The Great Alone

“Oh, you know teenagers,” Mama said, her voice fluttery.

“I am asking Leni, not you, Cora.”

“I was thinking it would be fun to go out, spend the day together. Maybe try our luck at Pedersen’s Resort on the Kenai. We’ve always had good luck there.”

“Good thought.” Dad stepped back from the new snow machine, glanced down the driveway. “Well. It’s summer. I have work to do.”

He left them standing there alone, went to the toolshed, and retrieved his chain saw. Hefting it over his shoulder, he headed toward the driveway and disappeared into the trees.

Mama and Leni stood there, barely breathing, until they heard the chain saw whir to life.

Mama turned to Leni, whispered harshly, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. You could have gotten caught.”

“We fell asleep.”

“Fatal mistakes often look ordinary. Come,” Mama said, leading her into the cabin. “Sit by the fire. I’ll comb your hair. It’s a mess. You’re lucky he’s not one to notice a thing like that.”

Leni grabbed a three-legged stool and dragged it over to the woodstove. She sat down on it, hooking her bare feet on the bottom rung, unbraiding her hair as she waited.

Mama pulled a wide-toothed comb from the blue coffee can on her makeshift vanity and slowly began combing the tangles out of Leni’s waist-length hair. Then she massaged Leni’s scalp with oil and smoothed some of the fragrant balm-of-Gilead rub they made from the buds onto Leni’s rough hands. “You think you got away with it this time and so you want to see Matthew again. That’s what you were really thinking, right?”

Of course Mama knew.

“I’ll be smarter next time,” Leni said.

“There won’t be a next time, Leni.” Mama took Leni by the shoulders, turned her around on the stool. “You will wait until college, like we talked about. We will do as we planned. In September, you’ll see Matthew in Anchorage and start your life.”

“I’ll die if I don’t see him.”

“No. You won’t. Please, Leni, think about me instead of yourself.”

Leni was ashamed of herself, embarrassed by her selfishness. “I’m sorry, Mama. You’re right. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Sex changes everything,” Mama said quietly.

* * *

A WEEK LATER, while Mama and Leni were eating oatmeal for breakfast, the cabin door opened. Dad strode inside, his dark hair and flannel shirt dusted with wood chips. “Come with me. Both of you. Hurry!”

Leni followed her parents out of the cabin and toward the driveway. Dad was walking fast, really covering ground. Mama stumbled along beside him, struggling to keep up on the spongy ground.

Leni heard her mother say, “Oh, my God,” in a whisper, and Leni looked up.

The wall her dad had been building all summer was in front of them. Finished. Plank after plank of newly milled wood ran in a straight line, topped in coiled razor wire. It looked like something out of the Gulag.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Now there was a gate across the driveway; a length of heavy metal chain kept the gate closed. A metal lock hung from loops in the chain. Leni saw the key hanging from a chain around her father’s throat.

Dad pulled Mama in close. He was smiling now. He leaned in, whispered something in Mama’s ear, and kissed the small purple bruise at the base of her throat.

“Now it’s just us, in here, cut off from the whole damn backstabbing world,” he said. “We’ll be safe now.”

* * *

FEAR, LENI LEARNED, was not the small, dark closet she’d always imagined: walls pressed in close, a ceiling you bumped your head on, a floor cold to the touch.

No.

Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.