He had gone the colour of paper.
Because Ari, Rune and Kit have my eyes and everything else on those three faces is his. The chin, the ears, the way the mouth goes when they are about to argue.
He took one step and said my name.
And for the first time in ten years, the thing that man wears instead of a face was not there.
He was doing the arithmetic in front of me. Five years. Three boys. That face, three times.
And what was actually happening in his head was worse than the arithmetic, and it took me until November to understand it.
Because he was not only working out that they were his.
He was working out that everything he had believed since February of 2021 was built on the same five minutes of reading a phone.
So — the messages.
They were real.
I want that first, because everybody assumes a forgery and it was not a forgery. I sent every single one of them.
