The Great Alone

“You don’t have to be the only one protecting her, you know,” he said. “We’ll all take care of you. It’s always been that way in Kaneq.”

Leni wanted that to be true. She wanted to believe there was a safe place for her and Mama, a do-over of their lives, a beginning that didn’t rise from the ashes of a violent, terrible ending. Mostly, she didn’t want to feel solely responsible for her mama’s safety anymore.

She turned to Matthew, loving him so much, so desperately, it felt like she was being held underwater and needed oxygen. “I love you.”

“Me, too,” he said.

Up here, in the vastness of Alaska, the words sounded infinitesimal and small. A fist shaken at the gods.

TWENTY-ONE

His job was to keep her safe.

Leni was his North Star. He knew it sounded stupid and girlie and romantic and that people would say he was too young to know these things, only he wasn’t. When your mom died, you grew up.

He hadn’t been able to protect his mom, to save her.

He was stronger now.

He held Leni in his arms all night last night, loved her, felt her twitch at bad dreams, listened to her sobs. He knew how that was, nightmares like that about your mom.

Finally, when the first glimmer of daylight pulsed through the pup tent’s tangerine nylon sides, he eased away from her, smiling at the muffled sound of her snoring. He dressed in yesterday’s clothes, put on his hiking boots, and stepped outside.

Gray clouds muscled across the sky, lowered over the trail. The breeze was more a sigh than anything else, but it was the end of August. The leaves were changing color at night. They both knew what that meant. Change came even faster up here.

Matthew busied himself building a fire on the black remnants of last night’s blaze. Sitting on a rock, leaning forward, he stared into the wavering flames. The breeze kicked up, taunted the flames.

Now, sitting by the fire alone, he admitted to himself that he was afraid he’d done the wrong thing by bringing Leni here, afraid he’d done the wrong thing by leaving Cora in Kaneq. Afraid he’d turn around and see Ernt barreling up the trail with a rifle in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.

Mostly he was afraid for Leni, because no matter how this all worked out, no matter if she did everything perfectly and got away and saved her mom, Leni’s heart would always have a broken place. It didn’t matter how you lost a parent or how great or shitty that parent was, a kid grieved forever. Matthew grieved for the mother he’d had. He figured Leni would grieve for the dad she wanted.

He settled a camp coffeepot in the fire, right in the flames.

Behind him, he heard rustling, the zipping sound of nylon being moved. Leni pushed back the flaps and stepped out into the morning. A raindrop splatted into her eye as she braided her hair.

“Hey,” he said, offering her coffee. Another raindrop fell on the metal cup.

She took the cup in both hands, sat beside him, leaned against him. Another raindrop fell, pinged on the coffeepot, sizzled and turned to steam.

“Great timing,” Leni said. “It’s going to dump on us any second.”

“There’s a cave up at Glacier Ridge.”

She looked up at him. “I can’t stay away.”

“But your mom said—”

“I’m scared,” she said in a small voice.

He heard the spike of uncertainty in her voice, recognized that she was asking him something, not simply telling him that she was afraid.

He understood.

She didn’t know what the right answer was and she was afraid to be wrong.

“You think I should go back for her?” she asked.

“I think you stand by the people you love.”