She whispers:

  “Ramona would have been proud of you.”

  He whispers back:

  “Are you?”

  She nods with heavy eyelids. What is she thinking there and then? Perhaps she’ll never remember it again, or perhaps she’ll always deny it, even to herself. There really ought to be a different word for “marriage,” but perhaps also a different word for “divorce.” One for when you’re only almost there. When you want to whisper that I don’t know what I want, I just don’t want it to be like this. A word for simply saying that I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it if all we’re going to do with each other is just bear it.

  “I… Peter, I…,” she begins, and all the oxygen goes out of the room.

  She says “Peter,” not “darling,” and she pauses just long enough for him not to let her finish the sentence. So he quickly leans his forehead close to hers and whispers:

  “I love you!”

  Her smile comes so fast, caught by the intensity in his eyes, his breath so close to hers, and then she says the same thing with such obviousness that they can both pretend she had never come close to saying anything different:

  “I love you too.”

  It’s been so long since they said that, but now it’s very recent. Above all the other words for love, there ought to be one for this: one that says how many times we’ve come close to losing each other but turn back and start again. One for the very smallest things, the inches, when we brush past each other in the kitchen instead of only almost doing it. Something that says I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it if you can’t bear me. I can’t bear it without you.

  * * *

  They set off for the funeral together and he doesn’t let go of her hand the whole way.

  * * *

  Ana’s dad is awake, hungover but not yet drunk again. The old guys in his hunting team are standing in the yard, waiting to set off to the church with him. They’re also sober for the funeral, but the whole thing is just a countdown to the first beer at the wake afterward.

  Ana and Maya are walking ahead of them on their own, Maya with her guitar still on her back. She’s been home to change and Ana immediately got annoyed because she’d “dressed up.” Maya pointed out that this was normal if you were going to a funeral, and Ana replied: “God I hate the fact that you’re attractive, it’s the absolute worst thing about you! I need uglier friends!” They cut through the patch of woodland just behind the houses on the edge of the Heights and leave the men’s voices behind. Only when they’re really close does Maya realize that they’re walking along the jogging track, that it was here that she waited for Kevin with the rifle. Ana seems to realize too, she’s about to turn off but Maya takes hold of her arm and leads her on. They pass the place where she squeezed the trigger, where Kevin wet himself when the gun clicked and she dropped the cartridge she had never loaded on the ground in front of him. The two young women trample over the memories and two invisible little girls pad after them. Because they’re always walking behind us: the children we were before the worst that has happened happened.

  “I didn’t know I’d feel like this…,” Maya says quietly when they’re a few hundred yards farther on, when they can slow down and look out toward the lake and see almost the whole town.

  “How?”

  “That I’d still be this angry.”

  Ana scrapes her shoe through the thin covering of snow and confesses:

  “I still dream of killing Kevin.”

  “I wish you didn’t. He isn’t worth your dreams,” Maya says.

  Ana scrapes her shoe harder.

  “I dream about Vidar too. But those are better dreams now. Before I just dreamed about him dying, but now he’s alive sometimes. He’s an idiot, a complete moron, but he… well, you know… he’s alive.”

  Maya takes her hand, Ana holds it tightly. They walk in silence for at least a quarter of an hour, reaching silent agreement on lengthy detours, but eventually and unavoidably they come close to the first houses. When they see the churchyard in the distance Maya says:

  “I miss the light here. The way it changes when the days are at their shortest. It’s as if you can see in the air how cold it is.”

  Ana wrinkles her nose and snorts:

  “You sound like a tourist.”

  “I am.”

  Ana doesn’t even laugh at that, so Maya has to tickle her to get her started. Then she can’t stop until they’re close to the churchyard and a boy is standing there alone, smoking. He’s been carrying chairs all morning and is dressed in just his suit pants and a sweaty vest now, despite the cold. He’s much thinner than they remember. Maya and Ana both have to stop themselves insulting each other for being too eager to give him a hug, so in the end Maya just gives him a clumsy half hug, and Benji looks at her like she’s crazy. She’s missed that look. He’s twenty years old now, and has been through a lot, inside and out, but as soon as he smiles he looks just like a teenage boy who climbs the tallest trees and carries the biggest secrets again. Most dangerous on the ice, most alone on the earth.

  “You look good,” he compliments Maya when she lets go.

  “You look like shit,” Maya laughs back.

  He turns to Ana and she hugs him first like a distant relative and then like the mast of a ship in a storm, there’s no in between with her. He grins.

  “Are you really walking unarmed through the streets? My sisters tell me you don’t do anything but hunt these days, so I thought you’d have your rifle with you. Now who’s going to protect me if there’s a fight?”

  “Don’t worry, I can take anyone here if they’re stupid toward you,” Ana grins back with her fists in the air.

  Maya sticks her own fists in her coat pockets. She’s trying not to feel worried for her friends, but they’re not making it easy for her.

  “Where have you been? I mean… where did you go?” she asks, nodding toward Benji’s suntanned skin without saying anything about all the new scars on it.

  “Here and there. And now I’m here,” he says carelessly.

  “I’m sorry about Ramona,” Maya says sadly.

  He nods slowly but can’t formulate a reply without his voice breaking. So he turns toward the gatepost where his white shirt and jacket are hanging, and fishes out a white tie from the jacket pocket and holds it out to Maya, saying:

  “For your dad.”

  “Are you kidding? He’s only just managed to knot his OWN tie!” she smiles.

  “He should have this,” Benji insists.

  “Isn’t white tie just for family?” Ana wonders.

  “He was family,” Benji says.

  Maya takes the tie and clutches it so tightly that it ends up crumpled. Then she sees someone farther away, laughs, and exclaims:

  “Okay… is that my brother standing over there smoking in secret?”

  Ana peers at the fourteen-year-old boy, who really isn’t as well hidden among the bare trees beyond the gravestones as he probably hopes. Then she lets out an impressed whistle, just to scare the shit out of her best friend.

  “Is that Leo? You’re kidding? He’s pretty hot now!”

  “Stop it!” Maya exclaims, and Ana bursts out laughing.

  “I don’t think he’s your type, Ana. I’m not so sure about me, though…,” Benji points out, unconcerned, and Maya hits him on the arm as hard as she can.

  It doesn’t really hurt, but unfortunately Ana hits his other arm out of solidarity and his knees buckle a couple of inches as he whispers:

  “Are you taking steroids now, you psycho?”

  “You’re the one who’s lost all your muscle on some sandy beach somewhere, you ridiculous hippy,” Ana grins.

  “See you inside, I need to shout at my brother!” Maya declares, and sets off toward the trees.

  Ana and Benji stay where they are, and he pretends to be frightened and whimpers:

  “No, no, don’t hit me again! Not my face!” when she shoves him playfully in his side. She giggles.

  “What about you? Aren’t you going to wear a tie?”

  He purses his lips.

  “No. Ties are gay.”

  Ana laughs so hard that she’s practically grunting when she breathes in and blowing snot from her nose when she breathes out, and he laughs so hard at her laughter that he loses his breath.

  * * *

  Ruth.

  * * *

  Ruth. Ruth. Ruth.

  * * *

  No one here even knows her name. None of them will see her headstone and remember who she was. Ruth. Ruth. Ruth. Her name was RUTH and Matteo hates everyone who doesn’t know that. Who doesn’t remember. Every last one of them.

  That morning he hides in the closet so his parents won’t see his computer. He hooks up to the neighbors’ Wi-Fi to watch a video of how to knot a tie. If Ruth had been here she’d have helped him, he’s never had anyone to ask but his sister, his dad has disappeared deep inside himself and his mother is living inside postcards no one else can see. They haven’t even given him a tie, he helped himself to one of his dad’s, they won’t notice he’s wearing it because that would mean actually looking at him. Or speaking to him. The house was silent before they came home with Ruth but it’s even more silent now. The lack of words is worse than loneliness.

  Matteo wonders if his parents are so certain of their faith that they believe their daughter is in Hell now. He wonders if they hope they end up there too, so they can see her again. He wonders if they’re scared. He wonders if they cried their way silently through last night, like he did.

  Ruth used to say that Matteo was too soft, then she would regret it instantly and assure him that that was the most beautiful thing about him. She was a good big sister, she would have followed him to Hell if it was him in the box in the hall. She once said she hated the world because it forced children like him to become hard simply to survive, but then she saw that he got scared and ruffled his hair and said it was probably good to be soft, because then you didn’t break when you fell. Like flower petals. Perhaps that’s what happened to her, she grew hard, the way a rose that freezes to ice can be shattered with a hammer.

  In the car on the way to the churchyard Matteo’s mother looks out through the window and the three surviving members of the family have the only conversation they will have all day:

  “Look, the flags at the ice rink are flying at half-mast,” his mother says, surprised and almost proud, and that cuts Matteo up because of course that was all his sister wanted their mother to be while she was alive.

  “It isn’t for Ruth. It’s for the woman who owned the pub,” he therefore blurts out without thinking.

  The fear that his mother will get locked into one of her anxiety attacks, shaking and holding her ears, instantly washes over him. But her gaze merely disappears behind the shiny gauze of her fantasies and she says happily:

  “I’m sure it’s for both of them.”

  It isn’t. They don’t even know her name, Matteo thinks. But all he whispers from the backseat is:

  “Yes, Mom, I’m sure it’s for both of them.”

  When they reach the churchyard there are already people hurrying about in the parking lot. They’re carrying boxes and crates, as if they were preparing for a rock concert rather than a funeral. Matteo recognizes a lot of them, men from the hockey club, they aren’t even aware that there are two funerals taking place today, and they couldn’t care less. The priest meets them guiltily at the gate and asks Matteo’s parents if they would consider holding the ceremony in the chapel rather than the church.

  “As you can see, the church is being prepared for a large funeral, and they’re carrying chairs in right now, so I thought it would be quieter for us in the chapel, because of course there aren’t so many of us here for… yes, for… for…”

  Not even the priest remembers.

  “Ruth. My sister’s name was Ruth,” Matteo whispers, but the priest doesn’t hear him.

  “It doesn’t matter. The chapel is fine,” his dad replies mildly with his head bowed.

  His mother doesn’t appear to be listening at all. It all goes rather quickly. The priest reads from the Bible and Matteo doesn’t need to open his to follow the text, he knows almost all the passages by heart. The only time his mother shows any emotion at all is when the priest at one point uses a more modern translation of one verse than his mother considers correct. She wrinkles her nose and snorts toward Matteo, and Matteo uses his whole face to let her know that he too thinks this is terrible.

  When it’s all over his parents stay in the chapel for a short while with the priest and Matteo goes outside into the morning light again.

  “I hate you being dead, because I can’t talk to anyone else about death except you,” he thinks, straight up toward the sky, and only then do the tears come, all at the same time. He sobs so hard he can’t breathe, bent double, then he starts to run, stumbling and tripping, away from all the voices. He sinks down behind a tree beyond the gravestones and punches his thighs until they’re covered in bruises and he loses the feeling in them. He closes his eyes and cries, and doesn’t open them again until he detects the smell of smoke.

  A boy the same age as Matteo is standing, badly hidden, a few trees away. He’s holding a cigarette like someone who’s still working out how to hold it, trying out different grips with his fingers, inhaling the smoke through his mouth and breathing it out through his nose. Matteo recognizes the boy from school but the boy never sees Matteo, their skills at hiding are very different, they haven’t spent the same amount of time practicing.

  Someone calls “Leo?” from farther away and the boy swears and drops the cigarette without bothering to stub it out. He steps out from among the trees and walks between the graves. A girl a few years older is walking toward him.

  “Are you smoking, Leo?” she hisses gleefully.

  “Shh! Don’t be a sneak, Maya, don’t say anything to Mom and Dad, okay?”

  “It’ll cost you two cigarettes, little brother!” she giggles and he swears and passes her the packet. They disappear toward the other end of the churchyard, walking close together, brother and sister. Nudging each other in the side, laughing, irritating.

  Behind them among the trees Matteo bends down and picks up the cigarette Leo dropped. It’s still alight. No one sees the lonely boy smoke it.

  50 Families

  Kira notes that the parking lot is full when Peter turns in toward the church. He’s just about to put the car in reverse and try to turn around to look for a space out on the road instead when two teenage boys in black jackets whistle and gesticulate in his direction. One of them removes three red cones from a spot right next to the gate and waves to Peter to park there.

  “Teemu told us to save the best space for you!” the guys are careful to point out to Peter as he gets out, still surprised.

  They don’t want a tip, they don’t want praise, they just want Teemu to know that they’re reliable. Peter reaches for Kira’s hand as she comes around the car and it takes a moment for her to take his, he can tell she does it reluctantly.

  “Teemu’s guys?” she says, an accusation as much as a question.

  “It’s not… like that… it’s just…,” Peter begins, but he really doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince.

  “Dad!”

  Maya saves him, she and Leo are walking toward them from the other direction, and she gives him a hug and hands him a white tie.

  “From Benji.”

  “I think white ties are only for family, I…,” Peter explains gently.

  “You’re family,” a voice replies from the churchyard gate.

  It’s Teemu. He’s standing beside the priest. “Only in this town,” Kira thinks, “only in this bloody town do you see hooligans and priests side by side.” But when Peter glances at her she nods and says with feigned encouragement:

  “You go ahead, darling! I’m going to see if there’s anything I can help with!”

  He goes and she stands there watching her husband and the priest and the hooligan, freezing with abandonment. Then she detects the smell of cigarette smoke that’s just settled on a jacket nearby, then something warm in her hand. Maya’s fingers, closing around hers.

  “I’ve missed you, Mom.”

  Dear God. Kira almost walks back to the car and sits there instead. Our children have no idea what they do to us.

  * * *

  After they finish talking to the priest, Peter and Teemu remain inside the church, surrounded by infernal noise, doors slamming, chairs scraping and clattering as they’re set out along all the walls. The echo reminds them of an ice rink.

  “What happened with… Lev? Have you… talked?” Peter asks, as worried that he won’t be heard over the noise as he is about being overheard.

  Teemu looks at him as if to ask “Do you really want to know?” and of course Peter really doesn’t. But he feels he ought to know.

  “We left a message,” Teemu says.

  “Where?” Peter wonders.

  Teemu scratches his freshly shaven chin and adjusts a few strands of hair in his perfect, swept-back hairstyle. Even his tie is impeccably knotted, white, like Peter’s, they could have been mistaken for father and son.

  “In his yard.”

  Naturally Peter regrets asking. He remembers his anger when he heard what Lev had done to Amat in the NHL draft, he remembers the barely veiled threats when Lev showed up at his house again, but he also remembers what the Pack did to him several years ago when they were unhappy with his work at the club.

  When Kira got a phone call from a moving company because their house had been put up for sale without their knowledge, and when Tails called to say that someone had placed an announcement of Peter’s death in the paper. There’s a difference between forgiving and forgetting. Perhaps Kira could lower herself to accept a truce with someone like Teemu, but what Peter is doing now is very different. He’s turned Teemu into an ally. Sooner or later a person has to ask himself: if the person I used to fear is now my protector, which of us has changed sides?