My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

Back at the apartment, Mum and Elsa sit in Granny’s Renault with the wurse. Mum is neither surprised nor upset that Elsa has been hiding it. Elsa tells Mum that she is afraid of the man chasing her and begins thinking about fears. In the Land-of-Almost-Awake, fears are “small fiery creatures” (230) that were eventually defeated by two golden knights who, instead of yelling at the fears, laughed at them. The fears were turned to stone, and the sixth kingdom, Maudacas, where courage is cultivated, was built.

Mum says that she knows the man who was chasing Elsa and confirms that he is a “shadow.” Mum knows about shadows because when she was a young girl and Granny was away, Granny would call her on the phone to tell her the stories of the Land-of-Almost-Awake. However, Mum had been resistant and angry because she wanted Granny to be home with her. Mum says she was a difficult child, who Granny nicknamed “the girl who said no” (235).

Mum tells her that she needs to ask Maud and Lennart about the man who was chasing her, since they know him best. As they enter the apartment building, they meet up with Alf, who tells Elsa that he also knows who was chasing her but that “you’re not the one he’s hunting” (238).

Mum is tired and lies down on her bed. Elsa sits with her and, at Mum’s request, recounts all the stories from the Land-of-Almost-Awake until Mum falls asleep.

The living room is filled with people from the funeral. Mum says they are the children in the photos from Granny’s ceiling, noting, “They’re grown up now. They were allowed to grow up because your granny saved their lives” (241). However, Elsa cannot yet forgive Granny for abandoning Mum to save other people’s children.

Elsa goes to the stairwell and meets up with the woman in the black skirt, although today she is wearing jeans. The woman couldn’t bring herself to go to Granny’s funeral, but she did visit her boys’ graves. The woman understands Elsa’s conflicted feelings about Granny and her life choices, specifically her decision to save others at Mum’s expense. The woman brings up the trolley problem, the philosophical conundrum of “whether it’s morally right to sacrifice one person in order to save many others” (243). Elsa insists she is only angry with Britt-Marie, but the woman warns her, “Don’t fight with monsters, for you can become one” (243).

The woman gives Elsa an envelope that she found on her sons’ headstone. It says, “To Elsa! Give this letter to Lennart and Maud!” (244).

Elsa brings the letter to Lennart and Maud, and they tell her about the man with the cigarette. His name is Sam, and he is a drug addict with a violent temper. He is the father of the boy with the syndrome. After Sam beat the boy and his mother badly, Lennart and Maud sought help from Granny, who brought the boy and his mother to live in her apartment building. When Alf went to fetch the boy’s things from their former home, Sam beat him badly. Sam then disappeared until the day Elsa saw him outside the undertaker’s.

Maud explains that Sam has mistaken Elsa for his son, the boy with the syndrome, since they have a similar appearance. She says, “He thinks you’re our grandchild” (251). Lennart admits that they are Sam’s parents.

Maud gives Elsa a letter that Granny left with them months ago. It is addressed to the boy with the syndrome’s mother, but Granny left them instructions that Elsa must come for the letter herself. Maud says that in the letter she and Lennart received, Granny apologized for saving Sam’s life.

Lennart and Maud explain that Sam was an angry child who became a soldier when he grew up. During a war, he met his very first friend. Both Sam and his friend were injured during an explosion, but the friend managed to carry Sam to the hospital where Granny was working. That was when Granny saved his life.

As Maud shows Elsa pictures in a photo album, she describes Sam’s friend as having “the soul of a poet” (257) while at the same time being a fearsome warrior. Elsa realizes that Sam’s friend is Wolfheart.

Elsa is once again able to visit the Land-of-Almost-Awake. She thinks it’s because now that the shadow is in the real world, she has nothing left to lose. She knows that “the war will come, that it’s inevitable, and the mere fact of knowing it makes her strangely calm” (259).

It is the day before Christmas Eve, which is when Dad and Elsa always go Christmas tree shopping. Before they go, Elsa checks on the wurse, who she has hidden in Renault. On her way downstairs, Elsa sees Kent leaving out poison for the wurse. Kent says the animal would lower the apartments’ property value, as would the sight of Granny’s dilapidated Renault, which has been towed. Furious, Elsa races up the stairs to get Dad. She stops when she sees Britt-Marie standing in her doorway. Elsa pleads for Britt-Marie to spare the wurse. For a “single fleeting second” Elsa sees “some humanity,” some hesitance, in Britt-Marie’s eyes, but then Kent calls for her to bring more poison, “and then the normal Britt-Marie is back” (264).

Dad and Alf help Elsa find Renault at a scrapyard, and Dad pays to bring it back. Alf puts Renault in Granny’s parking spot, then he and Elsa gather up all the bowls of poison. Elsa and Dad go to buy the tree. Elsa wants to ask Dad if she can stay with him and his wife Lisette more often after Halfie is born, but “she doesn’t want to upset him, so in the end she says nothing” (269).