The Great Alone

How pathetic, that she had no one to talk to about this. That her best friend had no idea who she was.

She folded the letter up and put it in the shoe box with all the others she’d written over the years and never sent.

* * *

THAT SUMMER, Leni watched cancer erase her mother. First to go was her hair, then her eyebrows. Next was the firm line of her shoulders; they began to droop. Then she lost her posture and her stride. Finally, cancer took away movement altogether.

By late July, after cancer had erased so much, the truth was revealed by her latest CT scan. Nothing they had done had helped.

Leni sat quietly beside her mother, holding her hand when they learned that the treatment had failed. The cancer was everywhere, an enemy on the move, hacking through bones, destroying organs. There was no discussion about trying again or fighting it.

Instead, they moved back into the Golliher house, set up a hospital bed in the sunroom, where light flowed through the windows, and contacted hospice care.

Mama had fought for her life, fought harder than she had fought for anything, but cancer did not care about effort.

Now Mama slowly, slowly angled up in the bed to a slouchy sitting position. An unlit cigarette trembled in her veiny hand. She could no longer smoke, of course, but she liked to hold them. There were a few strands of hair on the pillow, running like gold veins on white cotton. An oxygen tank stood by the bed; clear tubes inserted into Mama’s nostrils helped her breathe.

Leni got up from her place beside the bed and put down the book she’d been reading aloud. She poured Mama a drink of water and offered it. Mama reached for the plastic cup. Her hands were shaking so badly Leni placed her own hands over her mother’s, helped her hold on to the cup. Mama took a hummingbird sip and coughed. Her bird-thin shoulders shook so hard Leni swore she heard the bones rattling beneath the thin skin.

“I dreamed of Alaska last night,” Mama said, slumping back into the pillows. She looked up at Leni. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

Leni felt a shock at hearing the word mentioned so casually. By tacit agreement, they hadn’t spoken about Alaska—or Dad or Matthew—in years, but perhaps it was inevitable that they would circle back to the beginning as the end neared.

“A lot of it was great,” Leni said. “I loved Alaska. I loved Matthew. I loved you. I even loved Dad,” she admitted quietly.

“There was fun. I want you to remember that. And adventure. When you remember, I know it’s easy to pull the bad up. Your dad’s violence. The excuses I made. My sad love for him. But there was good love, too. Remember that. Your dad loved you.”

This hurt more than Leni could bear, but she saw how much her mama needed to say these words. “I know,” Leni said.

“You’ll tell MJ all about me, okay? You tell him how I never sang the words to any song right and how I wore hot pants and sandals and I looked good in that shit. You tell him how I learned to be Alaska-tough even though I didn’t want to, and how I never let the bad stuff kill me, how I kept going. You tell him I loved his mother from the moment I saw her and that I’m proud of her.”

“I love you, too, Mama,” Leni said, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, but all they had now was words—too many of them—and too little time.

“You’re a good mother, Leni, even as young as you are. I was never as good a mom as you are.”

“Mama—”

“No lies, baby girl. I don’t have time.”

Leni leaned down to smooth the few hairs back from Mama’s forehead. They were fine as goose down, wispy. This whittling down of her was unbearable. With every exhalation, it seemed, Mama lost a little more of her life force.

Mama reached slowly for the nightstand. The top drawer glided open with the soundlessness of expensive crafting. With a shaking hand, she pulled out a letter, folded crisply into thirds. “Here.”

Leni didn’t want to take it.

“Please.”

Leni took the letter, unfolded it carefully, and saw what was written on the page, in a scrawling, barely legible handwriting. It read:

I, Coraline Margaret Golliher Allbright, shot my husband, Ernt Allbright, when he was beating me.

I weighed his dead body down with animal traps and sank it in Glass Lake. I ran away because I feared going to prison, even though I believed then—and now—that I saved my life that night. My husband had been abusive for years. Many Kaneq residents suspected the abuse and tried to help. I didn’t allow it.

His death is on my hands and on my conscience. Guilt has turned itself into cancer and is killing me. God’s justice.

I killed him and hid the body. I did it all alone. My daughter had nothing to do with it.

Sincerely, Coraline Allbright