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that brooding through those sleepless nights.
    The sleeping pill slowly began to work.
    No more darkness now, she thought, half asleep. Help us to find him.
     
    It was a long time before morning came, and it was still dark outside when Julia awoke. She had breakfast, then she washed up, locked the flat, and got into the car. She started the engine, switched on the windshield wipers to clear the leaves, then she was finally on her way out of the street where she lived, on her way out of the city in the sunrise and the morning traffic. The last traffic light turned to green, and she turned eastward onto the freeway, away from Gothenburg and out into the country.
    She drove for the first few kilometers with the window down, letting the cold morning air blow away all trace of her sister’s perfume from the car.
    Jens, I’m coming, she thought. I’m really coming, and no one can stop me now.
    She knew she shouldn’t talk to him, not even silently to herself.
    It was unbalanced, but she’d been doing it on and off ever
    since Jens disappeared.
    After Boras, the freeway came to an end and the houses grew
    smaller and more sparse. The dense fir forests of Smaland crowded the road. She could have turned off and headed for an unknown destination, but the tracks into the forest looked so desolate. She drove on, heading across the country toward the east coast, and trying to take pleasure in the fact that she was undertaking a longer journey by herself than she had done for many years.
    She pulled in at a service station a few kilometers from the coast to fill up with gas and to eat a few mouthfuls of a stew that was chewy and sticky and not worth the money, and then she set off again.
    Toward the Oland Bridge. North of Kalmar, the bridge led to
    the island; it had been built over twenty years earlier, completed and opened the autumn that… That day.
    She wouldn’t think about it anymore, not until she arrived.
    The Oland Bridge stood tall and firm, spanning the sound,
    resting on broad concrete pillars, completely unaffected by the sharp gusts of wind that tore at the car. It was wide and completely straight, apart from an arched section close to the mainland, which allowed taller ships to pass beneath the road. The arch was a viewing point, and she could see the flat shape of the island. It extended along the horizon, from north to south.
    She could see the alvar, the grassy plain that covered large parts of Oland. Dark, low clouds drifted by, like long airships above the landscape.
    Both tourists and residents loved to go walking and bird
    watching out there, but Julia didn’t like the alvar. It was too big and there was nowhere to take shelter if the vast sky above came tumbling down.
    After the bridge she drove north, toward Borgholm. The road
    was almost dead straight for several kilometers along the west coast, and she met few cars now that the tourist season was over.
    Julia kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead in order to avoid looking out across the desolate alvar and the great expanse of water on the other side, and she tried not to think about a little sandal with a mended strap.
    It didn’t mean anything, it didn’t have to mean anything.
    The journey up to Borgholm from the bridge took almost half
    an hour. When she arrived, there was just one crossroads with a set of traffic lights, and she decided to turn left, down to the little town by the water.
    She stopped at a cake shop at the edge of Storgatan, thus
    avoiding the harbor, the square, and the church; the church behind which she and her parents had lived when Gerlof had his own cargo boat and wanted to live near the harbor. Her childhood was in Borgholm. Julia had no desire to see herself running along the streets around the square like a pale ghost, a nineyearold girl with her whole life ahead of her. She didn’t want to meet any young men, striding toward her along the street and making her think of Jens. She had enough reminders of that kind in