Invisible Murder

UCK!”

Nina jumped back a few steps, swearing, but it was too late.

The aerator from the kitchen faucet had come off. It shot down into the dirty pan soaking in the sink, and a cascade of greasy dishwater sprayed indiscriminately across the wall, the counter, the floor, and Nina’s T-shirt and jeans. She turned the water off and gave the little piece of thoroughly corroded metal that should have been replaced a long time ago a dirty look. Now the kitchen floor was awash with water and dust bunnies, and on the counter, the parade of salad bowls, plates, cutlery, and cups remained unstacked and unwashed. Nina felt her already bad mood descend into a thoroughly foul temper. It wasn’t really the water on the kitchen floor and the unappetizing onion skins and carrot peelings at the bottom of the sink, although none of that helped. It was Morten. Morten and the damn duffel bags in the bedroom.

Morten was packing.

He had done it many times before. He was a geologist and had been the resident “mud logger” at one of the North Sea oil rigs for years. Recently he had been promoted to project manager, which did mean fewer days at sea, but he still had to go on a regular basis, and every single time, Nina had the same aching anxiety in the pit of her stomach when he started packing. She missed him when he was gone, and once the door had closed behind him, Ida’s hostile, brooding silence would hang over the apartment like a sort of teenage curse. It wasn’t that Nina had much trouble from Ida while Morten was away. She went to her friends’ houses most nights, but she also dutifully picked up Anton and did the grocery shopping a couple times a week. On the face of it, a fourteen-year-old marvel of daughterly obedience. But Nina knew she did those things only because Morten had asked her to do them and because doing them quietly was one more way of avoiding conversation. If Ida did deign to join them for dinner, her complete lack of expression squashed any attempt at small talk. Ida seemed barely able to tolerate Nina’s presence, and Nina asking her to pass the potatoes was obviously a major imposition.

Nina would almost have preferred the arguments they used to have, and she felt sorry for Anton, who fidgeted in his chair as he tried to lighten the atmosphere with jokes and quotes from his favorite show on Cartoon Network. He did sometimes manage to wring smiles out of Ida or Nina, but God, he had to work at it.

Nina got out a cloth and mopped up the water from the kitchen floor while she tried to concentrate on the seven o’clock news. The police didn’t have enough manpower for the Copenhagen Summit, and the far right was up in arms again because some new Islamic cultural center was building “what amounted to minarets,” according to the professionally outraged spokesman for the party. As he went on about the importance of “upholding Danish values,” Nina’s ability to concentrate plummeted abruptly. She dried her hands, turned her back on the rest of the mess, and went into the bedroom.

He was almost done.

Socks, underwear, T-shirts, and a variety of electronic gear were laid out in small, separate mounds on the double bed, so that all he had to do was dump them into the waiting bags. He had done it so many times that he could now pack for a two-week absence in under half an hour.

“Have you seen my iPod?”

Nina shook her head. Morten put his arms around her and pulled her to him so her shoulders pressed against his chest. He was so tall that his chin rested naturally on top of her head, and it gave her a feeling of being tugged inside a big, friendly fur coat. He bent to give her a fleeting kiss on the back of her neck before he let her go and once again directed his attention to the piles on the bed.

“I lent it to Anton, so it could be anywhere.”

Nina nodded. Anton scattered things throughout the apartment—and everywhere else, too—pretty much at random. In many ways it was like living with an eight-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. Or maybe just with an eight-year-old, Nina corrected herself.

Morten began the process of transferring the piles into the duffel bags. He was working quickly and methodically now. He put his phone, train pass, and wallet in his jacket pocket, and that was pretty much it.

Nina felt the dull ache of longing already. It was her fault he had had to take this inconvenient job in the first place. It was all he had been able to get at short notice, and it would take time for him to work his way up from being an itinerant mud logger to a more family-friendly Copenhagen-based job. She hated it, and Morten probably did, too, although he was far too polite to complain about it to her face. Working on the rigs was a cross he had chosen to bear, like he bore everything else life had asked of him, or more accurately, everything else that Nina had put him through. Shaken, not stirred. James Bond-style.

“When are you leaving, Dad?”

Ida was standing in the bedroom doorway with an open book in her hand. She was reading The Lord of the Rings and had been discussing it with Morten as if she had personally invented the universe, or at least been the one to discover the books. The film version had, of course, been part of her classmates’ stable diet since they were Anton’s age.

Ida would say things like, “I’m not sure about Tolkien’s view of women,” and Morten would listen to her and answer her without batting an eyelid, never letting on that she had seized on the stalest of topics in one of the most endlessly debated books in the galaxy. James Bond teaching Literature. Nina was profoundly envious.

“I’m off in a minute,” Morten said, casting a quick glance at his watch, “but call me on the train, and we can say goodnight.”

Ida smiled, and planted a quick kiss on her father’s cheek. She was wearing scent of some kind, Nina realized. Something sweet and a little too heavy.

“Keep your fingers crossed for my hockey match,” she said. Then she waved and vanished back into her bedroom without even giving Nina a glance. The sound of muffled music seeped out into the hallway and on into their bedroom, and Nina knew she wouldn’t be seeing any more of Ida tonight.

Morten didn’t seem to have noticed any of this. He was leaning toward her so she could feel the warmth from his body.

“We still have our deal, right?” he asked softly.

Nina nodded. Their deal. Their Big, Important Deal. No underground work for the Network while Morten was away. She hoped no one from the ever-changing flock of illegal immigrants that Peter from the Network took under his wing would break an arm or a leg or come down with symptoms of appendicitis in the next fortnight.

“Of course,” she said.

“And remember.…” Morten whispered, pulling Nina in tight against him and kissing her mischievously on the nose. Feeling patronized, Nina wrapped her arms around his neck and stood with her nose right up against his throat.

“Remember you’re driving the girls to roller hockey on Wednesday. It’s our turn.”

Nina nodded quickly. Roller hockey was one of the few of Ida’s activities Nina was still allowed to attend. Maybe more out of necessity than desire on Ida’s part, but Nina had to take what she could get. Morten gently maneuvered his way out of her arms and went to say goodbye to Anton.

NINA STOOD THERE for a moment in the hallway, listening to his light, energetic steps descending the stairs. Then she turned around and went back to the kitchen. Ida had turned up her music, and a significant amount of bass penetrated the wall, reaching Nina and the chaotic kitchen table that still hadn’t been cleared. Anton had brushed his teeth and was in bed in his room with a comic book and his bedside light on, and Nina suddenly felt utterly miserable. Alone.

Two weeks, she thought, glancing at the calendar. Come on. The world won’t fall apart in two weeks.