And suddenly it’s just there, the realization that this whole thing was a mistake. Philip and the redhead aren’t at the cabin. The reason the place looked so deserted, without any lights on, the reason I couldn’t see any other car besides Veronica’s outside is that no one else is here, only the two of us. My chest tightens, and the dizziness comes over me again.
“I’m sorry. I promised Leo that I would… but I… I should have known better.”
I think I need to lie down again. I realize that I might faint otherwise, but I can’t move. I press my sleeve to my forehead, trying to dab at my head with the parts of the fabric that aren’t soaked through yet. I’m so cold now that I’m shivering.
Veronica is stamping her feet as she stands there.
“There’s… We have a first-aid kit in the cabin. I could go get—”
“That’s not necessary,” I manage to say. “I think the bleeding is stopping.”
She squints down at me.
“This business about Leo being worried. What do you mean by that? What is he worried about?”
“He mostly wanted to know that you were OK. And where you were going.”
Her face stiffens.
“The plan was for his dad to tell him that we… that I was coming here. But apparently he didn’t get the message. I did leave a note.”
I nod cautiously, avoiding moving too much or too vigorously. I speak as slowly as I can, since my voice is distorted by my chattering teeth.
“Like I said, he just wanted someone to check on you and make sure you were OK.”
Her face relaxes now.
“He has a good heart, my son.”
Seconds tick by. The police should be here soon. I hope they have a warm blanket with them.
“You’ve seen each other a few times?”
I nod again. And then, as if to explain away or play down our interactions, I add that he evidently wants to become an author, too.
“Yeah,” Veronica says. “So I understand. He has a very active imagination, Leo does. Too active for his own good sometimes.”
She hesitates for a few seconds. Then she straightens her back and looks me straight in the eye.
“Come inside for a bit,” she says in a tone that won’t take no for an answer. “That wound needs to be cleaned. There’s no way around it.”
45
She stands beside me as I get up. She doesn’t help me but seems ready to step in if I should fall. Then I shuffle into the cabin after her, step over the threshold straight into a large living room. It’s dark and very cold. The way it is in a cabin where no one’s turned on the heat, where no one’s been for a long time. The realization hits me yet again: No one is here.
Veronica flips a switch, and the room is instantly bathed in light. She shows me the way to the bathroom and takes out the first-aid kit and a half-filled package of gauze.
“Here,” she says, handing me some gauze. “I don’t think you’re going to need stitches. It doesn’t look like it.”
I lean over the sink and start cleaning my face. Veronica disappears but soon returns with a long-sleeved T-shirt and a fleece jacket as well as a bag for me to put my dirty clothes into.
“We must wear about the same size,” she says, without making eye contact.
Then she closes the door and leaves me alone. I clean myself up in the sink, carefully washing around the gash on my forehead. It’s swollen and tender, but I quickly determine that Veronica is probably right. The wound is wide but not particularly deep. And it’s already started to clot over, as I’d thought. When I come back out, wearing her clothes and with a bandage on my forehead, she’s sitting in an armchair in front of a coffee table with a glass of whiskey.
“There’s something I don’t understand,” she says.
She shakes her glass gently in her hand, and the ice clinks. At first I felt OK, but now I notice how weak my legs are. The dizziness is lurking somewhere.
“You don’t know me. At all. And yet you let yourself get caught up in Leo’s anxiety, so much so that you drove out here. Can you explain why?”
Just then the room does a somersault before my eyes, and my field of vision flickers. I hear Veronica’s voice more distantly now. It tells me to lie down on the sofa. She guides me there, and I sink into the cushions. I close my eyes for a long while, and when I look up again there’s a glass of orange juice on my side of the table. Somehow I manage to lean forward, take a couple of sips, and then fall back onto the sofa again.
Veronica crosses one leg over the other and takes a drink of her whiskey. Now her face shows no sign of fear. Maybe because I’m so weak. Or because she knows the police will be here soon.
“Tell me. How did you end up becoming worried as well?”
My first thought is that I don’t need to answer, that I don’t owe her an explanation. Then I think about the drive out here and how I ran across the lawn after her, of the terror in her eyes when she turned around and realized I was right behind her. The moment when I realized that neither Philip nor the redhead were here.
I lean forward and drink a little more juice.
“It was… it was something I saw.”
Veronica doesn’t take her eyes off me. Close up like this, she’s almost unimaginably beautiful.
“Something you saw?”
I open my mouth and hear myself telling her about that morning, what I witnessed from my kitchen, the flowers and the scissors, the hacking, chopping, and tearing, that tattered bouquet and the subsequent screaming and crying.
At first Veronica looks pale and then flushed.
“Oh, that,” she says. “Yes, that was… I appreciate how that must have looked strange, strange and a little… crazy, maybe.”
She raises her glass to her lips but immediately lowers it again.
“That wasn’t like me at all, but there is an explanation, you know.”
Then she tells me that she was supposed to go away that weekend. It had been planned for ages, and Philip had promised he would stay home with Leo. But the day she was supposed to leave, he told her that he had to go on a business trip, a meeting that had been set at the last minute, an important client that needed him.
“I objected, said that he knew how much I was looking forward to getting away. But he went anyway, even though he knew it meant that I’d be forced to cancel my plans. I was so incredibly angry. I guess I sort of lost control a little.”
She brings the glass to her lips again, and this time she drinks most of its contents. I stare at the hollows in her neck, watch the skin moving as she swallows. It’s as if something has been triggered within me, something I can’t stop.
“Then, just two or three days after that, I saw something else, too. You were eating dinner. You started crying and ran out of the kitchen. After that you didn’t come—”
Veronica sets her almost empty glass on the coffee table between us with a little bang.
“What is this, some kind of hobby of yours, sitting at your kitchen table and watching us? Is that what I’m meant to understand?”
I try not to tense up, try to sound honest and apologetic at the same time.
“It’s happened. A couple of times.”
“Why? Don’t you have a life of your own?”
Her tone is sharp.
“No, I guess I don’t. Not since my husband and I separated.”
That stops her.
“Oh” is all she says.
My headache returns, and I close my eyes. Then I happen to think of my sister, who’s still at my place, waiting. I have to get hold of her and tell her I’m OK. I feel my pockets but can’t locate my phone. Then I remember the bag with my bloody clothes. My vest is in there, too. My phone must be in one of the pockets. I sit up and reach for the bag, then rummage around in it until I find what I’m looking for. I type a quick text to my sister and put the phone away. Surely I’m feeling a little better now that I’ve rested for a bit? If I just take something for my headache, I’ll probably be able to drive home.