Ewert Grens had driven to the nursing home once a week for twenty-nine years and had not stopped since, even though someone else lived in her room now. He walked over to what had once been her window, where she used to sit watching the world outside, and where he sat beside her, trying to understand what she was looking for.

The only person he had ever trusted.

He missed her so much. The damned emptiness clung to him, he ran through the night and it gave chase, he couldn't get rid of it, he screamed at it, but it just carried on and on… he breathed it in, he had no idea how to fill such emptiness.

"Superintendent Grens."

Her voice came from the glass door that normally stood open when the weather was fine and all the wheelchairs were in place around the table on the terrace. Susann, the medical student who was now, according to the name badge on her white coat, already a junior doctor. She had once accompanied him and Anni on the boat trip around the archipelago and had warned him against hoping too much.

"Hello."

"You here again."

"Yes."

He hadn't seen her for a long time, since Anni was alive.

"Why do you do it?"

He glanced up at the empty window.

"What are you talking about?"

"Why do you do this to yourself?"

The room was dark. Whoever lived there now was still asleep. "I don't understand."

"I've seen you OUT here twelve Tuesdays in a row now."

"Is there a law against it?"

"Same day, same time as before."

Ewert Grens didn't answer.

"When she was alive."

Susann took a step down.