The Great Alone Read online

  She figured it was a reflection of her inner life. She’d rather have nightmares about Randall Flagg or Carrie or Jack Torrance than about her own past.

  She was just turning a page when she heard voices, lowered, moving past her room.

  Leni glanced at the bedside clock, one of dozens in the house, all ticking in time like the beat of a hidden heart. Almost nine P.M.

  Usually her grandparents were in bed by now.

  Leni set the book aside, marking her page. She went to the door, cracked it open just enough so she could peer out.

  Lights were on downstairs.

  Leni slipped out of her room. Her bare feet made no sound on the plush wool carpeting. Her hand gliding down the smooth mahogany banister, she hurried down the steps. At the bottom, the black-and-white marble felt cold beneath her feet.

  Mama was in the living room with her parents. Leni carefully edged forward, just enough so she could see:

  Mama sitting on the burnt-orange sofa, with her parents sitting across from her in matching paisley wingback chairs. Between them, the maple coffee table was decorated with a forest of ornate china figurines.

  “They think he killed us,” Mama said. “I read the local paper today.”

  “He easily might have,” Grandma responded. “I warned you, you recall, not to go to Alaska.”

  “Not to marry him,” Grandpa said.

  “Do you think I need I-told-you-sos?” Mama said. She sighed heavily. “I loved him.”

  Leni heard the sorrow and regret that eddied between the three of them. She wouldn’t have understood that kind of regret even a year ago. She did now.

  “I don’t know what to do from here,” Mama said. “I’ve screwed up Leni’s life and my own, and now I’ve dragged you into it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Grandma said. “Of course you dragged us into it. We’re your parents.”

  Grandpa said, “This is for you.”

  Leni wanted to peer around but didn’t dare. She heard the squeaking of a chair, then heels clicking on hardwood floors (Grandpa always wore dress shoes, from breakfast to bedtime), and finally a crumpling paper sound.

  “It’s a birth certificate,” Mama said after a moment. “For an Evelyn Chesterfield. Born April 4, 1939. Why are you giving it to me?”

  Leni heard the squeaking chair again. “And here’s a falsified marriage license. You married a man name Chad Grant. With these two documents, you’ll be able to go to the DMV and get a license and a new Social Security card. I have a birth certificate for Leni, too. She’ll be your daughter, Susan Grant. You two will rent a house not far from here. We will tell everyone you are a relative, or our housekeeper. Something. Anything to keep you safe,” Grandpa said, his voice rough with emotion.

  “How did you get these?”

  “I’m a lawyer. I know people. I paid a client of mine, a man of … flexible morals.”

  “That’s not who you are,” Mama said quietly.

  There was a pause, then: “We are all of us changed,” Grandpa said. “We’ve learned the hard way, haven’t we? By making mistakes. We should have listened to you when you were sixteen.”

  “And I should have listened to you.”

  The doorbell rang.

  The sound was so unexpected at this time of night, that Leni felt a clutch of fear. She heard the sound of footsteps, then the rustle of wooden blinds.

  “Police,” she heard her grandpa say.

  Mama hurried out of the living room and saw Leni.

  “Go upstairs,” Grandpa said, following Mama out of the living room.

  Mama took Leni’s hand and led her up the stairs. “This way,” Mama said. “Quiet.”

  They hurried up the stairs and tiptoed down the unlit hallway into the master bedroom—a huge room with mullioned windows and olive green carpet. A four-poster bed was dressed in lace that matched the carpet precisely.

  Mama led Leni to a heating vent in the floor. With care, she pulled the vent out and set it aside.

  Mama knelt down, motioned for Leni to scoot beside her. “I used to eavesdrop on the nuns when they came to expel me.”

  Leni heard footsteps echo through the metal vent slats.

  Men’s voices.

  “Detectives Archer Madison and Keller Watt. Seattle PD.”

  Grandpa: “Is there something amiss in the neighborhood, Officers, at this late hour?”

  “We’re here [something they couldn’t hear] behalf of Alaska state troopers. [Words that blended together] your daughter, Cora Allbright … [something] last seen her … Sorry to say … presumed dead.”

  Leni heard her grandma cry out.

  “Here, ma’am, let us help you sit.”

  A pause. Long. Then a scuffling sound, a briefcase being opened, papers withdrawn. “The pickup truck found … cabin full of blood, broken window, obvious crime scene but the evidence was destroyed by animals … tests inconclusive … X-rays that showed a broken arm … broken nose. Search being conducted, but … this time of year … weather. God knows what we’ll find when the snow melts … keep you informed…”

  “He killed them,” Grandpa said. These words were loud, angry. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Many reports … his violence.”

  Leni turned to her mama. “So we got away with it?”

  “Well … there’s no statute of limitations on murder. And everything we’ve done—and will do at the DMV—will be evidence of guilt. He was shot in the back and we disposed of the body and ran. If he is ever found, they’ll come looking for us, and now my parents have lied for us. Another crime. So we have to be careful.”

  “For how long?”

  “Forever, baby girl.”

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  I’ve called the rehab facility every day this week. I pretend I’m your cousin. The answer is always the same: no change. It breaks a little more of my heart every time.

  I know I can never send this letter and that even if I did, you couldn’t read it or wouldn’t understand the words. But I have to write to you, even if the words are lost. I told myself (and have been told repeatedly by others) that I need to move on with my new life. And I’m trying to do that. I am.

  But you are inside of me, a part of me, maybe even the best part. I’m not talking only about our baby. I hear your voice in my head. You talk to me in my sleep so much I’ve gotten used to waking with tears on my cheeks.

  I guess my mama was right about love. As screwed up as she is, she understands the durability and lunacy of it. You can’t make yourself fall in love, I suppose, and you can’t make yourself fall out of it.

  I am trying to fit in down here. Trying hard. I mean, Susan Grant is trying to fit in. The streets are jammed with cars and the sidewalks are wall-to-wall people and pretty much no one looks at anyone else or says hello. You were right about the beauty, though. When I let myself see it, it’s there. I see it in Mount Rainier, which reminds me of Iliamna and can magically appear and disappear. Down here, it’s called The Mountain because really they only have the one. Not like home, where mountains form the exposed spine of our world.

  My grandparents care about the weirdest things. How the table is set, what time we eat, how well I tuck the sheets into the bed, how tightly I braid my hair. My grandmother handed me tweezers the other day and told me to pluck my eyebrows.

  But we have a nice little rental house not far from them and we can visit if we are careful. I think Mama is surprised to find that she likes to be with her parents. We have plenty to eat and new clothes and when we all sit around the dinner table, we try to knit our lives together, dropped stitches and all.

  Maybe that’s what love is.

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  Christmas here is like an Olympic event. I’ve never seen so much glitter and food. My grandparents gave me so many gifts it was embarrassing. But afterward, when I was in my own room alone, staring out the window at neighbors we stay away from, looking at houses strung in twinkling lights, I thought of real winter. Of you. Of us.

  I looked at the picture of your grandparents and reread your grandmother’s newspaper article.

  I wonder what it’s like for our baby. Does she feel how uncertain I am? Does the song of my broken heart play for her? I want her to be happy. I want her to be the child of our love, of who we were.

  I think I felt the baby move today …

  I’m thinking of her as Lily. After your grandma.

  A girl needs to be strong in this world.

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  I can’t believe it’s 1979. I called the rehab facility again today and heard the usual. No change.

  Unfortunately, my mother overheard my call. She blew her stack and said I was being stupid. Apparently the police can trace the call if they wanted to. So I can’t call anymore. I can’t put us all at risk, but how can I stop? It’s all I have left of you. I know you’re not going to get better, but every time I call, I think, maybe this time. That hope is all I have, useless or not.

  But that’s bad news and that’s easy. You want good news. It’s a new year.

  I am going to the University of Washington. My grandmother pulled some strings and got Susan Grant registered with no evidence of graduation from high school. Life sure is different in the Outside. How much money you have matters.

  College isn’t what I expected. Some of the girls wear these fuzzy Shetland sweaters and plaid skirts and knee socks. I guess they’re sorority girls. They giggle and clump together like sheep and the boys who follow them around are so loud a bear could hear them coming from a mile away.

  In class, I pretend you’re beside me. Once I believed it so much I almost wrote a note to pass you under my desk.

  I miss you. Every day and even more at night. So does Lily. She’s started to kick me awake sometimes. When she does get all squirrelly, I read her Robert Service poems and tell her about you.

  That quiets her right down.

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  Spring here is nothing like breakup. No earth falling away, no house-sized blocks of ice snapping free, no lost things seeping up from the mud.

  It’s just color everywhere. I’ve never seen so many flowering trees; pink blossoms float through the campus.

  My grandfather says the investigation is still open, but no one is looking for us anymore. They assume we are dead.

  In a way, it’s true. The Allbrights vanished into nothing.

  At night I talk to you and Lily now. Does that mean I’m crazy or just lonely? I imagine all three of us huddled in bed, with the northern lights putting on a show outside our window while wind taps on the glass. I tell our baby to be smart and brave. Brave like her dad. I try to tell her to protect herself from the terrible choices she might someday face. I worry that we Allbright women are cursed in love and I hope she will be a boy. Then I remember you saying that you wanted to teach your son the things you had learned on the homestead and … well, it makes me so sad I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and pretend I’m in Alaska in the winter. My heartbeat turns into wind pounding on the glass.

  A boy needs a father and I am all Lily has.

  Poor girl.

  * * *

  “THOSE LAMAZE CLASSES were bogus,” Leni yelled when the next contraction twisted her insides and made her scream. “I want drugs.”

  “You wanted natural childbirth. It’s too late for drugs now,” Mama said.

  “I’m eighteen years old. Why would anyone listen to what I want? I know nothing,” Leni said.

  The contraction ebbed. Pain receded.

  Leni panted. Sweat itched and crawled across her forehead.

  Mama picked up an ice chip from the plastic cup on the table by the hospital bed and popped it in Leni’s mouth.

  “Put morphine in it, Mama,” Leni begged. “Please. I can’t take this. It was a mistake. I’m not ready to be a mother.”

  Mama smiled. “No one is ever ready.”

  The pain began building again. Leni gritted her teeth, concentrated on breathing (like that helped), and clutched her mother’s hand.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, panting, until the pain crested. When it began—finally—to subside, she sank back into the bed, spent. She thought: Matthew should be here, but she pushed the thought aside.

  Another contraction hit seconds later. This time Leni bit her tongue so hard it bled.

  “Scream,” Mama said.

  The door opened and her doctor came in. She was a thin woman wearing blue scrubs and a surgical cap. Her eyebrows were unevenly plucked, which gave her a slightly askew look. “Ms. Grant, how are we feeling?” the doctor asked.

  “Get it out of me. Please.”

  The doctor nodded and put on gloves. “Let’s check, shall we?” She opened the stirrups.

  Normally Leni would not be relieved when a relative stranger sat between her spread legs, but right now she would have splayed herself at the observation deck of the Space Needle if it would end this pain.

  “It looks like we’re having a baby,” the doctor said evenly.

  “No shit,” Leni shouted at another contraction.

  “Okay, Susan. Push. Hard. Harder.”

  Leni did. She pushed, she screamed, she sweated, she swore.

  And then, as quickly as her pain had come, it ended.

  Leni collapsed into the bed.

  “A baby boy,” the doctor said, turning to Mama. “Grandma Eve, do you want to cut the cord?”

  As if through mist, Leni watched her mother cut the cord and follow the doctor over to an area where they wrapped the newborn in a pale blue thermal blanket. Leni tried to sit up but she had no strength left.

  A boy, Matthew. Your son.

  Leni panicked, thought, He needs you, Matthew. I can’t do this …

  Mama helped Leni to a sitting position and put the tiny bundle in her arms.

  Her son. He was the smallest thing she’d ever seen, with a face like a peach and muddy blue eyes that opened and closed and a little rosebud mouth that made sucking motions. A pink fist burst out of the blue blanket and Leni reached down for it.

  The baby’s minuscule fingers closed around hers.

  A searing, cleansing, enveloping love blew her heart into a million tiny pieces and reshaped it. “Oh, my God,” she said in awe.

  “Yeah,” Mama said. “You’ve been asking what it’s like.”

  “Matthew Denali Walker, Junior,” she said quietly. A fourth-generation Alaskan who would never know his father, never feel Matthew’s strong arms around him or hear his steadying voice.

  “Hey, you,” she said.

  She knew now why she had run away from their crime. She hadn’t known before, hadn’t understood, truly, what she had to lose.

  This child. Her son.

  She would give up her life to protect him. She would do anything and everything to keep him safe. Even if that meant listening to her mother and cutting the last, tender thread to Alaska and Matthew—the calls to the rehab center. She wouldn’t call again. The very thought tore her heart, but what else could she do? She was a mother now.

  She was crying softly. Maybe Mama heard and knew why and knew there was nothing to say; or maybe all mothers cried right now. “Matthew,” she whispered, stroking his velvet cheek. “We’ll call you MJ. They called your Daddy Mattie sometimes, but I never did … and he knew how to fly … he would have loved you so much…”

  1986

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “I don’t know how to live with what I’ve done to her life,” Cora said.

  “It’s been years,” her mother said. “Look at her. She’s happy. Why must we keep having this conversation?”

  Cora wanted to agree. It was what she said to herself on a daily basis. Look, she’s happy. Sometimes, she was able to almost wholly believe it. And then there were days like today. She didn’t know what caused the change. Weather, maybe. Old habits. The kind of corrosive fear that once it moved in, pitted your bones and stayed forever.

  Seven years had passed since Cora had dragged Leni away from Alaska and brought her here, to this city poised on the water’s edge.

  Cora saw how Leni had tried to put down roots into this rich, wet land, tried to flourish. But Seattle was a city of hundreds of thousands; it could never speak the rugged language of Leni’s pioneer soul.

  Cora lit a cigarette, drew the smoke into her lungs, and let it linger there; instantly she was calmed by the familiar act. She exhaled and lifted her chin, trying to get comfortable on the camp chair. Her lower back ached from a night spent in the pseudo-wilderness sleeping in a tent; her breathing was ragged from a persistent cold.

  Not far away, Leni stood at the river’s edge with a little boy on one side of her and an old man on the other. She cast her line out in a graceful, practiced arc, the line snapping and dancing in the air before it cascaded into the calm water. Late spring sunlight painted all of it gold; the water, the three mismatched figures, the nearby trees. Even as the sun shone down on them it began to rain, tiny droplets drawn from the damp air.

  They were in the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the last refuges of pure wilderness in the populated western half of Washington State. They came here as often as they could and pitched their tents on campsites that offered both electricity and water. Here, away from the crowds, they could be who they really were. They didn’t have to worry about being seen together or making up stories or telling lies. It had been years since anyone had mentioned the Allbright family in Alaska or gone looking for any of them, but still, they were always on guard.

  Leni said she could breathe in this wilderness, where the trees were as big around as Volkswagens and grew high enough to block out the recalcitrant sun. She said she had things to teach her son that were part of his heritage, lessons that couldn’t be taught where the world was paved and lit by streetlamps. Things his father would have taught him.

  In the past few years, Cora’s father had become an avid fisherman—or maybe he was just an avid grandfather who did anything and everything to make Leni and MJ smile. He’d quit practicing law and had become a putterer around the house.

  So they came camping out here as often as they could, regardless of the rain that greeted them ten times out of twelve, even in midsummer. They caught fish for dinner and fried it in cast-iron skillets over an open flame. At night, while they all sat around the campfire, Leni recited poems and told stories set in the wilderness of Alaska.

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