The Great Alone

“Even in the bush, they’ll investigate a local man who disappears, Leni,” Large Marge said. “Remember how everyone came together to look for Geneva Walker? The first place they’ll look is the cabin. And what will you say about the shot-out window? I know Curt Ward. He’s a by-the-book cop. He might even bring in a dog or call an investigator from Anchorage. No matter how well we clean, there could be evidence here. A human bone fragment. Something to identify your father. If they find it, they’ll arrest you both for murder.”

Mama went to Leni. “I’m sorry, baby girl, but you wanted this. I was willing to take the blame alone, but you wouldn’t let me. We’re in it together now.”

Leni felt as if she were free-falling. In her naïveté, she’d thought they could do this terrible thing and pay no price beyond the shadowing of their souls, the memories and nightmares.

But it would cost Leni everything she loved. Matthew. Kaneq. Alaska.

“Leni, we don’t have a choice now.”

“When have we ever had a choice?” Leni said.

Leni wanted to scream and cry and be the child it felt she’d never been, but if her youth and her family had taught her anything, it was how to survive.

Mama was right. There was no way they could clean up this blood. And dogs and police would sniff out the crime. What if Dad had an appointment tomorrow they didn’t know about and someone called the police to report him missing before they were ready? What if his body slipped free of the shackles and floated to the shore when the water thawed and a hunter found him?

As always, Leni had to think about the people she loved.

Mama had taken every hit to protect Leni, and she’d shot Dad to save Leni. She couldn’t leave Mama alone now, on the run; and Leni couldn’t raise her baby alone, either. She felt an overwhelming sadness, a suffocating sense of having run a marathon only to end up in the same place.

At least they would be together, the two of them, like always. And the baby would have a chance at something better.

“Okay.” She turned to Large Marge. “What do we do?”

The next hour was spent on final details: they parked the truck on the side of the road, with blood smeared across the door handle. They knocked over furniture and left out an empty whiskey bottle and Large Marge shot twice into the log walls. They left the cabin door open for animals to enter and further ruin any evidence.

“Are you ready?” Mama asked at last.

Leni wanted to say, No. I’m not ready. I belong here. But it was too late to salvage Before. She nodded grimly.

Large Marge hugged them both tightly, kissed their wet cheeks, told them to have a good life. “I’ll report you missing,” she whispered in Leni’s ear. “I’ll never tell a living soul about this. You can trust me.”

By the time Leni and Mama walked down their zigzagged beach steps for the last time, in a blinding snowfall, Leni felt like she was a thousand years old.

She followed her mother down onto the snowy, slushy beach. Wind whipped hair across Mama’s eyes, tore the volume from her voice, rattled the pack on her back. Leni could tell Mama was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear the words and didn’t care. She sloshed through icy waves toward the skiff. Tossing her pack into the boat, she climbed aboard and sat down on the wooden bench seat. On the shore, falling snow would soon erase all evidence of their path; it would be as if they’d never been here at all.

Mama jumped aboard. Without lights to guide them, she motored slowly along the shore, gripping the wheel in gloved hands, her hair flying every which way.

They rounded the bend as a new dawn glimmered and showed them the way.

* * *

THEY PULLED UP TO the transient dock in Homer.

“I need to say goodbye to Matthew,” Leni said.

Mama tossed Leni a line. “No way. We need to go. And we can’t be seen today. You know that.”

Leni tied the boat down. “It wasn’t a question.”

Mama reached down for her pack, hefted it up, slipped it onto her back. Taking care, Leni stepped out of the skiff and onto the icy dock. The lines made a creaking sound.

Mama turned off the engine and stepped off the boat. The two of them stood in the softly falling snow.

Leni pulled a scarf out of her pack and coiled it around her neck, covering the lower half of her face. “No one will see me, Mama, but I’m going.”

“Be at the Glass Lake counter in forty minutes,” Mama answered. “Not one minute late. Okay?”

“We’re going to fly? How?”