Page 108 of Shatter

An old woman sits beside her with one arm around her shoulders.

Mormor.

My eyes sting so hard I have to blink.

I pick the photo up by the edges, careful, the way Mormor taught me to lift a moth off a windowsill.

"I found it in Mom's closet." Pierce's voice is soft. "In a shoebox with your baby teeth. She kept everything, Anni. All of it."

Mormor's hand on my shoulder.

Her knuckles swollen from arthritis, her wedding ring worn thin as wire.

She used to let me sit on the counter while she made krumkake, and she'd sing to me in Norwegian, songs about trolls and girls who turned into birds.

When she died, I was eight, and nobody let me go to the funeral.

"Why are you doing this?" My voice comes out rough.

"Because I miss my sister." Pierce leans forward on his elbows. "And because every day you stay down here, Desmond gets a little less patient, and I'm running out of ways to keep him calm."

Gunnar sets his Coke can down on the bar with a sharp little click.

Pierce doesn't look at him.

"He wants it over, Anni." Pierce's voice drops. "He wants the drive back and he wants to see you give it to him yourself. Then it's done, engagement and all. The debt gets restructured and Dad keeps the company. Nobody goes to prison, and you can come home."

"And if I don't?" The photo's edge bends under my thumb.

He doesn't answer, and he doesn't have to.

His eyes drift past me to the patched cut on Gunnar's back, then to the hall where Hakon's room is.

"He's a biker, Anni." His voice goes gentle, like he's breaking bad news. "A man like the ones Dad hires to unload containers at two in the morning. What are you doing?"

My ears burn.

"He's the reason I'm alive." I set the photo down on the table. "Where were you?"

Pierce's face goes still.

For one second, something raw flickers behind his eyes, and his mouth opens.

Then he closes it and looks down at his watch.

My hands tremble in my lap.

"I can't stay long." Pierce sighs. "Mom's been calling me every hour since I got here. She wants to talk to you. She's been asking for weeks."

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it on the table between us, face up.

Gunnar stands up off his stool.

"She's her mother." Pierce doesn't look away from me. "Five minutes. That's all she wants."

I look at the phone, then down at the little girl on the step in the yellow raincoat, who didn't know yet what her family was.

Gunnar crosses the room and stands at the end of the table, his arms folded, his eyes on me.