“I won’t leave the property and I’ll lock the door,” Leni promised.
“Good girl.” Dad grabbed a box full of pelts that he would sell to the furrier in Sterling and headed for the door.
When he was gone, Mama said, “Please, Leni. Don’t screw up. You’re so close to leaving for college. Just a few weeks.” She sighed. “You are not listening.”
“I am listening. I won’t do anything stupid,” Leni lied.
Outside, the truck horn honked.
Leni hugged her mother and literally shoved her toward the door.
Leni watched them drive away.
Then she waited, counted down the minutes until the ferry’s departure time.
Precisely forty-seven minutes after they left, she jumped onto her bicycle and pedaled down the bumpy driveway, through the opening in the plank wall and onto the main road. She turned onto the Walker’s road. She came to a thumping stop in front of the two-story log house and stepped off her bike, glancing around. No one would be inside on a day like this, not with so many chores to do. She saw Mr. Walker off to the left, near the trees, driving a bulldozer, moving piles of dirt around.
Leni dropped her bike in the grass and walked over the grassy berm and stared down the wide, weathered gray steps that led to the pebbled beach. Broken mussel shells lay scattered across the kelp and mud and rocks.
Matthew stood in the shallow water at a sloping metal table, filleting big silver and red salmon, pulling sacs of bright orange eggs out, carefully laying them out to dry. Seagulls cawed overhead, swooping and flapping, waiting for scraps. Guts floated in the water, brushed up against his boots.
“Matthew!” she yelled down at him.
He looked up.
“My parents are on the ferry. Going to Sterling. Can you come over? We have all day together.”
He put down his ulu. “Holy shit! I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Leni went back to her bike and jumped on.
At the homestead, she fed and watered the animals and then ran around like a madwoman, trying to get ready for her first real date. She packed a picnic basket full of food and brushed her teeth—again—and shaved her legs and dressed in a pretty, off-white Gunne Sax dress Mama had given her for her seventeenth birthday. She twined her waist-length hair into a single wrist-thick braid and tied the end with a piece of grosgrain ribbon. Her stretched-out gray wool socks and wafflestompers kind of ruined the romantic effect, but it was the best she could do.
Then she waited. Holding her picnic basket and blanket, she stood on the deck, tapping her foot. Off to her right, the goats and chickens seemed agitated. They were probably sensing her nervousness. Overhead, a sky that should have been cornflower blue darkened. Clouds rolled in, stretched out, dimmed the sun.
They were on the ferry now, pulling into Homer; they had to be. Please don’t let them come back for something.
While she was staring down the shadowy driveway, she heard a distant motor whirring. Fishing boat. The sound was as common here in the summer as the drone of mosquitoes.
She ran to the edge of the property just as an aluminum fishing boat puttered into their cove. Nearing the beach, the motor clicked off and the boat glided soundlessly forward, beaching itself on the pebbled shore. Matthew stood at the console, waving.
She hurried down the stairs to the beach.
Matthew jumped down into the shallow water and came toward Leni, dragging the boat higher on the beach behind him, mesmerizing her with his smile, his confidence, the love in his eyes.
In an instant, a glance, the tension that had held her in its maw for months released. She felt giddy, young. In love.
“We have until five,” she said.
He swept her off her feet and kissed her.
Laughing at the sheer joy she felt, Leni took him by the hand and led him past the caves on the beach to an inland trail that led to a stub of forested land that overlooked the other side of the bay. Cliffs jutted out beneath them, defiant slabs of stone. Here, the ocean crashed against the rocky shore, sprayed up and landed like wet kisses on their skin.
She laid out the blanket she’d brought and set down the picnic basket.
“What did you bring?” Matthew asked, sitting down.
Leni knelt on the blanket. “Easy stuff. Halibut sandwiches, crab salad, some fresh beans, sugar cookies.” She looked up, smiling. “This is my first date.”
“Mine, too.”
“We’ve lived weird lives,” she said.
“Maybe everyone does,” he said, sitting down beside her, and then lying down, pulling her into his arms. For the first time in months, she could breathe.
They kissed so long she lost track of time, of fear, of everything except the softness of his tongue against hers and the taste of him.
He loosened one pearl button on her dress, just enough to slip his hand inside. She felt his rough, work-callused fingers glide across her skin; goose bumps changed the feel of her flesh. She felt him touch her breasts, slip beneath the worn cotton of her bra to touch her nipple.
A crack of thunder.
For a second she was so sluggish with desire, she thought she’d imagined it.
Then the rain hit. Hard, fast, pelting.
They scrambled to their feet, laughing. Leni grabbed the picnic basket and together they ran along the winding beach trail, and emerged on the bluff by the outhouse.
They didn’t stop until they were in the cabin, standing face-to-face, staring at each other. Leni felt raindrops sliding down her cheeks, dripping from her hair.
“Alaska in the summer,” Matthew said.
Leni stared at him, realizing now, all at once in a sweep of goose bumps, how she loved him.
Not in the toxic, needy, desperate way her mother loved her father.
She needed Matthew, but not to save her or complete her or reinvent her.
Her love for him was the clearest, cleanest, strongest emotion she’d ever felt. It was like opening your eyes or growing up, realizing that you had it in you to love like this. Forever. For all time. Or for all the time you had.
She started to unbutton her wet dress. The lacy collar fell down her shoulder, exposed her bra strap.
“Leni, are you sure—”
She silenced him with a kiss. She had never been more sure of anything. She finished unbuttoning her dress, which fell down her body, landed like a parachute of lace at her booted feet. She stepped out of it, kicked it aside.
She unlaced her boots, pulled them off, threw them aside. One hit the cabin wall with a thunk. Down to her bra and cotton panties, she said, “Come on,” and led him up the loft ladder to her bedroom, where Matthew hurriedly undressed and pulled her down onto the fur-covered mattress.
He undressed her slowly. His hands and mouth explored her body until every nerve in her tightened. When he touched her: music.
She lost herself in him. Her body was autonomous, moving in some instinctive, primal rhythm it must have known all along, edging into a pleasure so intense it was almost pain.
She was a star, burning so brightly it broke apart, pieces flying, light spraying. Afterward, she fell back to earth a different girl, or a different version of herself. It scared her even as it exhilarated her. Would anything else in her life ever change her so profoundly? And now that she had had this, had him, how was she supposed to leave him? Ever?
“I love you,” he said quietly.
“I love you, too.”
The word felt too small, too ordinary to contain all of this emotion.
She lay against him staring up at the skylight, watching rain boil across the glass. She knew she would remember this day all of her life.
“What do you think college will be like?” she asked.
“Like you and me. Like this all the time. Are you ready to go?”
Truthfully, she was afraid that when it was time to actually go, she wouldn’t be able to leave her mother. But if Leni stayed, if she gave up this dream, she would never recover. She couldn’t look that harsh future in the eyes.