* * *

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” Vidar’s mother screams when she collapses into the arms of the men standing in her kitchen, drowned in tears.

The men have no words. They’re tumbling into the same darkness as she is. Vidar’s mother lies on the floor wailing inconsolably “My baby! Where’s my baby? Where’s my baby where’s my baby where’s my baby?”

* * *

Bloody kids.

* * *

How often does a mother think that while her children are growing up? “Bloody kids.” How much does she have to shout at them? How many times does she have to tell a young boy to do even the simplest little thing? Like tying his shoelaces. “Tie your laces!” she says. Does the boy listen? Of course not. “Tie your laces before you trip!” she says. “You’ll end up falling and hurting yourself!” You’ll hurt yourself. Bloody kid.

Leo didn’t tie his laces properly that night. If he had, he would have been a few seconds quicker through the trees, out of the forest, onto the road. He would have been there when the car arrived. Just a few seconds. Just one shoelace and a badly tied knot.

* * *

So Kira falls asleep on Leo’s bed that night, and he doesn’t make her go away, and what an incredible gift that is to a mother from a teenager. They both wake up when Maya creeps in and curls up beside them. Kira holds her children so hard that they can’t breathe.

* * *

Bloody kids.

* * *

Bloody bloody bloody kids.

* * *

When Vidar was little, he didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. All the other children had nightmares and wanted the light left on, but not him. When he and Teemu shared a room and had a bunk bed, Vidar insisted on sleeping on the bottom. It took Teemu several months to realize why. He woke up one night and heard Vidar crying, so he jumped down and forced him to explain why. Eventually the little boy, no more than five or six years old, said he was convinced that there were horrible monsters that came into the house at night. “So why the hell do you want to sleep in the bottom bunk, then?” Teemu asked.

Vidar sniffed. “So the monsters will get me first and you have time to escape!”

* * *

He couldn’t help himself. Ever.

* * *

The path back to normal life is indescribably long once death has swept the feet out from under those of us who are left. Grief is a wild animal that drags us so far out into the darkness that we can’t imagine ever getting home again. Ever laughing again. It hurts in such a way that you can never really figure out if it actually passes or if you just get used to it.

Ana sits on the floor outside Vidar’s hospital room all night. Teemu and his mother sit on either side of her. They hold Ana’s hands, unless she’s holding theirs. Three people loved Vidar Rinnius so much that they wouldn’t have hesitated to change places with him if they could. That’s not a bad achievement for anyone. One day they might be able to think that thought without falling apart.

* * *

A boy has died tonight. An old man, too. A mother and a brother and a girlfriend sit in a hospital, an old woman goes home to a house that will never stop feeling empty. Two men from Hed will go to prison for arson, one of them will probably never walk again after the car crash in the forest, and some of us will never believe that’s anywhere near enough of a punishment.

Some of us will say it was an accident. Some that it was murder. Some will think it was only those men’s fault, others will say that more were responsible. That it was many people’s fault. Ours.

It’s so easy to get people to hate one another. That’s what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It’s an uneven fight.

* * *

Spider and Woody and the men in black jackets sit in the waiting room at the hospital for almost twenty-four hours. They’re surrounded by men and women, old and young, in white shirts, green T-shirts. They stay long after the doctors emerge with somber faces to shake everyone’s hand and convey their condolences, as if Vidar won’t be properly dead until they leave the hospital.

No one in either town will know what to say. Sometimes it’s easier to do something instead. When the cars leave the hospital in Hed, Teemu and his mother drive at the back of the convoy, so at first they don’t understand why everyone is slowing down. Not until they look at the trees.

Someone has knocked the snow from the bare branches and hung thin strips of fabric all the way back. It’s no big deal, just strips of fabric fluttering in a forest in the wind. But every second one is red, and every second one is green. So that the families in the cars will know that Beartown isn’t grieving alone.

* * *

When Teemu and his mother get home, there’s someone sitting on the steps waiting for them.

“Is that Kira Andersson?” Teemu’s mother wonders.

Teemu gets out of the car without saying anything. Kira doesn’t speak, either. She just stands up and goes inside with them, goes straight to the kitchen, and starts to clean and make food. Teemu takes his mother to the bedroom and sits with her until the pills grant her the respite of sleep.

He goes back out to the kitchen. Kira hands him the brush without a word. He washes, she dries.

49

Everyone Gets a Stick. Two Goals. Two Teams.

Life is a weird thing. We spend all our time trying to manage different aspects of it, yet we are still largely shaped by things that happen beyond our control. We will never forget this year, not the best of it and not the worst. It will never stop influencing us.

Some of us will move to different places, but most of us will stay. This isn’t a uncomplicated place, but when you grow up you realize that nowhere is. God knows, Beartown and Hed have plenty of faults, but they belong to us. This is our corner of the world.

* * *

Ana and Maya are training in the barn up at the kennels. Hour after hour. Things aren’t good, things will never be all right for either of them again, but they will still find a way of getting up each morning. When Ana falls apart and just screams and cries, Maya holds her best friend tight and whispers in her ear, “Survivors, Ana. Survivors. We’re survivors.”

* * *

Early one morning, as soon as the sun has struggled above the horizon, there’s a knock on the door of a mechanic’s workshop. It’s the middle of winter, toward the end of a childhood, and when Bobo opens the door he finds Benji, Amat, and Zacharias standing outside. They go down to the lake with sticks and a puck and play together, one last time. As if it were all just a game and nothing else mattered.

* * *

In ten years’ time, Amat will be a professional player, playing in huge arenas. Zacharias will be a pro as well, but in front of a computer. Bobo will be a father.

* * *

By the time they finish playing down on the lake, it’s almost dark again. Benji gives the others a brief wave and shouts good-bye. As if they’re going to see each other tomorrow.

* * *

Hed Hockey plays Beartown Ice Hockey for the second time this season in a game that means absolutely everything and nothing at all.

* * *

In the kitchen of a house up on the Heights, Maggan Lyt is making pasta salad and potato salad. She places them in big bowls and covers them with plastic wrap. She doesn’t know if she’s a good or a bad person, she knows that most people assume that they’re good, but she never has. She has always seen herself first and foremost as a fighter. For her family, for her children, and for her town. Even when this town wants nothing to do with her. Sometimes good people do bad things out of good intentions, and sometimes the reverse happens.

She takes her salads and drives through the town, past the ice rink, and out along the road. She stops outside the home of the Rinnius family and knocks on the door.

* * *

Say what you like about Maggan Lyt. But she’s someone’s mother as well.

* * *

It’s nearing the time for the puck to drop in the rink, all the players should be in their own locker rooms, but despite this, William Lyt is heading the other way along the corridor. He stops in the doorway and waits until Amat and Bobo catch sight of him.

“Have you got any more of those?” he asks quietly.

Amat and Bobo look confused, but one of the older players understands what William means. He fetches a black armband, the sort all the Beartown players are already wearing, and hands it over. William pulls it on over his sleeve and nods his thanks. “I’m—I’m truly sorry for your loss. Our whole team is.”

The Beartown players nod curtly in response. Tomorrow they’ll hate each other again. Tomorrow.

* * *