“Sander?”
Sander turned his head. “Oh, hello, Filip. It’s been ages. Milk?”
“No thanks, I take it black.”
“It’s nice to see you. I wasn’t really sure you’d be here.”
“I felt like I needed to come. For my own sake, mostly.”
“I can understand that.”
“I don’t know if you can. But thank you.” For a moment he was silent, as though there were more words to be said but maybe not to Sander. Then he added: “It’s always sad when someone dies. But I’m not exactly mourning him.”
“That makes sense,” Sander said. He was still holding the pot of coffee, like he was a server. “How are things?”
“Oh, under control, I suppose. Just working, soldiering on.”
“Where are you living these days?”
“In Frans Ljunggren’s old house. I bought it from him a year or so before he died.”
“When did Frans die?”
“Last winter. It was his heart.”
Frans too,Sander thought. Old man Östholm, Sten, Linda, Karl-Henrik, Mikael, Killian. So many people gone.
“Sorry to hear it.”
“Yes, but it was his time. He was over ninety, after all.”
Frans had left most of his belongings in the house after the sale, Filip told him. Furniture, curtains, the tools and equipment in the garage, even the silverware in the kitchen drawers.
“But I ended up throwing those out,” he said. “They were all pretty rusted through.”
He’d gotten the household goods in exchange for a bottle of liquor he supplied to Frans, who planned to smuggle it into Patrikshill, the nursing home he had just moved into. That got a chuckle out ofSander. He remembered the old mechanic and was about to recount a sudden memory of him when Filip put down his undrunk cup of coffee and looked at his phone.
“I’ve got work this afternoon. I have to get going. But it was nice to see you again.”
“It was,” Sander agreed, and returned to his table.
The others fell silent as he sat down.
“What happened to Filip?” Jakob asked.
“I guess he had to go to work.”
“Can’t have been easy for him. Coming here, I mean.”
“No,” Sander said. “I was thinking the same thing. What would I have done?”
If he’d been the one to lose a brother, if it had been his home, if he’d been convinced Killian’s father had destroyedit.
Jakob lowered his voice. “You know, I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about that.”
“What you would have done in Filip’s situation?”
“Yes. Or no, not really.” Jakob shook his head. “Fuck it.”
