Apollo kills Jorgen Knudsen after learning that the old man’s apparent confession was a deliberate diversion intended to give Kinder Garten time to flee. The murder follows a reversal of trust: Jorgen’s story explains his family’s past, but its real purpose is to protect his son in the present. Afterward, Apollo leaves with the cooked sheep’s head Jorgen had been preparing, uncertain whether it can serve as an offering to Emma Valentine and whether Kinder Garten has escaped.

The confession as a diversion

Jorgen’s account of his family history is also an explanation of the anguish and instability he attributes to his son. He says that Gretta Wheeler left him and took Grace Wheeler with her after rejecting his vision and courage. In Jorgen’s telling, his willingness to sacrifice his own child had broken his wife’s trust, and the loss had helped drive Kinder Garten out of his mind. Jorgen presents himself as the person who has cared for his son ever since. The history makes his devotion legible, but it does not make his account disinterested.

The open front door and the light left on are not signs of welcome for Apollo. Jorgen reveals that they are a signal Kinder Garten understands as an instruction to run. The disclosure changes the meaning of the preceding conversation: Jorgen has not simply unburdened himself but has used Apollo’s attention to buy his son time. His explanation that he was doing what a good father would do frames the deception as an act of parental protection. It also exposes the conflict at the heart of the scene: Apollo has been listening to the past while Kinder Garten may be escaping in the present.

Apollo kills Jorgen

Once Jorgen asks for the blade, Apollo goes down on one knee and appears to give it to him. Instead, he uses it to kill Jorgen. The movement makes the exchange a reversal rather than a surrender: Apollo’s gesture of compliance becomes the means by which he acts against the man who has just admitted to deceiving him. Jorgen’s attempt to direct the blade toward himself does not avert the killing.

The kitchen timer sounds during the struggle, abruptly setting an ordinary household task beside the murder. Its alarm continues after Jorgen has fallen, and Apollo turns off the high flame beneath the pot. The timer and the cooking do not interrupt the consequences of the killing; they draw Apollo back to the practical scene around him. He recognizes that Jorgen is dead, then returns to the meal that had been in progress. The episode thus moves from family history and calculated delay to immediate violence, and then to the stubborn continuation of domestic routine.

The meal and the departure

Apollo leaves 124 86th Road under cover of night carrying a covered serving plate with the cooked sheep’s head. The potatoes and cabbage have boiled for three hours and are ruined; the water in both pots has boiled away, leaving what remains scorched. The sheep’s head, by contrast, has stayed whole through the cooking. These details mark the cost of the time spent in the house: the meal has been prepared, but the rest of it is lost while the confrontation unfolds.

Jorgen had told Apollo that he brought meals to Emma Valentine, sometimes Starbucks and sometimes food he had made, as a kind of offering. Apollo wonders whether he must do the same and whether the sheep’s head will be enough. His questions leave the gesture unresolved: he carries the food without knowing whether he has learned the steps that would make it meaningful. He also wonders whether Kinder Garten came to the front door, saw Jorgen’s signal, and escaped while Apollo was occupied in the windowless den. The possibility is Apollo’s inference, not a confirmed account of Kinder Garten’s movements.

Consequences and significance

Jorgen’s death does not resolve the danger that brought Apollo to the house. The old man’s signal may have succeeded, and Apollo leaves without knowing whether Kinder Garten is still nearby. The murder instead converts the deception into a lasting practical uncertainty: Apollo has stopped Jorgen from directing the encounter, but he may have lost the time needed to learn what comes next. His departure with the meal makes that uncertainty concrete. The cooked sheep’s head is at once the surviving product of Jorgen’s domestic labor and an object Apollo carries forward without knowing whether it can fulfill the purpose Jorgen described.

The scene gives Jorgen’s appeal to fatherhood a double consequence. His effort to protect his son leads him to manipulate Apollo, and that manipulation provokes Apollo’s fatal response. The phrase of paternal duty is therefore not simply an excuse or a moral resolution; it names the principle Jorgen uses to justify a deception whose consequences neither man controls. Apollo kills him, yet does not emerge with certainty or closure. He leaves the house at night with a possible offering, a ruined meal behind him, and the possibility that the person he came to confront has already escaped.