The Great Alone

He shambled forward in a lurching, unsteady gait that probably made her think he could fall at any moment. He’d fallen a lot, gotten up more.

“Matthew?” She moved toward him, her face tilted up.

Her beauty made him want to cry. He wanted to tell her that when he painted, he felt her, remembered her, that it had started in rehab as occupational therapy and now it was his passion. Sometimes when he was painting he could forget all of it, the pain, the memories, the loss, and imagine a future with Leni, their love like sunshine and warm water. He imagined them having kids, growing old together. All of it.

He strained to find all those words. It was like suddenly being in a dark room. You knew there was a door, but you couldn’t find it.

Breathe, Matthew. Stress made it worse.

He drew in a breath, released it. He limped over to the bedside table, picked up the box full of the letters she’d sent him all those years ago, while he was in the hospital, and the others, the ones she’d sent when he was a grief-stricken kid in Fairbanks. They were how he’d learned to read again. He handed it to her, unable to ask the question that had haunted him: Why did you stop writing to me?

She looked down, saw her letters in the box, and looked up at him. “You kept them? After I left you?”

“Your letters,” he said. He knew the words were elongated; he had to concentrate to create the combinations he wanted. “Were how I. Learned to read again.”

Leni stared up at him.

“I prayed. You’d. Come back,” he said.

“I wanted to,” she whispered.

He gave her a smile, knowing how it pulled down the skin at his eye, made him look even more freakish.

She put her arms around him and he was amazed at how they still fit together. After all the ways he’d been put back together, restrung and bolted up; they still fit together. She touched his scarred face. “You are so beautiful.”

He tightened his hold on her, tried to steady himself, feeling suddenly, inexplicably afraid.

“Are you okay? Are you in pain?”

He didn’t know how to say what he was feeling, or he was afraid that if he said it, she’d think less of him. He’d been drowning for all of these years without her, and she was the shore he’d been flailing to find. But surely she would look into his ravaged, stitched-together face and run away, and then he would drift back into the deep, dark waters alone.

He pulled away, limped back over to his wheelchair, and sat down with an oomph of pain. He shouldn’t have held her, felt her body against his. How would he ever forget the feel of her again? He tried to get back onto an ordinary track, but couldn’t find his way. He was trembling. “Where. Have you been?”

“Seattle.” She moved toward him. “It’s a long story.”

At her touch, the world—his world—had cracked open or broke apart. Something. He wanted to revel in the moment, burrow into it like a pile of furs and let it warm him, but none of it felt real or safe. “Tell me.”

She shook her head.

“I disappoint. You.”

“You aren’t the disappointment, Matthew. I am. I always have been. I was the one who left. And when you needed me most. I would understand if you can’t forgive me. I can’t forgive me. I did it because, well … there’s someone you need to meet. Afterwards, if you still want to, we can talk.”

Matthew frowned. “Someone. Here?”

“Outside with your dad and Atka. Will you come with me to meet him?”

Him.

Disappointment settled deep, all the way to his bolted-together bones. “I don’t need to meet. Your him.”

“You’re mad. I get it. You said we always stand by the people we love, but I didn’t. I ran.”

“Don’t talk. Go,” he said in a harsh voice. “Please. Just go.”

She looked at him, tears in her eyes. She was so beautiful he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to cry, to scream. How would he ever let her go? He had been waiting for this moment, for her, for them, for all the years he could remember, through pain so bad he cried in his sleep, but every day he woke and thought, Her, and he tried again. He’d imagined a million versions of their future, but he’d never imagined this. Her coming back just to say goodbye.

“You have a son, Matthew.”