“Ernt, this is crazy—”
He hit her so hard she slammed into the wall. Before Mama could get to her feet, he was on her again, yanking her hair back, exposing the pale skin of her throat. Wrapping his hand in her hair, he smashed his fist down, cracked the side of her head on the floor.
Leni hurled herself at her father, landed on his back. She clawed at him, pulled his hair, screamed, “Let her go!”
He wrenched free, cracked Mama’s forehead into the floor.
Leni heard the door open behind her; seconds later she was yanked off her dad. She got a glimpse of Matthew, saw him pull Dad off Mama, spin him around, and punch him in the jaw so hard Dad staggered sideways and crumpled to his knees.
Leni ran to her mother, helped her to her feet. “We need to go. Now.”
“You go,” Mama said, looking nervously toward Dad, who moaned in pain. “Go.” Her face was bloodied, her lip torn.
“I’m not leaving you,” Leni said.
Tears filled Mama’s eyes and fell, mixing with the blood. “He’ll never let me go. You go. Go.”
“No,” Leni said. “I’m not leaving you.”
“She’s right, Mrs. Allbright,” Matthew said. “You can’t stay here.”
Mama sighed. “Fine. I’ll go to Large Marge’s. She’ll protect me, but Leni, I don’t want you anywhere near me. You understand? If he comes after me, I don’t want you there.” She looked to Matthew. “I want her gone for at least twenty-four hours. Hidden someplace he can’t find her. I’ll go to the police this time. Press charges.”
Matthew nodded solemnly. “I won’t let anything happen to her, Mrs. Allbright. I promise.”
Dad made a groaning sound, cursed, tried to get up.
Mama hefted up Leni’s bug-out bag and handed her the pack. “Now, Leni. We need to run.”
They ran out of the cabin and into the bright sunlit yard toward Matthew’s truck. “Get in,” he yelled, then raced over to Dad’s truck. He opened the hood, did something to the engine.
Behind them, the cabin door cracked open. Dad staggered out.
Leni heard the cracking sound of a gun being cocked. “Cora, damn it.” Dad was on the deck, bleeding profusely from his forehead, blinded by blood, holding a shotgun. “Where are you?”
“Get in!” Matthew yelled, throwing something into the trees. He jumped into the driver’s seat and started his truck.
In a spray of shotgun pellets pinging loudly, Leni leaped onto the seat and Mama crammed in beside her. Matthew jammed the gearshift into drive and stomped on the gas. The truck fishtailed in the deep grass before the wheels grabbed hold. He sped down the driveway and through the open gate and turned onto the main road.
They turned again at Large Marge’s driveway and drove to the end of it, honking the horn. “You keep her safe and away from me,” Mama said to Matthew, who nodded.
Leni stared at her mother. The whole of their lives—and all of their love—was in that look. “You won’t go back to him,” Leni said. “You’ll call the police. Press charges. We’ll meet up in twenty-four hours. Then we’ll run away. You promise?”
Mama nodded, hugged her fiercely, kissed her tears away. “Go,” she said in a sharp voice.
After Mama got out of the truck, and they drove away, Leni sat there, replaying it all in her mind, crying quietly. Every breath hurt and she had to fight the urge to go back, to be with her mother. Had she done the wrong thing by leaving her?
Matthew turned at the Walker gate, rumbled beneath the welcoming arch.
“We can’t go here! He’ll look for us here!” Leni said. “Mama said we needed to disappear for a day.”
He parked, got out. “I know. But it’s low tide. We can’t use the boats or the float plane. I only know one place to disappear. Stay here.”
Five minutes later, Matthew was back with a backpack, which he tossed into the bed of the truck.
Leni kept looking behind them, down the Walker driveway.
“Don’t worry. He won’t find the distributor cap for a while,” Matthew said.
And they were off again, turning onto the main road, then left, toward the mountain.
Turns. Switchbacks. River crossings. Up and up they went.
Finally, they pulled into a dirt parking lot and stopped abruptly. There were no other vehicles. A sign at the trailhead read:
BEAR CLAW WILDERNESS AREA
ALLOWABLE USES: Hiking, Camping, Rock Climbing.
DISTANCE: 2.8 miles one way.
DIFFICULTY: Challenging. Steep climbs.
ELEVATION GAIN: 2600 feet
CAMPING: Sawtooth Ridge, near marked Eagle Creek crossing.
Matthew helped Leni out of the truck. Kneeling, he checked her wafflestompers, retied her laces. “You okay?”
“What if he—”
“She got away. Large Marge will protect her. And she wanted you safe.”
“I know. Let’s go,” she said dully.
“We’ve got a long hike ahead of us. Can you make it?”
Leni nodded.
They headed for the trail, with Matthew leading and Leni following along behind him, struggling to keep up.
They climbed for hours, saw no one. The trail snaked along a sheer stone cliff. Below them was the sea, waves crashing into rocks. The ground trembled at each wave’s impact, or maybe Leni just thought it did because life felt so unstable now. Even the ground felt unreliable.
Finally, Matthew came to what he’d been looking for: a huge, grassy field, thick with purple lupine. Snow whitened the peaks; below lay folds of rock, dotted here and there by the white dots that were Dall sheep.
He dropped his pack into the grass and turned to face Leni. He handed her a smoked salmon sandwich and a can of warm Coke, and while she ate he set up a pup tent deep in the grass.
Later, with a fire crackling in front of the tent and the orange flaps pinned open, Matthew sat on the grass beside her. He put an arm around her. She leaned into him.
“You don’t have to be the only one protecting her, you know,” he said. “We’ll all take care of you. It’s always been that way in Kaneq.”
Leni wanted that to be true. She wanted to believe there was a safe place for her and Mama, a do-over of their lives, a beginning that didn’t rise from the ashes of a violent, terrible ending. Mostly, she didn’t want to feel solely responsible for her mama’s safety anymore.
She turned to Matthew, loving him so much, so desperately, it felt like she was being held underwater and needed oxygen. “I love you.”
“Me, too,” he said.
Up here, in the vastness of Alaska, the words sounded infinitesimal and small. A fist shaken at the gods.
TWENTY-ONE
His job was to keep her safe.
Leni was his North Star. He knew it sounded stupid and girlie and romantic and that people would say he was too young to know these things, only he wasn’t. When your mom died, you grew up.
He hadn’t been able to protect his mom, to save her.
He was stronger now.
He held Leni in his arms all night last night, loved her, felt her twitch at bad dreams, listened to her sobs. He knew how that was, nightmares like that about your mom.
Finally, when the first glimmer of daylight pulsed through the pup tent’s tangerine nylon sides, he eased away from her, smiling at the muffled sound of her snoring. He dressed in yesterday’s clothes, put on his hiking boots, and stepped outside.
Gray clouds muscled across the sky, lowered over the trail. The breeze was more a sigh than anything else, but it was the end of August. The leaves were changing color at night. They both knew what that meant. Change came even faster up here.
Matthew busied himself building a fire on the black remnants of last night’s blaze. Sitting on a rock, leaning forward, he stared into the wavering flames. The breeze kicked up, taunted the flames.