The Great Alone

“Just do it.” Leni moved quietly across the cabin, eased through the beaded curtain. Her heartbeat was a hammer hitting her rib cage as she looked around, saw what she’d come for.

Keys. Mama’s purse. Not that there was any money in it.

She grabbed it all and started to leave and then stopped, turned back.

She looked at her dad, sprawled facedown on the bed, naked, his butt covered by a blanket. Burn scars puckered and twisted his shoulders and arms, the skin looked lavender-blue in the shadows. Blood smeared the pillow.

She left him there and went back to the living room, where Mama stood alone, smoking a cigarette, looking like she’d been beaten with a club.

“Come on,” Leni said, taking her hand, giving a gentle, insistent tug.

Mama said, “Where are we going?”

Leni opened the door, gave Mama a little shove, then she reached down for one of the bug-out bags that were always by the door, a silent ode to the worst that could happen, a reminder that smart people were prepared.

Hefting it onto her shoulder, Leni leaned into the wind and snow and followed her mother out to the bus. “Get in,” she said gently.

Mama climbed into the driver’s seat and fit the key into the ignition, giving it a turn. As the VW warmed, she said dully, “Where are we going?”

Leni tossed the big pack into the back of the bus. “We’re leaving, Mama.”

“What?”

Leni climbed into the passenger seat. “We’re leaving him before he kills you.”

“Oh. That. No.” Mama shook her head. “He would never do that. He loves me.”

“I think your nose is broken.”

Mama sat there a minute longer, her face downcast. Then, slowly, she put the old VW in gear, and turned toward the driveway. Headlights pointed to the way out.

Mama started to cry in that quiet way of hers, as if she thought Leni couldn’t tell. As they drove into the trees, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror, wiping her tears away. When they reached the main road, a feral wind clawed at the bus. Mama worked the gas carefully, trying to keep the bus steady on the snow-packed ground.

They passed the Walker gate and kept going.

At the next bend in the road, a gust of wind punched the bus hard enough that they skidded sideways. A broken branch cracked into the windshield, got caught for a second in the wiper, was slammed up and down before it blew away, and revealed a giant bull moose in front of them, crossing the road on a turn.

Leni screamed a warning, but she knew it was too late. They had to either hit the moose or swerve too hard, and hitting an animal of that size would destroy the bus.

Mama turned the steering wheel, eased her foot off the accelerator.

The bus, never good in the snow, began a long, slow pirouette.

Leni saw the moose as they glided past him—his huge head inches from her window, his nostrils flaring.

“Hang on,” Mama screamed.

They hit a berm of snow and flipped over; the bus cartwheeled and plummeted off the road, landing in a screech of metal.

Leni saw it in pieces—trees upside down, a snowy hillside, broken branches.

She cracked her head into the window.

When she regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was quiet. Then the pain in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth. Her mother was slumped beside her; both of them were in the passenger seat.

“Leni? Are you okay?”

“I … think so.”