Silver Tears(6)

“I don’t get it…Why are they selling?”

“There’s no time for sentimentality right now. First we need to evaluate the situation—you need to get up to speed with everything while I keep digging. We can be pissed off later. But not now. It takes energy we can’t afford to waste right now.”

Faye nodded slowly. She knew Kerstin was right. Nevertheless, it was hard to refrain from speculating about which of the women she had trusted was selling her shares in Revenge. Behind her back.

“I want us to go through everything together. Line by line,” she said.

Kerstin nodded.

“Let’s get started.”

Faye looked at her and then returned her gaze to the sheet of paper. Something turned over anxiously in her gut. She hadn’t predicted this. And that worried her more than anything else.





The house was silent. Everyone had gone to bed. Everyone except Faye. She was still up with the list, going through it over and over. Trying to collect her thoughts.

The figures danced before her eyes. She was tired and dejected—the latter an emotion she hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since Jack. And it was one she disliked intensely. Forbidden thoughts began to creep up on her. What if it was already too late? What if they could no longer save Revenge? What if she had let down her guard so much over the last two years that enemies had been able to sneak up behind her unnoticed? She would never be able to forgive herself. Weakness was something she had left behind. With Jack. He was the carrier of her weakness, and he bore it as close to himself as the ill-fitting prison clothing.

Faye put down the sheet of paper. The prospect of betrayal stung. The names on the list of women who had sold their shares were very familiar to her. Their faces flickered by—women to whom she had presented the idea behind Revenge. Women she’d persuaded to believe in Revenge. To believe in her. Why had no one said anything? Had all that talk of sisterhood meant nothing to anyone but Faye?

She rubbed her eyes, which were prickling with tiredness, and swore when she got a flake of mascara in her eye. Faye blinked frenetically and hurried to the bathroom to remove her makeup. She was much too tired to do any more this evening. The escapades of the night before were still making themselves felt, and she realized that without a good night’s sleep she would be no use to anyone. Not herself, not Revenge.



Just as Faye was pulling back the covers to slip between her crisp Egyptian cotton sheets, she stopped. She looked toward the door and felt the impulse throughout her body. She padded slowly into the hallway. The door into Julienne’s room was open—she didn’t like sleeping with it completely shut. Faye carefully opened the door wider and slipped inside. A small rabbit-shaped nightlight shone gently inside the room. Enough light to chase off all the ghosts. Her daughter was sleeping on her side, her back to Faye. Her long fair hair was spread across the pillow. Ever so slowly, Faye settled down beside Julienne. She pushed her daughter’s hair off the pillow and laid her head behind her. Julienne whimpered a little in her sleep and stirred slightly but didn’t wake up—not even when Faye put an arm around her. Millimeter by millimeter, she moved closer to Julienne until she had her nose buried in her hair, which smelled of lavender and chlorine.

Faye shut her eyes. She felt the tension slowly dissipate as sleep took over. Right there, with her arm around her daughter, she knew she would have to do everything she could to save Revenge. Not for her own sake, but for Julienne’s.





FJ?LLBACKA—THEN

Even though I was only twelve years old, it felt as if I already knew everything about life. My existence in Fj?llbacka was predictable. The same transitions between ten months of complete tranquility and two months of summer chaos. Everyone knew everyone—in the summer the same tourists came year after year. Nothing changed at home either. It was as if we were running on a hamster wheel, around and around, without any chance of moving on. As if nothing was ever going to change.

So I already knew when we sat down to eat dinner that it was going to be one of those nights. I’d caught the whiff of booze off Dad as soon as I got home from school.

I both loved and loathed our house. It was Mom’s childhood home. She had inherited it from my grandparents, and everything that I loved about that house had to do with her. She had done the best she could. It was cute cozy—everything that was associated with a happy, thriving home. The shabby wooden table from Grandma and Grandpa’s day. The white linen curtains that Mom had made herself—she was good at sewing. The framed cross-stitch sampler given to Grandma as a wedding present by my great-grandma. The crooked, warped staircase with a thick rope as a handrail that bore traces of the footsteps of several generations. The small rooms and their white transomed windows. I loved all this.

What I loathed were the traces of Dad. The knife marks on the kitchen counter. The dents on the wooden door to the living room, a reminder of the occasions when Dad had kicked it in an outburst of rage while drunk. The slightly bent curtain pole from the time Dad had pulled down the curtain to wrap it around Mom’s head until Sebastian had finally plucked up the courage to pull Dad away from Mom.



I loved the open fireplace in the living room. But the pictures on the mantelpiece were a downright insult. The family photos Mom put there, the dream of a life that didn’t exist. A smiling picture of her and Dad, of me and my big brother, Sebastian. I wanted to tear them down, but at the same time I didn’t want to upset Mom. It was for our sake that she tried to keep the dream alive. One time, she put a photo of her brother there. But when Dad caught sight of the picture of Uncle Egil, he went mad. While Mom was in the hospital, Dad made sure the photograph disappeared.