Free Let the Old Dreams Die by John Ajvide Lindqvist Page A

standing at the stop waiting for the bus to Norrtälje.
    Her father wasn’t in his room. She asked one of the care assistants, and was told he was in the dayroom. The carer’s eyes flicked down to her feet as if to check that she hadn’t brought any dirt in with her. No doubt she looked like shit.
    He was alone in the room, sitting in his wheelchair facing the window. At first she thought he was asleep, but when she walked around him she saw that his eyes were open, looking out towards the sparse pine trees outside the window. He quickly rearranged his features into a smile.
    ‘Hello, love. Another surprise visit!’
    ‘Hi, Dad.’
    She pulled over a chair and sat down.
    ‘How are things?’ he asked.
    ‘Not so good.’
    ‘No. I can see that.’
    They sat in silence for a while, looking into one another. Her father’s eyes had acquired the transparency of old age. The clarity, the wisdom were still there, but somehow diluted, like blue water colour. Tina’s mother had had brown eyes, so she had never thought about it. But she was thinking about it now.
    ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Where did I come from?’
    Her father’s gaze sought out the pine trees. After a while he said, without looking at her, ‘I presume there’s no point in…’ He frowned. ‘How did you find out?’
    ‘Does it matter?’
    Back to the pine trees. In spite of the fact that he lived in a nursing home, in spite of the fact that he was confined to a wheelchair and that his hands, once so capable, could no longer even wave away a fly, Tina had managed to disregard his age. Now she was aware of it. Or perhaps it was just that old age had taken hold at this particular moment.
    ‘I’ve always loved you,’ he said. ‘As if you were my own daughter. You
are
my daughter. I hope you realise that.’
    The lump in her stomach was growing. It was the same feeling as when Vore held out the box. The moment before the lid is opened. When you can still run away, close your eyes, pretend there’s nothing to see. She had thought she would have to coax her father, hadn’t been prepared for the fact that they would reach this point so quickly. But perhaps he had been ready since the day she asked about the scar. Perhaps he had been ready for many years. Ever since he…took her in.
    He said, ‘I see you didn’t bring any juice.’
    ‘No, I forgot.’
    ‘You will still come and see me, won’t you…in the future?’
    She placed a hand on his arm, then on his cheek, and held it there for a few seconds. ‘Dad.
I’m
the one who should be afraid. Now tell me.’
    He leaned his cheek almost imperceptibly against her hand. Then he straightened up and said, ‘Your mother and I couldn’t have children. We tried for many years, but it never happened. I don’t know whether you ever thought about the fact that…well, we were ten or fifteen years older than your friends’ parents. We’d started the process of applying to adopt a child three years before…before they found you.’
    ‘What do you mean, found?’
    ‘You were…two years old at the time. When they found this couple deep in the forest. Only five kilometres into the forest from where we lived. Where you live now.
    ‘I think people knew they were there, but it was only when it turned out they had a child that…steps were taken.’
    He closed his mouth, opened it again with a sticky sound. ‘Could you get me some water, please?’
    Tina got up, went over to the tap, filled a feeding cup with water—
    deep in the forest
    —went back and gave it to her father. She watched him as he drank, the wrinkled neck moving as he swallowed tiny, tiny amounts. He was thin now, but he had been fine-limbed even in his heyday, just like her mother. She had seen photographs of her grandparents on both sides—
    She gave a start. A little water spilled onto her father’s chin, dripping down onto his chest.
    Everything is disappearing,
she thought. Her maternal grandparents, her paternal grandparents. The