The Great Alone

“Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like … how I think about you all of the time? It makes me feel crazy, how much I think about you.” He pulled her in for a kiss. They made out forever, time slowing down just for them; tasting each other, taking each other in. Sometimes they talked, whispered secrets or made jokes, or stopped talking altogether and just kissed. Leni learned the magic of knowing someone else through touch.

Her body wakened again in his arms, but lovemaking was different the second time. Words had changed it somehow, real life had pushed its way in.

She was scared that this was all they would ever have. Just this day. Scared that she’d never get to go to college or that Dad would kill Mama in her absence. Scared even that this love she felt for Matthew wasn’t real, or that it was real and flawed, that maybe she’d been so damaged by her parents that she couldn’t know what love really was.

“No,” she said to herself, to him, to the universe. “I love you, Matthew.”

It was the only thing she knew for sure.

TWENTY

A hand clamped over Leni’s mouth; a voice whispered harshly, “Len, wake up.”

She opened her eyes.

“We fell asleep. Someone’s here.”

Leni gasped into Matthew’s palm.

It had stopped raining. Sunlight poured through the skylight.

Outside, she heard a truck engine, heard the rattle of the metal bed on the axle as the truck rolled over the ground.

“Oh, my God,” Leni said. She scrambled over Matthew, snatched up some clothes and dressed quickly. She was almost to the railing when she heard the door open.

Dad walked in, stopped, looked down.

He was standing on the wet heap of her dress.

Shit.

She launched herself over the side of the railing and half climbed, half slid down the loft ladder.

Dad bent down for her soggy dress, lifted it up. Water dripped from the eyelet hem.

“I—I got caught in that squall,” Leni said. Her heartbeat was so hard, she was breathless. Dizzy. She glanced around for anything that might give them away and saw Matthew’s boots.

She let out a little cry.

The rack to Dad’s left was full of guns, the shelf beneath them layered with boxes of ammunition. He barely had to turn, reach out, and he’d be armed.

Leni rushed over and grabbed her soaking-wet dress.

Mama frowned. Her gaze followed Leni’s, landed on the boots. Her eyes widened. She looked at Leni and then at the loft. Her face went pale.

“Why did you wear your good dress?” Dad asked.

“G-girls are funny that way, Ernt,” Mama said, sidling sideways, blocking Dad’s view of the boots.

Dad looked around; his nostrils flared. Leni was reminded of a predator on the scent. “Something smells different in here.”

Leni hung her dress up on a hook by the door. “It’s the picnic I packed for us,” Leni said. “I—I wanted to surprise you.”

Dad walked over to the table, flipped open the picnic basket, looked inside. “There are only two plates.”

“I got hungry and ate mine. That’s for you guys. I—I thought you’d enjoy it after the haul to Sterling.”