Sofia Zetterlund discovers that Lars Magnus Pettersson is alive while searching online at her computer in her study. The confirmation unsettles the story she had believed about her own past: although he had betrayed her, she had not killed him. His continued life also brings her imagined account of other people into view as part of the same internal collapse.

The Search and Its Evidence

Early in the morning, Sofia is seated at the computer in her study, staring at the screen. The address she finds for Lars Magnus Pettersson is the same one she already knows, on Pålnäsvägen in Saltsjöbaden. She also discovers that he travels frequently for work and finds his name among the participants at a conference in Düsseldorf held just three weeks earlier. The address and recent professional listing turn her suspicion into confirmation: he is alive and continuing a life beyond the one she had constructed around him.

The Reversal of Her Belief

Sofia laughs when the evidence settles what happened. Lars Magnus Pettersson had betrayed her, but she had not killed him in response. The discovery reverses the assumed consequence of that betrayal, separating what she had believed she did from what actually happened. It also makes the imagined version of his fate less consequential to her than the recognition that she had been inventing lives for others as well as for herself.

A Life Outside Her Enclosed World

Sofia considers that Lars Magnus Pettersson may still be living a double life, perhaps with another woman, as he had before. That possibility does not restore their relationship or draw him back into her experience. Instead, she recognizes that his life has moved on outside her enclosed world, and she is pleased by this. The scene therefore closes not with a reunion but with a changed relation to the story she had told herself: his independent existence no longer has to be absorbed into her own collapse.

The Immediate Aftermath

The confirmation arrives while Sofia is absorbed in an escalating process of work. She still has tasks to finish before she can sleep for a few hours, and she feels focused enough to continue. The discovery gives her a moment of relief and perspective without ending that process; it changes what she understands about Lars Magnus Pettersson and her own imagined past, while she remains intent on the work ahead.