I light a cigarette to buy a few seconds and consider my words, then return my attention to Kate. “Brain surgery impacted me more than I knew. My recovery isn’t over yet, but I’m much improved. However, some of the things I’ve done upset important people, mostly because I no longer want to do questionable things on their behalf. If you come home, we’re going to stay in Arvid’s house for a while. You’ll like it. It’s pretty and spacious. On the river. A good place to rest. Jenna, Sweetness and Milo will come, too. Jenna was in the accident with Mirjami. She was pregnant and lost the baby. She needs a change of scenery. It’s sort of a vacation for all of us.”
“You still do questionable things,” Kate says. “You more or less had me abducted and forced me back here.”
Torsten helps me out. “I told Kari he had to get you back here in order for me to treat you. Your illness had become a life-threatening situation. I didn’t say it to Kari, but I was afraid you might harm yourself.” His smile is gentle. “You were abducted on doctor’s orders.”
She doesn’t find it humorous and scowls at me. “You think you’re the fucking Godfather. I’m married to Michael Corleone.”
A penetrating observation. Especially since Milo and Sweetness want the next step in our illustrious careers to be much like the end of The Godfather.
“If Kate goes with you,” Torsten asks, “will she be safe?”
A half-truth. “Of course she’ll be safe. She’ll be surrounded by law enforcement officers around the clock.” Followed by a truth, as without me, Milo and Sweetness to protect her, she’s in dire peril. “There’s no safer place she could be.”
“Tell us, Kate,” Torsten asks, “what do you feel would be best for you?”
“I want to sleep for ten thousand years with my baby in my arms.”
“Are you comfortable living with Kari?”
“I don’t know who he is or wants to be. I don’t know if we should be married anymore. I avoided him for weeks and kept his baby from him. That wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t right for me to leave him alone when he was so weak and sick and then to dump Anu on him out of the blue. I will try to be comfortable with Kari, one day at a time.”
“You aren’t well enough to live on your own. Do you see that now?”
She hesitates, doesn’t want to admit it. “Yes.”
“If you run away again or if your condition deteriorates, Kari is to call me, and you’ll have to take that rest we talked about. Do you both understand this?”
We nod.
“And Kari,” Torsten says, “you must understand that Kate isn’t well, and that living with her will sometimes be uncomfortable. You’re obviously in poor condition yourself. Are you prepared for that?”
“Of course.”
He writes a prescription for Kate. “This is for Valdoxan, an anti-depressant. It’s a relatively new drug, but results with it have been very good. The side effects are minimal, it will help you sleep, and stopping it when the time comes is much easier than with other anti-depressants.”
He hands it to her. “Kari, this is a safe place for Kate. If you have something you want to say or anything you would like to ask her, now would be a good time.”
I look at my wife and barely recognize her. The changes wrought by her suffering fill me with sadness. “Why did you leave?” I ask. “When you came out of your dissociative stupor, you left within hours. I don’t understand. You were in a safe place, loved and cared for.”
“Except for Anu, I wished we had all died on that island. I wish we had never come to Helsinki. I wish you could have been content to be a good and honest policeman, even if you didn’t make a difference. I just couldn’t stand the sight of you. It made me think of all that ugliness.”
“And now?”
“I still wish we were all dead, and I can look at you, but it’s hard.”
Question asked and answered. I should have known better. Never ask a question if the answer may destroy you. I say nothing else.
“Let’s call it a day,” Torsten says.
28
We go to a pharmacy, Yliopiston Apteekki, to get Kate’s prescription filled. It’s downtown in a large shopping district, a mall across from it. The main train station is on the other side of the street. Kate and I go there by taxi.