Two cars are driving through the forest. One of them drives all the way to the kennels, and a man in a black jacket that can’t possibly be fastened over his muscular chest gets out. He shakes Adri’s hand. Adri was in high school with him half a lifetime ago and has nothing against him, except for the fact that he’s less sharp than someone suffering from rheumatism handling a disposable camera. Once she had to explain to him that south on the map didn’t actually mean a downward slope and on another occasion that islands didn’t float on the sea but were actually fixed to the ocean floor. He doesn’t have many branches on his family tree. He’s got himself a new tattoo on his hand, she notices, a spiderweb so uneven that it practically forces her to ask, “What the hell . . . did you lose a bet or something?”

“What?” he answers uncomprehendingly, and stares at his hand, clearly not struck by the fact that it looks as though whoever did it was working in the dark.

Someone once called him “Spider” at school because he had long, thin, hairy legs. He was the sort of boy who didn’t care what anyone called him, as long as they knew who he was, so he embraced the insult. He’s gotten himself at least a dozen spider-themed tattoos since then, all of them apparently done by drunks sitting on top of a tumble drier.

Adri shakes her head wearily and opens the boot of Spider’s car, which is full of boxes of liquor. Adri notes that the other car is waiting as usual where the road ends, at the edge of the forest. The driver is sitting inside it so he can warn them if any unwelcome visitors are approaching, but the passenger gets out. Adri has known him for many years, too, and—unlike Spider—he definitely isn’t an idiot. That’s what makes him dangerous.

His name is Teemu Rinnius. He’s not particularly thickset, and he’s not particularly tall, and his hair is so neat that his best friends call him “the accountant,” but Adri has seen him fight and knows that beneath that hair his head is made of concrete. His kick is so hard that in this town it’s the horses that are frightened of standing behind him. When he was younger, he and his little brother were so notorious that the hunters used to joke, “You know why you should never knock the Rinnius brothers off a bike? Because it’s probably your bicycle!” Now that he’s older they no longer tell jokes about him, and if anyone from outside comes to the town asking for Teemu Rinnius, even the smallest child has the sense to answer, “Who?”

Teemu isn’t wearing a black jacket; he doesn’t need one. He opens the back door of the car and lets out two dogs. He bought them from Adri as puppies, so if anyone asks what he’s doing here this evening, he can say he’s thinking of buying another one. He has no delivery schedule, no fixed routine; Adri gets a phone call a couple of hours in advance, then he shows up once it’s dark. She calls him “the wholesaler,” half affectionately, half mockingly. She herself is the retailer. Two cars can’t go from door to door in Beartown dropping off bottles of drink without attracting suspicion, whereas everyone knows that all the hunters in the area usually drop in at the kennels from time to time to check out the puppies and drink coffee. Perhaps they come a little too often, those hunters, especially before major holidays. But if you ask anyone around here about Adri, they’ll all say the same thing: “She makes very good coffee.”

The men in black jackets always have two cars, and Teemu never sits in the one containing the drink. There are police investigations that claim that he’s the leader of a “violent hooligan gang known as the Pack, who support Beartown Hockey.” There are plenty of stories of their influencing the club’s affairs, that highly paid players on the A-team who don’t perform well enough have voluntarily torn up their own contracts, but there’s never been any proof. And naturally there’s no proof that the Pack is involved in the organized smuggling of alcohol or trading in stolen cars and snowmobiles, either. There has never been any proof that the Pack has ever threatened anyone, the way criminal networks everywhere usually have to do in order to establish their violent credentials. Police investigations claim that the Pack don’t need to do that because they use hockey games to advertise themselves. The theory goes that anyone who has seen the black jackets packed in the standing area of the rink, or who has heard what they’ve done to fans of other teams that have challenged them, would understand the seriousness of the situation if they appear on the doorstep.

But obviously that’s all nonsense. Rumor and exaggeration by city types who’ve seen too many films. If you ask almost anyone who lives in Beartown about the Pack, they’ll just reply, “What pack?”

When Adri lifts the last crate of drink from the back of the car she notes that there’s a large ax under it. She rolls her eyes.

“Seriously, Teemu, don’t you think it looks a bit suspicious, having an ax in the trunk when every cop in the district has seen pictures of that councillor’s car in Hed?”

There aren’t many people who dare take that tone with Teemu, but he merely looks amused. “Adri, think about it: after what happened to that poor woman’s car in Hed, wouldn’t it look more suspicious if we didn’t have axes in our cars?”

Adri bursts out laughing. “You’re such an idiot. Except you’re not.”

Teemu smiles. “Thank you kindly.”

* * *

When Ana has fallen asleep out on the island, Maya lies awake and writes lyrics about hatred. Sometimes she carries on so long that she ends up writing about love. Not the earth-shattering falling-in-love kind but the boring, whole-of-your-life sort. She doesn’t know why, but she’s thinking a lot about her parents this summer. When you’re a teenager, you want them to be sexless, but somewhere along the way the smallest memories of affection between our parents get imprinted on our DNA. Parents who divorce, like Ana’s, can stop a child believing in eternal love. Parents who stick together for a lifetime can make a child take it for granted instead.

Maya remembers such insignificant things from her childhood. The way her mom laughs when she describes her dad’s style of dress as “plainclothes cop at high school disco.” Or the way her dad shakes the all-but-empty milk carton each morning and mutters, “Welcome to today’s Guinness World Record attempt, where we will try to make the smallest cup of coffee in the world.” The way her mom loses it if there are socks on the floor and the way her dad would like to take anyone who doesn’t wipe the dish rack in front of a war crimes tribunal. The way her mom moved around the world twice for the sake of her dad’s hockey and the way her dad sneaks admiring glances at her mom when she takes business calls in the kitchen. As though she were the smartest, funniest, most stubborn, most argumentative person he’s ever met and that he still can’t quite believe she’s his.

The way Maya and Leo didn’t know their parents’ real names for years because they just called each other “darling.” The way they’ve never mentioned the word “divorce,” not even when they’re having a row, because they know that’s the nuclear option, and if you threaten it once, every argument from then on will end the same way. The way they suddenly seem to have stopped squabbling about little things now, the way the house has gotten quieter, the way they can hardly look each other in the eye anymore after what happened to Maya. The way they can’t bring themselves to show each other just how badly they were broken by it.

Children notice when their parents lose each other in the very smallest ways, in something as insignificant as a single word, such as “your.” Maya texts them each morning now and pretends it’s to stop them worrying about her, even though it’s actually the reverse. She’s used to them calling each other “Mom” and “Dad.” As in “Mom didn’t really mean you were grounded for a thousand years, darling,” or “Dad didn’t demolish your snowman on purpose, he just tripped, darling.” But suddenly one day, almost incidentally, one of them writes, “Can’t you call your mom, she’s worries so much when you’re not home?” And the other writes, “Remember, your dad and I love you more than anything.” Four letters can reveal the end of a marriage. “Your.” As if they didn’t belong to each other anymore.

Maya sits on an island in a lake far out in the forest and writes songs about it, because she can’t bear to be at home and watch it happen.

Minefield

This is a minefield you’re walking on

Every word a bomb, but you go on walking

Until there’s a quiet “click” beneath a foot

And then it’s too late to go back.

The worst thing about being a victim is the victims I turned you into

I can’t mend you now, no matter how much I want to

It’s like I was the one who died but you’re the ones who were buried

Like I was the one he broke but you’re the ones who snapped.

* * *