The Bucket List: An agent John Adderley Novel by Peter Mohlin && Peter Nyström

Author:Peter Mohlin && Peter Nyström
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

31

Just like last time, John parked a few hundred meters from his childhood home so as not to draw unnecessary attention. He had spent the whole afternoon weighing whether to say goodbye to his brother or not.

He decided the risk was acceptable. The Chrysler was already packed and if he took a ferry down to the continent tonight, it wouldn’t matter if someone connected it with a visit to Billy Nerman. He’d sell the car for cash in Germany and all traces of Fredrik Adamsson and John Adderley would vanish when he bought his new identity.

What had made him hesitate was more to do with the emotional aspects. John wasn’t sure whether he wanted to see his brother one last time. The visit might unleash a lot of emotions that he had neither the time nor inclination to deal with. Better to let the story end here. That way, he could at least pretend that Billy was living his life happily, now that all suspicions against him had disappeared.

Nevertheless, he walked up the gravel road toward Nerman’s Autos. It was dusk and John felt his father’s sermons resounding in his ears. “There’s nothing more important than family, John. When all is said and done, that’s all we have.” That was what he’d said at the kitchen table in their apartment on the Lower East Side, with the poorly concealed expectation that his son would give him a grandchild or two. It hadn’t worked out like that. Instead, the old man’s words had driven him back here—to his childhood home.

John was aware that his father didn’t include either Billy or his mother in the concept of family. That branch of the family tree had been chopped off with an axe the moment they stepped on the plane to New York. But it was different for John. It didn’t matter how many times he tried to erase his Swedish family from his consciousness. They would always be there, a pang of bad conscience. And leaving the country without saying goodbye was the coward’s way out.

John stood outside the front door. He rang the doorbell but no one came to open it. The bell had been broken back when they were kids, and it seemed Billy hadn’t gotten around out to fixing it. Maybe not many guests came to visit.

John knocked on the door a few times. Now there was some movement inside. He heard a chair being pushed back, scraping the floor—and then footsteps approaching. Billy’s face lit up when he opened the door, and he gave John one of his bear hugs.

“I was just wondering if you were going to turn up. Come on in! We’re celebrating. There’s cake and everything.”

He let go of John and showed him into the kitchen. John had to make an effort not to brush away the dirt he imagined his brother’s hands had left on his jacket.

The kitchen looked just as John remembered it from childhood. The walls were still covered with that white wallpaper with thin blue stripes and a border of flowers.

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