A white car is driving along the road, far too fast. The men from Hed inside it are little more than boys. Can we forgive them for that? How old do we have to be to be held accountable for our actions, even when the consequences end up being so infinitely worse than we imagine?

* * *

When the Saab appears in the rearview mirror and the men in the white car realize that they’re being pursued, they panic. They speed up, the Saab behind them does the same, the driver of the white car takes his eyes off the road, and a moment later the headlights of a third car shine through the windshield and dazzle him. It’s a large Volvo heading the other way.

* * *

The white car skids on the snow; the men from Hed inside it scream. The tires lose their grip on the road. Thousands of pounds of metal take flight, just for a moment, hanging silently in the darkness. Then comes a collision so terrible that we will never really stop hearing it.

* * *

Kira and Maya are sitting in the Volvo; they’ve just left the kennels when Kira’s phone rings. It’s Peter. He’s already run into town.

“THE BEARSKIN’S ON FIRE! I DON’T KNOW WHERE LEO IS!” he roars.

The kennel is located a fair way into the forest. There are only two routes back to Beartown: the ordinary winding road that all normal people use, but also a barely maintained track through the trees with no lighting that’s occasionally used by hunters. The track leads directly to the main road that runs between Beartown and Hed.

* * *

Never have a mother and a sister driven that track faster than they do tonight.

* * *

A few minutes later the Volvo slides out of the forest with its engine roaring, down onto the main road. Some way down the road an old man is driving toward them from Hed and blows his horn angrily. Kira couldn’t care less. She puts her foot down.

Then she sees the white car; it’s coming toward them far too fast. Maya lets out a scream before Kira has time to react. The driver of the white car loses control, and the car skids across the road. Kira slams on the brakes, steers the Volvo toward the ditch, and throws herself across the seat to protect her daughter. The white car loses its grip on the road, takes off, and smashes into a tree.

* * *

Leo Andersson is running through the forest, darting between the trees to get there before the cars. He isn’t fast enough. Thank God.

* * *

He isn’t fast enough.

* * *

There’s an old man who’s a regular at the Bearskin; he usually sits with four other old men arguing about hockey. His eyesight isn’t good, the other old men sometimes swap his spectacles for cheap reading glasses to make him think he’s gone blind when he puts them on. As Ramona usually snaps, “So if he does go blind, how the hell is he going to know about it?”

The old man is wearing his own glasses tonight but still can’t see well in the dark. He tried saying that to the staff at the hospital. His wife isn’t home tonight, and his children have long since moved to bigger cities in search of better jobs and sushi bars and whatever the hell else young people want from big cities, and the old man woke up with a pain in his chest. So he got into his car and drove from Beartown to Hed and sat for several hours in the hospital before finally being told that it was nothing to worry about. Probably just indigestion. “Have you ever considered drinking less alcohol?” the doctor wondered. “Have you ever considered a lobotomy?” the old man wondered, and told the doctor off for making him wait so long. He doesn’t see well in the dark! He promised his wife he wouldn’t drive tonight! “We’re understaffed,” the doctor says. The old man drove away, feeling aggrieved. “What sort of crappy hospital is this, anyway?”

Then, when he’s driving back from Hed to Beartown, some crazy woman in a Volvo suddenly appears out of the forest and pulls out right in front of him. She’d evidently decided to take a shortcut to town, and the old man brakes and blows his horn and flashes his headlights, but of course the stupid woman doesn’t care. That’s just how people drive these days.

The Volvo is driving so fast that soon the old man can only just see its rear lights. Snow is blowing hard against the windshield. It’s dark. The old man curses and squints through his glasses. He doesn’t even see exactly what happens next, he has no chance to react. The stupid woman in the Volvo suddenly brakes and lurches toward the side of the road. Two cars are approaching from the other direction: perhaps the old man has time to see that the first one is white. It leaves the ground, rolls over, and smashes into a tree with horrific force. The car behind it is a Saab, the old man might have time to notice. It was evidently pursuing the white car, because it brakes sharply and slides across the entire width of the road, and Teemu, Spider, and Woody throw the doors open and leap out. The old man probably recognizes them from the Bearskin.

* * *

The old man brakes. But it’s snowing. It’s dark. Even if the brakes do all they can, perhaps no one could have stopped at that distance, not in this weather. Perhaps it isn’t anyone’s fault. The old man isn’t wearing a seat belt, he’s driving an old car, has old eyes. He passes the Volvo and then wrenches the wheel as hard as he can as he swerves past the Saab.

* * *

He doesn’t have time to see what he hits. Never hears the thud on the hood of his car. He’s already hit his head on the steering wheel and lost consciousness.

* * *

Kira throws herself out of the Volvo, runs around the car, and pulls Maya from the passenger seat. That’s the mother’s first thought: to get her daughter away from the road, protect her. They’re hugging each other tightly in the ditch when a third person embraces them, hard, as if he thinks they’ll leave him forever if he lets go.

* * *

It’s Leo.

* * *

Ana and Vidar are running through the forest, faster than either of them really has the energy for. If they had lived a whole life together, perhaps they might have enjoyed competing against each other. If they had had children, they would probably never have stopped arguing about which of them was fastest.

They hear the crashes from down on the road and change direction instinctively, running toward the noise. Vidar hears Teemu’s voice, then Spider’s and Woody’s, yelling “Call an ambulance!” and “Watch out!”

Vidar and Ana’s fingertips nudge each other one last time. Theirs is no ordinary love story. They may have loved each other for a shorter time than many of us, but they’ve loved harder than most.

“It’s on fire!” Ana cries as they reach the road.

On the far side they can see that a car has smashed into a tree, its front end crumpled around the trunk. The people inside are unconscious. Smoke is seeping out of the gaps in the hood. Ana shouts again, “IT’S ON FIRE! IT’S ON FIRE!”

Then she runs. Vidar tries to stop her, but she’s already out of his reach. Because she’s been raised by a dad who told her, “We’re not the type who let other people down, you and me.”

So she runs toward the burning white car, straight across the road. The old man driving back from hospital in Hed doesn’t see what he’s heading toward until it’s too late. He passes the Volvo and swerves around the Saab, braking as hard as he can. Ana is in the middle of the road.

* * *

Vidar runs, shouts, but everything happens too quickly. So Vidar throws himself forward and shoves Ana out of the way. Because he’s the sort of person who lacks any impulse control. He can’t help himself saving the life of the person he loves.

Ana rolls into the ditch, gets to her feet in the snow, and lets out a howl, but the person she loves isn’t there to hear it. The old man’s car is skidding too fast, it hits with full force, and the body slams onto the hood. Vidar Rinnius dies the same way he lived. Instantly.

* * *

Theirs was a love we will always remember.

48

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! My baby!”

Have you ever seen a town fall? Ours did.

* * *

Have you ever seen a town rise? Ours did that, too.

* * *

Have you seen people who usually can’t agree on a damn thing, be it politics, religion, sports, or anything else, come rushing from all directions to help one another put out a fire in an old pub? Have you seen them save one another’s lives? We did. Perhaps you would have done the same thing. Perhaps you’re not as unlike us as you think.

* * *

We did our very, very best. We gave all we had that night. But we still lost.

* * *

There are many beautiful trees in Beartown. We sometimes say that’s because a new one grows every time we bury someone. That’s why the births are listed alongside the deaths in the local paper, so we never run out of either trees or people.

* * *

It doesn’t matter.

* * *

We don’t want a new tree. Another person. We just want this one back.