it before. It rang on the other end.
“Hello?” said a soft voice.
“Hi. It’s Sander.”
“Sander,” said Felicia. “Hi.”
He had no words. None at all. “I just wanted to hear someone’s voice. Is this a bad time?”
He must have sounded as lost as he felt.
“No, it’s fine.”
Too many questions inside—they got stuck. He wanted to cross them out and come up with a new one, the right one. He tried, but it didn’t work, so he just lay there breathing. In the end, Felicia was the one who spoke:
“He stopped by and said he had to go away for a while. But that he would come back. Killian, I mean. I tried to get him to stay but he wouldn’t listen.” She exhaled. “He said you had a fight.”
The guilt was a tremendous wooden cross on his shoulders.
They came back to him now, all those words inside him that hadn’t stayed where they belonged, deep down in his body and his soul; they had flown from his mouth and driven Killian to take off, to flee. They had driven him to death. He said it aloud now, for the first time:
“It’s my fault.”
“No it isn’t.”
But she didn’t totally believe her own words. He could tell.
“You and Mikael,” he said. “Killian said you…that he had forced himself on you. Is that true?”
“Does it matter?”
No, maybe not. That didn’t matter anymore either.
Except, yes. It did.
“I just want to know,” he said. “Did he?”
Felicia didn’t say anything for a long time. “What do you think?”
“But…when? Where? How…I mean, why didn’t you say anything?”
“Who would I tell?”
She fell silent again. Sander could hear her sniffling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I…”
“Killian was the only one who knew.”
“Is he the one that did it?”
“Did what?”
“Mikael.”
A long silence, more profound this time. “What doyouthink?”
Sander had no idea anymore.
