Chapter 1

In the sixth year of my relationship with Niklas Berg, he spent three hundred days a year in Inari, in northern Finland, doing fieldwork on Sámi culture and traditional crafts.

I stayed behind in London, looking after his mother, Helena Berg, who had been bedridden since her stroke.

The day I miscarried from sheer exhaustion, I was shaking all over with pain. I called him.

Before I could say a word, he cut me off. "Signal's bad up here. The project's at a critical stage. Stop bothering me with every little thing at home."

Then he hung up.

I had always believed he was simply too consumed by his research to understand the needs of an ordinary relationship.

That belief lasted until late one night, when I came across a promotional video for a Nordic traditional crafts exhibition on social media.

In the video, Niklas, always so reserved and composed, was leaning down, fastening an heirloom silver brooch at the collar of a radiant young Sámi woman.

The silver caught the light against her red-and-blue shawl, and his hands moved with such solemnity it looked like a ritual only the two of them understood.

Someone off-camera teased him, asking if he planned to stay in the north forever.

He looked at the girl, his voice low and tender. "Aila says this brooch is only given to the person she wants to share her life with. I'd gladly stay here for her."

I closed the video. I didn't cry, and I didn't confront him.

I simply signed the Helsinki transfer confirmation I should have signed long ago, then left my flat key and engagement ring behind in our home.

His beliefs had never left room for me.

So I would go and find a world of my own.

第1章

"Irene, the care home says you didn't visit my mother yesterday. What's going on with you?"

Niklas's call came at five in the morning.

Northern Finland was two hours ahead of London. He lived on the local schedule and was already up before dawn.

I lay on a hotel bed with three folded towels beneath me.

The bleeding hadn't fully stopped.

The doctor said I needed at least five days of bed rest after the miscarriage, but I hadn't dared go back to what was supposed to be our home. I was afraid of seeing the blood on the bathroom floor from where I'd collapsed, or of the care home calling to say Helena needed me again to sign forms, deliver medication, or take her to an appointment.

For six years, I had barely had a real day of rest.

My abdomen cramped in waves, and every breath tasted like rust.

On the other end, his voice grew more and more irritated. "Why are you being so careless about her now? What if something happens? The care home says you haven't shown up for two days straight. You didn't even bring her the scarf she always wears."

"I was at the hospital yesterday. I couldn't make it."

He paused.

"Are you sick?"

Twenty-seven hours later, he had finally asked.

I clutched the edge of the blanket, drew a shaking breath, and tried to tell him that the baby we had fought so hard for was gone.

"Niklas, our..."

"Niklas—"

A bright voice rang out from the other end of the line.

"My father says he's going to check the old reindeer migration routes today. Didn't you say you've been wanting to shoot more winter footage? If we don't leave now, the guide will go without us."

She spoke in Finnish, her tone breezy, her voice still soft with sleep.

Niklas's tone shifted almost instantly, turning gentle. "All right. Wait for me downstairs."

"It's windy out. Change out of that thin jacket. Wear my gray windbreaker. I don't want your hands hurting from the cold again. You still have silver work to do this afternoon."

"Got it," Aila said with a laugh.

Only when she had moved out of earshot did he speak to me again, his voice dropping. "You said you went to the hospital. What's wrong with you?"

I loosened my grip on the wrinkled blanket and stared up at the harsh white light overhead.

"Nothing."

An impatient click of his tongue came through the phone. "Every time I ask, you do this. You won't say what's actually wrong, and then somehow I'm the one who doesn't care."

"Fine, have it your way. But you're going to the care home today. And I'm bringing Aila to London in three days to shoot a promotional piece for the museum. It's her first time away from Lapland for so long, and she doesn't do well in unfamiliar cities. The guest room faces the street and it's too noisy at night. Clear out the master bedroom, the one facing the garden, and give it to her."

My grip tightened around the phone.

"The master bedroom is ours."

"Irene, can you not be so petty?" His voice was pure reproach. "You grew up in London. What difference does it make which room you sleep in? Aila is coming all that way to support my research. It's her first time traveling so far. She's a light sleeper, she gets anxious easily. You're the woman of this house. Can't you show her a little consideration? Besides, it's only for a few days. Once the shoot's done, she'll leave."

I closed my eyes. The pain in my abdomen surged upward in waves, and cold sweat slid from my temples into my hair.

There was a time I would have argued with him over something like this until dawn.

I would have asked why a girl he'd known for less than a year deserved more consideration than the fiancée who'd stood by him for six.

I would have hung up and opened our message thread over and over, typing accusations and deleting them every time.

Now I didn't even have the strength to explain.

"Fine. Give her the master bedroom."

On the other end, Niklas was clearly pleased by my surrender.

He let out a small, self-satisfied hum. "See? Was that so hard? You always have to make a scene over every little thing."

"Change the sheets and duvet cover. Aila doesn't like sleeping in bedding someone else has used. And clear out the right side of the wardrobe. Her traditional garments can't be crushed."

He hung up without waiting for a reply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The line went dead.

I stared at the ceiling. My eyes stung, dry and raw, but not a single tear fell.

My phone screen lit up.

An email from HR sat at the top of my notifications:

"Ms. Lehti, your transfer to the Helsinki Design Archive has been approved. Report date: seven days from now. Please confirm that this timeline works. If you need to postpone, submit a request within forty-eight hours."

I typed back two words.

"No changes."

Then I called the care home and paid Helena's fees for the next six months in full. I compiled the contact information for her doctor, nursing supervisor, and Niklas's assistant, and sent it all to him.

It was the last time I would clean up after him.

第2章

They arrived a day earlier than planned.

I had just checked out of the hotel and gone back to the flat to pick up the last box. I hadn't made it out yet.

When I heard the key slide into the lock, I was crouching on the bathroom tiles, scrubbing away the darkened bloodstains in the corners with a brush.

They were from five nights ago, when I had collapsed here.

I didn't want whoever lived here next to see them, and I didn't want that blood left on the white tiles my mother, Catherine Lehti, had helped me choose.

Bang.

The bathroom door was shoved open.

Niklas stood in the doorway, his brow furrowed tight, his suitcase still lying on its side in the entryway.

"What are you doing in here? The whole place reeks of disinfectant. Aila started gagging the second she walked in." His voice dripped with contempt. "You pick this exact moment to do a deep clean. Are you trying to make a point?"

I braced myself against the wall and slowly stood up.

I had been crouching for too long. My vision dimmed, and before I could steady myself, he snatched the brush from my hand and tossed it into the sink.

"Open every window and air this place out. She needs to try on outfits later. She can't get a headache from the fumes."

I looked at him and, for a moment, felt dazed.

It had been this same bathroom, four years ago.

I had been curled up beside the toilet, doubled over with menstrual cramps so bad I couldn't stop vomiting, couldn't even stand.

Niklas had been at a conference in Cambridge. When he got my call, he had driven three hours through the night to get back. When he pushed open the door, his eyes were full of panic and tenderness.

He had carried me to bed, rubbed his palms together until they were warm, and pressed them against my abdomen, kissing my forehead over and over. "Irene, I'm here now. You'll never have to go through this alone again."

But now, in the same bathroom, with me in the same wretched state, the first thing he noticed was that the disinfectant smell had made Aila sick.

"I'm talking to you." Niklas's expression darkened when I didn't move. "Did you not hear me?"

"The windows are right there. Don't you have hands?"

His eyes went cold. He was about to snap when Aila's apologetic voice drifted in from the entryway.

"Niklas, maybe I should just stay at a hotel. She probably doesn't want me here."

She wore a deep blue dress suited for the city, a red woven-band shawl draped over her shoulders, and a silver brooch pinned at her chest. Nothing about her outfit was showy, yet it was enough to mark her as Sámi, from one of the communities in the far north.

Her eyes were bright, her expression innocent, as if she genuinely worried about inconveniencing anyone.

"Don't be silly." Niklas went to her in quick strides, his hand settling on her shoulder with easy familiarity. "She's been in a bad mood lately. Don't take it to heart. Feeling less nauseous? Go sit in the living room. I'll get you some warm water."

Two years ago, the day we bought this flat, Niklas had held me the same way, his arm around my shoulders.

He had rested his chin on my shoulder, pointed at the south-facing windows, and said, "This place is going to be just ours. We'll get married here, have children, fill every bookshelf. We'll never be apart."

I could still hear the echo of those words.

Yet here I stood in a bathroom that smelled of blood, watching him guide another woman into the living room where we had planned our entire life together.

After Aila sat down, she looked around curiously, then pulled a small handmade ornament from her bag.

It was a miniature cradle made of soft leather and blue-and-red woven thread, with tiny silver leaves dangling from the edges that chimed faintly at the slightest touch.

She held it out to me, her smile innocent and shy. "I made this myself. Where I'm from, people hang cradles like this in the nursery. It's a blessing for a safe, healthy baby."

"Niklas told me you've been wanting a baby for a long time, but your health has made it difficult. Since this is my first time visiting your home, I wanted to bring you the gift you needed most."

Niklas visibly stiffened.

He cleared his throat and looked away from me. "Aila means well. Just take it. Your health hasn't been great these past few years. You should stop worrying so much and focus on getting better."

I stared at the miniature cradle, and my stomach lurched.

A year ago, the doctor had told me my chances of getting pregnant were slim.

Niklas had held me in his arms, kissed my hair, and said, "It's all right if we don't have children. We can spend our whole lives as just the two of us. You matter more to me than a child we may never have."

Three months ago, when I found out I was unexpectedly pregnant, I had cried in the bathroom for half an hour from sheer joy.

I had bought a pair of the tiniest wool socks, planning to slip them into his suitcase when he came home from the north.

Those socks were still lying at the bottom of a sealed box.

"Why won't you take it?" Aila looked at Niklas, at a loss. "Did I do something wrong? I just wanted you to have a baby of your own."

"Irene, just take it." Niklas's face went dark. "She spent nights making that, and now you're putting on this act. Who is it supposed to be for?"

Suddenly, I smiled.

"I don't need it," I said, each word deliberate. "And I won't be having children. Keep it."

"Irene!" Niklas was furious. "When did you become so cruel? Aila came to London for the first time, walking on eggshells around you. She gives you a gift, and you throw it back in her face. Do you need everyone to know you can't stand her?"

Aila dropped her gaze, her eyes reddening quickly. "I'm sorry. Maybe I really don't understand how things work in the city. I thought wishing a woman a child was a kind thing to do."

Her voice was soft, but she pressed down on the words "in the city" with unmistakable precision.

I looked at her.

That was when I understood: she was not the timid, naive girl Niklas made her out to be.

She knew exactly what she had given me, and she knew exactly how those words would make Niklas take her side.

But I had no interest in exposing her.

I turned, walked into the guest room, and shut the door, shutting out their argument and her tears.

My packed suitcase stood in the corner.

In four days, I would leave England.

None of this would have anything to do with me anymore.

第3章

The day after Aila moved in, Niklas hosted a small reception for potential sponsors at the flat.

He was trying to secure a digital archive grant for the traditional crafts of northern Indigenous communities. The guest list included university professors, museum curators, foundation representatives, and a handful of cultural journalists.

He had rearranged the living room to suit the shoot.

Woven bands, leather pouches, traditional knife sheaths, and silverwork lined the windowsill. The walls displayed his photographs from Inari: snow-covered plains, reindeer herds, artisans at work. Aila wore a traditional ceremonial dress she had redesigned herself and demonstrated her silversmithing for the guests.

I hadn't planned on being there.

I still had a final batch of transfer paperwork to process before I left. Working through the dull, persistent ache in my abdomen that had lingered since the miscarriage, I sat on the guest room floor sorting documents.

Then, through the door, a chorus of admiring voices reached me.

"Niklas, the craftsmanship on this silver set is stunning. And that glass plate underneath, the color is just like the northern lights on a winter night."

"That blue-violet really brings the silver to life. Where did you get it?"

My hands froze on the laptop.

A glass plate?

There was only one piece of glassware in this flat with a color like the aurora.

It was the last art glass plate my mother, Catherine, had fired before she died.

She had been a studio glass artist in her youth, spending her entire life trying to achieve a color she called "twilight after rain." That plate was the closest she had ever come, and the last piece she left me.

I had always kept it locked in the top shelf of the study cabinet, wrapped in three layers of soft cloth.

I threw the door open and rushed out.

At the display table in the center of the living room, Aila was smiling, presenting a silver collar necklace she had made to the guests.

And that heavy ring of silver plates and pendants sat on top of my mother's glass plate, the one as thin and delicate as a sheet of ice.

No padding had been placed beneath the silver. Its edges had already scratched several harsh white lines into the blue-violet surface.

"Stop! Who told you to touch that?"

I lunged forward, reaching for the plate.

Aila flinched as though startled and jerked back a step. The silver collar slipped from her hands.

Clang.

The heavy silver piece crashed down onto the center of the glass plate.

First, a faint, brittle sound.

Then a white fracture raced from the center to the edge like a bolt of lightning, tearing that aurora of color in two.

The room went silent.

I was shaking all over. My eyes burned, and I reached for the cracked plate.

"Irene, what the hell is wrong with you!"

Niklas stormed over, grabbed my wrist, and threw me aside.

I was already weak. The force sent my lower back slamming into the edge of the coffee table, and I crashed to the floor.

My abdomen felt as though it had been ripped open with a dull blade.

I curled into myself, my forehead instantly slick with cold sweat.

The guests backed away. Some looked shocked, some frowned, and a few whispered to each other, asking who the glass plate actually belonged to.

Aila stood by the display table, her face white. A second later she darted behind Niklas, clutching his sleeve. "I didn't mean to. I was just showing the silver to everyone. She came out of nowhere..."

Niklas immediately stepped in front of her. The look he turned on me was pure fury and disgust.

"This is the most important reception of my career. Did you have to humiliate me in front of all these people?"

I pressed my hand to my abdomen and stared at the fracture, my voice trembling so badly it was barely audible. "That was my mother's. You know that... You know exactly what it was."

"Enough!"

He cut me off without an ounce of mercy.

"It's an old glass plate, that's all. What's the point of letting it collect dust in a cabinet? At least tonight it served a purpose, letting this many people see it. Your mother spent her whole life making glass and never made it into any major collection. Now something she left behind can actually contribute to a living artist's career. What are you screaming about?"

It felt as if someone had punched me square in the face. I couldn't breathe.

Six years.

He had stood at my mother's funeral, held my hand, and promised we would protect everything she had left behind.

And yet now, in his eyes, my mother's life's work was nothing more than a tray for another woman's silver.

I clenched my teeth, fighting through the searing pain as I dragged myself up from the floor, reaching for the plate.

Niklas blocked me again, his voice stripped of all warmth. "Haven't you made enough of a scene? You've already terrified Aila. Go back to your room and stay there."

"That's mine."

"This flat is my home too!" He kept his voice low, but the words came through gritted teeth. "I have every right to decide what's used to entertain guests. If you have any sense left, stop ruining my work today."

He grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the guest room.

Every pair of eyes in the room followed me.

Some pitied me. Some looked away in embarrassment. Others, not wanting to offend Niklas, pretended they hadn't seen a thing.

Aila stood beside the cracked plate, her eyes red, apologizing to the guests. She never once bent down to pick up a single shard for me.

The guest room door slammed shut behind me.

A second later, the lock clicked into place.

Niklas had locked me in.

第4章

I lay curled up on the cold floor for three hours.

The cramping in my abdomen grew worse with each wave, and my body shook beyond my control. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass, and cold sweat soon soaked through the back of my shirt.

I banged on the door. I called Niklas.

At first, I could still hear the guests talking.

Then music started, glasses clinked, and all the sounds blurred together. No one paid attention to the locked door.

I didn't know when I passed out.

When I came to, the living room had gone quiet, and the lock had been undone.

I braced myself against the wall and, driven by some survival instinct, inched out to find painkillers.

The living room was a wreck.

Half-finished drinks, used plates, and promotional materials were scattered everywhere. My mother's glass plate had shattered completely into more than a dozen pieces, swept carelessly into a cardboard box in the corner and piled together with crumpled napkins and broken flower stems.

Meanwhile, Niklas was sitting on the sofa, carefully dabbing Aila's wrist with an antiseptic pad.

There was nothing but a faint pink mark there. Not even a trace of blood.

"Does it still hurt?" His voice was gentle, almost tentative. "Let me put a bandage on it. Don't get it wet for a couple of days, and take a break from the silver work so you don't irritate it."

"I'm fine." Aila shook her head obediently, but the moment she spotted me braced against the wall in the doorway, she shifted closer to Niklas. "She's out. She doesn't still blame me, does she?"

Niklas turned.

The tenderness in his eyes vanished the instant they landed on me. His gaze went cold.

"What are you doing out here?"

I pressed my hand to my abdomen, where the dragging weight of pain wouldn't stop. Cold sweat covered my forehead, and my voice was so weak it barely held together. "Niklas, I'm in so much pain. Take me to the hospital."

"Keep it up. Keep pretending."

He shot to his feet, crossed the room in a few strides, and stood over me, his eyes full of contempt.

"You didn't cause enough of a scene at the reception? Now you see me taking care of Aila's scratch and suddenly feel slighted, is that it? All you know how to do is play the victim. Pain, sickness, suffering. Anything to force me to pay attention to you."

The pain was too much to stand. I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor, my vision going black in pulses. "I'm not pretending..."

"Aila's hands were shaking because of you." He pointed at the woman on the sofa, his voice rising. "Do you have any idea how important her hands are? She's one of the most talented young silversmiths in the north. Museums and foundations are waiting on her new work. If you'd hurt her hands today, you wouldn't just be destroying my project. You'd be destroying her career. Can you pay for that?"

I looked up at him.

For six years, I had looked after Helena for him, proofread his papers, organized his interviews, and handled all the bills, repairs, and household chores he called "not worth wasting time on."

Every time he came back from the north, I unpacked his bags, washed his clothes, double-checked his reports, and scheduled Helena's follow-up appointments.

Yet in his version of things, I was nothing but a woman who sat around at home, using illness to compete for his attention.

The pain peaked and then, gradually, went numb.

I looked at the face I had loved for six years. It suddenly seemed so foreign it was almost absurd.

I didn't cry or explain the way I always had. I didn't beg him to save me.

I just gripped the door frame and pulled myself to my feet, slowly, steadily.

"Niklas, we're done."

My voice was quiet, but there was not a trace of hesitation in it.

He blinked, then let out a cold laugh, as if he'd heard the most ridiculous joke. "This again? Irene, every time things don't go your way, you pull the breakup card. You really think I'll keep coddling you forever?"

"If you can't handle Aila being around, then leave. Right now."

He pointed at the front door, his face dark. "But think carefully. Once you walk out that door, don't expect me to come crawling after you."

Aila sat on the sofa, her lips parting slightly as though she wanted to say something, but in the end she stayed silent.

She just lowered her head and pressed lightly on the bandage on her wrist. The one she didn't need.

I ignored them both.

I went back to the guest room and picked up the suitcase and laptop bag I had already packed.

When I passed the corner, I crouched down and picked up the shards of my mother's glass, one by one.

One piece had a sharp edge. It cut my finger.

A drop of blood fell onto the blue-violet glass, like a belated red star.

I didn't stop. I wrapped every shard I could find in soft cloth and placed them in the top layer of my suitcase.

Then I walked to the entryway.

I slid the engagement ring off my finger, the one I had worn for three years, and set it on the marble countertop beside the flat key.

"Just as you wanted."

When Niklas saw the ring, the coldness on his face faltered for a moment.

But he pressed his lips together, waiting for me to turn around, waiting for me to do what I'd always done, to reach the door and then come back in tears, asking if he really didn't want me anymore.

I didn't.

I pushed the door open and dragged my suitcase out into the cold autumn rain of London.

By the time the lift doors closed, he still hadn't come after me.

I called an ambulance from the lobby.

After examining me, the doctor fell silent for a long time, then said only that my recovery wasn't going well and I needed to be admitted for two days of observation.

I lay in the hospital bed, watching the city lights blur behind the rain on the window, and deleted all of Niklas's contact information.

The next day, three messages from him appeared on my phone.

The first asked when I was coming back to bring Helena her clothes.

The second said Aila had been so upset she couldn't sleep, and that I needed to apologize to her when I got back.

The third was a single line: "Don't take this too far."

I didn't reply to any of them.

Four days later, I boarded a flight to Helsinki.

As the plane broke through the heavy clouds, for the first time, I didn't imagine the look on Niklas's face when he realized I was gone.

I just pressed my forehead against the window and watched the sea of clouds slowly fill with light.

In that moment, I knew I had finally walked out of a house with no exits.

第5章

Winter came early in Helsinki.

During my first week at the new job, the first snow fell by the harbor.

The company set me up with a temporary flat for two months, not far from the Design Archive. It was small but south-facing, and on clear days, sunlight would stretch from the window all the way to the center of the wooden floor.

There were no books of Niklas's here, no pill organizers for Helena, and no one to wake me before dawn asking why I hadn't done something for them.

I worked late every day.

The new archival projects were piling up. My Finnish colleagues spoke plainly and kept clear boundaries. When the workday ended, no one treated their personal responsibilities as someone else's obligation.

The work made me realize, for the first time, that I was perfectly capable of doing the job. I wasn't the person Niklas had made me out to be, the woman who "just sat around at home."

I had simply spent the best six years of my life holding his life together.

Sophia's video call came through while I was putting together a new bookshelf.

Sophia Bennett had been my closest friend since university and was still in London, working as an intellectual property lawyer. The moment her face appeared, she peered at the snowy view behind me and let out an exaggerated sigh. "Not bad. Settling into the new job? Are the Nordic men as good-looking as they say?"

I tightened the last screw. "No time to look at men. I'm run off my feet with projects."

"Good. Stay busy and you won't think about the ones who don't deserve it."

She paused, her tone turning careful. "There's something I have to tell you. Niklas showed up at my office a couple of days ago."

I put my tools back in the box and said nothing.

"He was frantic, asking where you'd gone. I told him I didn't know, and he stood downstairs for three hours. He said your old number was disconnected. When he went back to the flat, he found you'd cleared out almost everything. All that was left was the key and the ring."

Sophia let out a cold laugh. "I asked him, who throws a tantrum and cancels a phone number they've had for six years? Who throws a tantrum and takes every last shard of their dead mother's work with them?"

"The second I said 'her mother's final work,' his whole face changed."

I leaned against the bookshelf and listened quietly.

Sophia went on. "At first he was convinced you were just trying to make him cave. He said you always waited for him to make up after every fight. Then he went back to the flat looking for something and found hospital-prescribed medication in the bathroom cabinet. And the examination folder you'd left at the bottom of the bin."

"He sent me message after message, asking if something was wrong with you."

She went quiet for a moment. "Irene, I didn't tell him about the miscarriage. I don't think it should come from me. And honestly, he doesn't deserve to hear the truth that easily, secondhand."

"Mm."

"Don't go soft on him." She fixed her eyes on me. "Just because he's panicking doesn't mean he actually understands what he did wrong. He might just not be able to accept that you really left."

Outside the window, the snow fell slowly.

The things that had once cut me so easily seemed to have finally lost their sharpness, dulled by two thousand kilometers of distance.

"What about Aila?" I asked.

Sophia's expression grew complicated. "Three days after you left, Niklas tried to send her back to Finland."

"He bought her a ticket and wrote her a check, saying it covered her project fee and compensation. Aila slapped the check down on the table. She didn't take a penny."

"Did she cry?"

"She did, but not because she was some clueless girl," Sophia said. "She asked Niklas why, if it had only been a research collaboration, he had accepted her family's silver brooch in front of her father, her relatives, and the sponsors. Why had he said on camera that he would stay in the north for her? The brooch wasn't some universal Sámi engagement custom. It was an heirloom passed down in her family, and giving it to someone was her personal choice. Niklas knew all of that, yet he deliberately staged the moment for the cameras as a declaration of love. Everyone at the exhibition thought they were together. Her family believed he was ready to commit to her. Now that the project had gotten the attention he wanted, he planned to put her on a plane with a check and be done with it."

I said nothing.

Outright lying had never been Niklas's greatest talent.

What he was good at was telling selective truths and leaving other people to bear the consequences.

To me, he said Aila was just a research subject, a young artisan who needed looking after.

With Aila, he encouraged her feelings through every intimate gesture, letting her believe he would stay.

"What happened then?"

"Aila left without taking anything," Sophia said. "After she got back to Finland, she posted a statement on her personal page. She didn't attack anyone or play the victim. She just laid out, clearly and precisely, how Niklas had directed the filming and used their apparent relationship to generate publicity. The university and the foundation both demanded an explanation about research ethics. The grant was suspended. The promotional film that was supposed to air got pulled."

I set a Finnish dictionary on the shelf.

The heavy spine landed with a quiet thud.

The silver brooch, the traditions, the promises, the academic ideals. In the end, they were all just material Niklas could edit and delete from his reports.

But Aila and I, two living, breathing people, had become the price he cared least about paying as he crafted his image.

I didn't like Aila. I wouldn't forget the baby cradle she had handed me days after my miscarriage, and I wouldn't make excuses for her.

But in this moment, I could see clearly that the person who had set us against each other was Niklas.

Sophia switched to a lighter tone. "Enough about them. Isn't your team heading to Lapland next week for the winter archive trip? Think you'll see the northern lights?"

"Probably. We're spending two days in Rovaniemi, then heading further north."

"Then look at them a little longer for me."

I smiled. "I will."

After I hung up, I stood at the window for a long time.

Once, Niklas had promised to take me to see the northern lights.

The night we got engaged, he had been drinking. He held me and said, "When I get tenure, we'll go up north and stay in one of those glass cabins. You won't have to worry about a thing. Just lie back and watch the sky."

That promise, like so many of his others, was never mentioned again.

A week later, I stood on the snow-covered plains of Saariselk?.

The night sky was as clear as a single pane of deep blue glass, and a ribbon of green light rose slowly from behind the mountains, unfurling and rippling among the stars.

My colleagues were cheering and snapping photos.

I didn't reach for my phone. I just looked up in silence.

It turned out the northern lights didn't belong to any one promise.

And I didn't need anyone to bring me here.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

A message from an unknown British number:

"Irene, I'm in Helsinki. I know I was wrong. Come see me. Just once. Please."

It was Niklas.

I didn't know how he'd gotten my new number.

I looked at it for two seconds and deleted it.

A moment later, another message arrived from a different number:

"Ms. Lehti, I'm Professor Berg's research assistant. He skipped the university's investigation hearing to fly to Finland and find you. He has been waiting outside your building for five hours. It's very cold in Helsinki tonight. Would you be able to..."

I typed back two words.

"I'm busy."

Then I put my phone on silent and looked up at the sky again.

The green light swept across the snowfield, as though someone had finally opened a door I hadn't been able to reach for a long time.