The Neighbor
Part 1
The first time he saw it, he thought he was having a nightmare.
He was holding a cup of coffee up to his lips, about to take a sip, watching the new neighbor stand at the stump between their houses where they split the logs for their fires.
She was smallish, thin but moderately athletic. Her shoulders were broad, but her hips were slim.
So when she picked up the axe, he expected her to be pretty strong. I mean, you need to be strong to split wood.
Magnus had been doing it his whole life, he had almost always lived in the country. But the new neighbor... there was something soft about her, something...sad but a little bit angry.
Perhaps it was the way she gripped the wooden handle of the axe, or the way she set her jaw as she tried to pick up a piece of wood that would even give Magnus a challenge.
And there were other pieces of wood for her to pick up, but she was set on that one.
Magnus took a small sip of coffee and watched her struggle to set the large log on the stump.
"No, don't do it..." he whispered into his quiet cabin.
He watched her take a deep breath and step back, lift the axe... and then bring it down on the log.
Magnus winced and sucked air in through his teeth as her whole body reverberated with the shock of the impact. And the log remained unsplit, unfazed by her attempt.
"Shit," he whispered.
He watched as the new neighbor let the axe fall to the ground and wrapped her arms around herself as she walked back to her cabin, obviously in pain.
"Didn't anybody teach you how to split wood?" he said, as if he wasn't talking to his empty cabin, as if he was talking to her.
He shook his head and watched her go inside her door and then he went to sit down.
The next morning, he went out to split some wood. He moved the large log she had put there the night before. He had no idea if she was watching him, but he hoped she was. He chose a small log, he tapped the axe into the top of it and then he picked up the wood with the axe and tapped it hard a few times on the stump until it split into two pieces. He did it again, and again, and again.
He dared not look at her cabin, but he hoped she could see him and she would know better what to do the next time she needed wood.
Then he split a few larger logs, maybe a few more than he needed to, leaving some for her to split like he had at first. It was how his father had taught him when he was small.
She watched him from her window, tears in her eyes. And the tears weren't because she couldn't split wood, and they weren't because her arms and back were still sore from the last time she had tried. Salty tears rolled down her cheeks as she watched the neighbor split the wood, her mind filled with everything she had lost, the life she didn't have anymore.
Rebecka looked at the officers, trying with all she had in her to shield all the things she didn't want to say.
If it had only been Magnus, if there had been time to explain to him alone, to get his opinion, to hear his perspective on the situation... because she trusted him, and she wasn't always trusting of police officers. There had been many she had dealings with that she most definitely didn't trust.
But she couldn't tell if these officers were that type, or the Magnus type.
If only she had been able to just tell Magnus alone.
Her eyes moved to him, the other officers noticed, and she hated that, but there was nothing to be done about it.
"I don't know," she started. "I am a journalist, from Stockholm, I've written a lot of things, about a lot of people. "
Rebecka held Magnus' gaze. It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth.
She hoped it would be enough until she could confide in Magnus and figure things out on her own.
When she looked back at the officers, she made a half hearted, defeated shrug. "We are a long way from Stockholm," she said as lightly as she could. "Maybe it was just some kids."
She looked back at Magnus and then down to the ground.
"Thank you for coming so quickly," she said as Henry brushed against her legs and leaned into her, offering her some comfort in the moment. She smiled as she leaned down and pet the soggy dog.
The officers looked toward Magnus.
"We will do an extra patrol when we can, but we don't have the man power to leave someone here," they explained.
Rebecka didn't look up from the dog. She would be on her own, that's what they were saying. That is what they were telling Magnus.
"Thank you," Rebecka said quietly.
"I'll be here," Magnus said, but he knew that there was something that Rebecka wasn't telling them.
Because she had been cautious, overly suspicious and anxious when she had thought she had seen someone. If it had just been kids then she wouldn't have cared as much, but it was almost as if she had been anticipating something much worse.
Rebecka Lindahl was certainly turning out to be a very mysterious figure.
But he couldn't protect her all the time.
He still had to go to work, still had his own obligations. It had been fine when the streets had flooded, there was no work to do, but now he had to catch up on everything that he had missed in the past few days.
And he couldn't do that in town.
"Maybe tomorrow," Magnus said. "I'm back to work, so a drive through might be a good option. The kids would be back at school as well so if it was anyone else."
The officers nodded, of course Magnus had always been a bit of a forward planner, he was very cautious. He had to be to have become a detektive at such a young age.
He turned to Rebecka.
"Is that okay with you?"