Chapter 64: A Decade of Absence (1)
Eriksson’s POV
I am a shattered soul, trying to fix myself with bodies, which cannot hold its splinters.
––Eriksson Lennard
I hold her small hand in mine as if that act alone could make me a better man. She is not my daughter. She will never be her. It’s only now that I finally accept it. Her red lips are nothing like the ones my wife passed down to our child. No birthmark on her neck to echo the one I bore as a boy. Her hair will never catch the light in that same autumnal blaze, never burn with that particular hue. Her eyes will never hold the same unguarded joy.
Maybe, before all of this, she had something like it—her own family, her own warmth. I squeeze her hand gently, walking beside her, while my other hand trembles like a coward’s.
I hate myself for it. A monster. That’s what I am. I tell myself I saved her, over and over, the words like paste in my mouth. My chest is tight, heart drumming too fast. No. I’m not a savior. I’m a butcher in nicer clothes. When I look at her, she smiles at me with a warmth I have not earned. We barely speak—just enough to keep moving, enough to keep eating, drinking, sleeping. The past twelve days on the train have blurred into something like a week, time stretching and snapping in unfamiliar places. It reminds me of the gap between my world and hers: how little we share, how absurd it is that I even tried to pretend.
She points into the distance, voice small and clear. “Ice cream.”
I almost laugh. A smile dares to show itself before I kill it. I am not allowed happiness. I’m too selfish, too ruined for that. She should have someone—anyone—else. Someone who deserves her trust. We never talk about her family. Once or twice, maybe, some half-finished sentences about food or sleep. Never the real things. And yet now she’s comfortable, more at ease than I ever thought she’d be with me.
I don’t understand it.