Chapter Twenty-Two
The words of Håvamål are from gathered writing of the Viking age and are in the public domain.
II
Caroline Jensen was waiting for her doom.
She had arisen early, dressed herself in black as the grieving should and waited. They would probably come today, after the other girl had become sick. They had probably figured it out now, or thought they had.
She was almost glad.
The house was silent but for the passing of time. The clocks, always the clocks, ticking away the seconds Anna had been dead, the seconds until Caroline would join her. The seconds until the police officers would come and arrest her. Tick. Longing. Tick. Guilt. Tick. Grief. Grief. Grief.
The grief was everywhere. In her shaking hands, the faded morning light, the mournful wind, the persistent clock, moving time ever forward. Moving Anna ever away from when she had been alive.
Anna. Anna, who had been the daughter she should have had. For a while. Until...
She breathed, watching her clasped hands burrow into each other with a strength she didn't realise she had. But then, she had never thought herself capable of murder either.
Murder. For all she could wrap it, it was still murder. She had murdered Anna. Simple, heartbreaking, heart-chilling truth.
And she had broken the oath she had sworn to the little babe the first time she held her in her arms.
"I will never hurt you, as your mother will. I will raise you as my own. You will be my legacy to the world. You will be what my daughter is not."
In the old faith of Norway, murders and oath breakers were the lowest, the cast out, the ones the goddess Var punished. As young, she'd found it strangely horrifying. Now, she wondered if perhaps her forefathers knew the truth of it after all. Your body died, but your words and action lived on, clinging to your memory. Oath breaker, murderer, mother. Her legacy. All for love.
Engines roared and died outside and she smiled, but without joy. Yes. They were coming today.
She opened the door even before they rang and saw the stern police officers, shadowed by the Americans. Young Ms. Sidle looked stern, disapproving and almost sad. Mr. Grissom merely looked curious and Mr. Sanders looked almost openly hostile.
"Come in," she said haltingly, longing to speak her own language, but the Americans deserved to know too. They had come a long way. "I know why you have come. I do not wish for legal representation. I wish to talk."
Mr. Grissom did not look surprised, she noted, as the others exchanged surprised glances. He merely tilted his head and regarded her.
They came in, the two younger Americans taking a seat on her couch, Mr. Grissom in the chair of her darling Knut, still alive in her mind. She smiled faintly. The Norwegian detective hovered without taking a seat, not quite looking at her.
"You wonder perhaps at my foolish reasons for the inexcusable?" she asked softly, feeling the judgement in the air. She would face it as doom should be faced, head lifted and back straight.
"Let no one wonder at / another's folly/ it is the lot of many. / All-powerful desire / makes of the sons of men / fools even of the wise," Mr. Grissom quoted slowly, looking above her. "Odin's words to your people a long time ago, I believe."
"Yes. Håvamål. You have read your history, mister Grissom."
"A land is its history, as is a person." He smiled at her, almost friendly in a strange way.
"Yes. We are what we have done and I killed Anna, as you know. I expect you want to know why?"
"Please," Mr. Grissom said, his tone indicating he meant it.
'Courteous even to a killer? You are a different one,' she thought, a thought that would have amused her a long time ago, a lifetime ago.
"I lied before," she said calmly. "I knew who Anna's father was. Cecilie told me about him early on, to shock me, dismay me, hurt me. She often did. I knew she was attracted to the darkness in him. She always liked the dangerous ones. And he had killed, Cecilie told me. I think, when he left, she was deep down relieved. And we never spoke of him again, except once. When Anna said she had found her father, I... I knew he would break my little girl. She is all light... Was all light. He would break her."
"So you killed her?" Mr. Sanders stared at her, disbelieving. She met his glance evenly.
"Yes. She wasn't meant to eat them on the plane. She was meant to eat them here, in Norway. She was meant to stay here."
"You didn't love her enough to let her go," Mr. Grissom said quietly.
"All love is selfish, mister Grissom," she replied, feeling the words drain her, free her, bind her. "You have lived the world. You know this."
For a flicker of a moment, he glanced at Ms. Sidle. "Perhaps. But selfish is not the same as murdering."
"Murder is the ultimate act of selfishness. You kill for your own protection, your own advancement, your own desires, your own revenge. My husband worked as a doctor and a coroner, mister Grissom. I know why men kill."
"Then you know sometimes murder is not always selfish. Sometimes… Sometimes you kill for another."
Caroline didn't answer, feeling her heartbeats thump through her mind, fast and rushed and afraid.
"Who did you kill for?" He looked at her now, his eyes still not judging, but demanding, beckoning the answer within her.
"Cecilie," she whispered, the word a pain and relief.
Blood. You could not help but love your blood, for all it did wrong, for all it asked of you.
"You loved your daughter. You loved her more than your granddaughter," Mr. Grissom went on.
The pain was hard, spiked, glass and ice cutting in her blood. "Yes. I tried very hard not to, but I failed. Anna was all Cecilie should have been. And still I loved my daughter more. And my daughter… My daughter did not wish Anna to ever know her father. I agreed with her. And then I found out Anna overheard his name as Cecilie and I talked on her deathbed and she had already contacted him, pretending this was the will of Cecilie. Perhaps believing it too, I do not know. I tried to talk her out of it, but she would not listen. I tried… I failed."
Even as she spoke it, she could feel Anna's ghost in her mind, screaming at the unfairness, the betrayal, the bond of blood.
'I am sorry. Forgive me,' Caroline thought, but only her mind's silence answered.
No forgiveness for oath breakers. Only the venom, forever burning.
"Cecilie wanted you to kill her daughter?" Disbelief was all over Mr. Sanders's face and voice. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Perhaps it does not, to you. Perhaps you love your family and will one day have a child you love and not a child you fear. I raised Anna because I made Cecilie not have an abortion, made her have a child she feared. She had her for me. What she gave, I returned. Think of me as insane, mister Sanders, if that helps you."
"The father, what is his name?" Mr. Grissom asked, still calm. He had heard her story before, in other names, she realised. Humans echoed their forefathers. Nothing was truly ever new.
She sighed. "I suppose it does not matter now. His name was Alan Keyes. He lives in Las Vegas."
And then Mr. Grissom did look shocked, his mouth opening and his eyes fixating on something beyond her. "You're sure?"
"Yes."
Both his younger colleagues seemed confused, but the name definitely had meaning to Mr. Grissom. Perhaps Anna's father was the killer Cecilie had claimed after all.
"I'll be right back," he said hurriedly, already pulling up a cell phone and punching numbers with fervour.
"Mrs Jensen," Ms. Sidle cut in, her face a mask, unreadable and cool. "The lithium..."
"A Danish doctor who is a friend of mine supplied it when I was visiting. He trusts me, trusted the story I gave as an excuse. I am responsible alone. You will not punish him."
"Why lithium?"
"It is taken for being sad, yes? I thought it appropriate."
"I see. Did you know it is an unreliable drug to kill someone with?"
Caroline bit down on her lip, keeping the words inside.
"You said you thought she would take it while in Norway. You didn't realise she would save those buns for the flight?"
"No."
"But if she had eaten them here, she may have sought medical help. The drug may not have killed her. She may have lived. Did you want her to live?"
"What does it matter? I killed her."
"It matters," the young woman answered softly, pain in her voice. "It matters."
Caroline closed her eyes and after a while, she heard people get up and leave. Officers probably remained, getting ready to arrest her. The end, at last. Or perhaps the end had been Cecilie's dying night, clinging to Caroline's hands, words of desperation, rage and insanity.
"Promise me, mother. Promise me you will keep them apart. She is his child, he will make her as twisted as he. Promise me. Promise my child will not be his, even if you must kill. Promise me!"
"I promise."
It did matter, Ms. Sidle was right. If she had not meant to kill Anna, she would have broken two oaths and not just one. Surely, surely she was not an oath breaker twice over?
Very faintly, she heard her rights being read in her own language as last, but she still kept her eyes closed, letting the grief fill her.
Anna, Anna who she meant to love as a daughter, but couldn't in the end. Cecilie, who had disappointed her, hurt her, pushed her away, but who she did love as a daughter in the end after all.
Her doom. Oath breaker, murderer, mother. For Cecilie.
For Cecilie.
