His father stood at the end of the dock, his arms at his sides.
Matthew jumped off the pontoon and onto the dock and tied the float plane down. He remained that way, bent over, his back to his father, for a moment longer than necessary, gathering the strength he needed to really be here.
At last he straightened, turned.
His father was close now; he pulled Matthew into a bone-jarring hug that went on so long Matthew had to gasp for breath. Dad drew back finally, looked at him, and love took shape in the air around them, a regret-and memory-filled version, maybe, sad around the edges, but love.
It had been only a few months since they’d seen each other. (Dad made it a point to come to several of Matthew’s hockey games and visit in Fairbanks as often as the harsh weather and homesteading chores allowed, but they had never really talked about anything that mattered.)
Dad seemed older, his skin more lined and creased. He smiled in that way of his, the way he did everything in life, full tilt, no explanations, no regrets, no safety nets. You knew Tom Walker in a glance, because he let you in. You knew instantly that this was a man who always told the truth as he saw it, whether it was popular or not, who had a set of rules to guide his life and no other rules mattered. He laughed harder than any man Matthew had ever met, and Matthew had only seen him cry once. On that day out on the ice.
“You’re even taller than the last time I saw you.”
“I’m like the Hulk. I keep tearing through my clothes.”
Dad grabbed Matthew’s suitcase and led him up the dock, past the fishing boat straining at its lines; seabirds cawed overhead, waves slapped the pilings. The smell of kelp baking in the sun and eelgrass beaten down by waves greeted him.
At the top of the stairs, Matthew got his first glimpse of the big log home with the soaring bowed front and wraparound deck. A welcoming light illuminated the pots hanging from the eaves, still full of last year’s dead geraniums.
Mom’s pots.
He paused, caught his breath.
He hadn’t realized how time could unspool the years of your life until for a second you were fourteen again, crying from a place so deep it seemed to predate you, desperate to be whole again.
Dad went on ahead.
Matthew forced himself to move. He passed by the weather-grayed picnic table and climbed the wooden steps to the purple-painted front door. Beside it hung a metal cutout of an orca that read WHALECOME! (That had been a gift from Matthew; it always cracked his mother up.)
It brought tears to his eyes. He wiped them away, embarrassed by the display in front of his stoic father, and went inside.
The house looked the same as it always had. A cluster of reclaimed and antique furniture in the living room, an old picnic table draped in bright yellow fabric with a vase of blue flowers placed in its center. A collection of candles stood like a medieval village around the flowers. His mother’s touch was everywhere. He could almost hear her.
The interior of the house, bark-darkened log walls, windows large enough to capture the view, a pair of brown leather couches, a piano Grandma had had shipped in from the Outside. He walked over to the window, stared out, saw the cove and the dock through a watery image of his own face.
He felt his father come up behind him. “Welcome home.”
Home. The word had layers of meaning. A place. An emotion. Memories. “She was out ahead of me,” he said, hearing the unsteadiness of his voice.
He heard the way his father drew in a sharp breath. Would he stop Matthew, abort this conversation they’d never dared to have?
There was a moment, a pause that lasted less time than an indrawn breath; then Dad laid a heavy hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “No one could contain your mother,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Matthew didn’t know how to respond. There was so much to say, but they’d never talked about any of it. How could you even start a conversation like that?
Dad pulled Matthew into a fierce embrace. “I’m glad as hell you’re back.”
“Yeah,” Matthew said hoarsely. “Me, too.”
*
MID-APRIL. Dawn washed across the land well before seven A.M. When Leni first opened her eyes, even though it was to darkness, she felt the buoyancy that came with the changing of the seasons. As an Alaskan, she could feel the nascent light, see it in the lessening of the inky black to a charcoal hue. It carried with it a sense of hope, of daylight coming, of everything would be better now. Of he would be better.
But none of that was true this spring. Even as sunlight was returning, her dad was getting worse. Angry and intense. More jealous of Tom Walker.
Leni had a terrible, building feeling that something bad was going to happen.
All day at school she battled a headache. On her bike ride home, she started getting a stomachache. She tried to tell herself it was her period, but she knew better. It was stress. Worry. She and Mama had gone into alert mode again. They made eye contact constantly, walked carefully, tried to be invisible.
She rode expertly over the bumpy driveway, taking care to stay on the high ground between the two muddy tire ruts.
In her yard—a morass of mud and running water—she saw that the red truck was gone, which meant that Dad was either hunting or had gone to see the Harlans.
She slanted her bike against the cabin and did her chores, feeding the animals, checking their water, bringing in the dry sheets from the line, dropping them into a willow basket. Holding the laundry basket on her hip, she heard the high, rubber-band sound of a boat engine, and stared out at the water, tenting a hand across her eyes. High tide.
An aluminum skiff turned into their cove. The put-put-put of the engine was the only sound for miles. Leni tossed the laundry basket onto the porch and headed for the beach stairs, which they’d strengthened over the years. Almost all of the boards were new; only here and there could you see the tarnished gray of the original stairs. She descended the zigzag steps in her muddy boots.
The boat puttered forward, its sharp prow angled up proudly on the waves. A man stood at the console, guided the boat forward, beached it.
Matthew.
He killed the engine and stepped out into the ankle-deep water, held on to the boat’s ragged white line.
She touched her hair in embarrassment. She hadn’t bothered to braid it or brush it this morning. And she was wearing the exact same outfit she’d worn to school today and the day before. Her flannel shirt probably smelled like wood smoke.
Oh, God.
He pulled the boat up onto the beach, dropped the rope, and walked toward her. For years she’d imagined this moment; in her musings, she always knew exactly what to say. In the privacy of her imagination, they just started talking, picked up the thread of their friendship as if he’d never been gone.
But in her mind, he was Matthew, the fourteen-year-old kid who’d showed her frogs’ eggs and baby eagles, the boy who’d written her every week. Dear Leni, it’s hard at this school. I don’t think anyone likes me … And to whom she’d written back. I know a lot about being the new kid in school. It blows. Let me give you a few tips …
This … man was someone else, someone she didn’t know. Tall, long blond hair, incredibly good-looking. What could she say to this Matthew?
He reached into his backpack, pulled out the worn, banged-up, yellowed version of The Lord of the Rings that Leni had sent him for his fifteenth birthday. She remembered the inscription she’d written in it. Friends forever, like Sam and Frodo.
A different girl had written that. One who hadn’t known the ugly truth about her toxic family.
“Like Sam and Frodo,” he said.
“Sam and Frodo,” Leni repeated after him.