“Murder? But he was beating us. You saved my life.”
“I shot him in the back, Leni. Twice. Juries and defense attorneys don’t like people shot in the back. It’s fine. I don’t care.” She pushed the hair out of her face, left bloody streaks. “Go tell Large Marge. She’s a lawyer, or was. She’ll handle it.” Mama sounded drugged; her speech was slow. “You’ll have your fresh start. You’ll raise your baby here in Alaska, among our friends. Tom will be like a father to you. I know it. And Large Marge adores you. Maybe college is still a possibility.” She looked at Leni. “It was worth it. I want you to know that. I’d do it again for you.”
“Wait. Are you talking about leaving me? About prison?”
“Just go get Large Marge.”
“You are not going to prison for killing a man that everyone in town knew was abusive.”
“I don’t care. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
“What if we get rid of him?”
Mama blinked. “Get rid of him?”
“We could make it so this never happened.” Leni got to her feet. Yes. This was the answer. They would devise a way to erase what they’d done. Then they could stay here, she and Mama, and live among their friends, in this place they’d grown to love. The baby would be loved by all of them, and when Matthew finally got better, Leni would be waiting.
“That’s not as easy as it sounds, Leni,” Mama said.
“This is Alaska. Nothing is easy, but we’re tough, and if you go to prison, I’ll be alone. With a baby to raise. I can’t do it without you. I need you, Mama.”
It was a moment before Mama said, “We’d need to hide the body, make sure it never gets found. The ground is too frozen to bury him.”
“Right.”
“But Leni,” she said evenly. “You’re talking about another crime.”
“Letting you be called a murderer? That would be a crime. You think I’m going to trust the law with your life? The law? You told me the law didn’t protect abused women, and you were right. He got out of jail in a few days. When did the law ever protect you from him? No. No.”
“Are you sure, Leni? It means you’ll have to live with it.”
“I can live with it. I’m sure.”
Mama took a while to consider, then extracted herself from Dad’s limp, bloody body, and stood. She went into her bedroom and came out a few moments later dressed in insulated pants and a turtleneck. She dumped her bloody clothes in a heap by Dad’s body. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t open the door to anyone except me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Step one is to dispose of the body.”
“And you think I’m going to sit here while you do it?”
“I killed him. I’ll do this.”
“And I’m helping you cover it up.”
“We don’t have time to argue.”
“Exactly.” Leni stripped out of her bloody clothes. Within moments she was in her insulated pants and parka and bunny boots, ready to go.
“Get his traps,” Mama said, and left the cabin.
Leni gathered the heavy traps from their hooks on the cabin wall and carried them outside. Mama had already hooked the big red plastic sled to the snow machine. It was the one Dad had used for hauling wood. It could hold two large coolers, a lot of chopped wood, and a moose carcass.
“Lay the traps in the sled. Then go get the chain saw and the auger.”
When Leni returned with the tools, Mama said, “You ready for the next part?”
Leni nodded.
“Let’s go get him.”
It took them thirty minutes to drag Dad’s lifeless body from the cabin and across the snowy deck, and then another ten minutes to get him settled on the sled. A bloody trail in the snow revealed their path, but within the hour, with snow falling this heavily, it would be gone. Come spring, the rains would wash it away. Mama covered Dad with a tarp and lashed him and it down with bungee cords.
“Okay, then.”
Leni and her mother exchanged a look. In it was the truth that this act, this decision, would change them forever. Without words, Mama gave Leni the chance to change her mind.
Leni stood firm. She was in this. They would dispose of the body, clean the cabin, and tell everyone he left them, say he must have fallen through the ice while hunting or lost his way in the snow. No one would question or care. Everyone knew there were a thousand ways to disappear up here.
Leni and her mama would finally—finally—be unafraid.
“Okay, then.”
Mama pulled the cord to start the snow machine, then took her place on the two-person seat and grasped the throttle. She fitted a neoprene face mask over her bruised, swelling face, and gingerly pulled on her helmet. Leni did the same. “This is going to be cold as hell,” Mama yelled over the roar of the engine. “We’re going up the mountain.”
Leni climbed aboard, put her arms around her mother’s waist.
Mama revved the engine and they were off, driving through the virgin snow, through the open gate. They turned right on the main road and left onto the road that led up to the old chromium mine. By then it was deep night and blowing snow and cold. The thread of yellow from the snow machine’s headlight led the way.
In weather like this, they didn’t need to worry much about being seen. For more than two hours, Mama drove high up the mountain. Where the snow was deep, her touch on the throttle was light. They rode up hills, down valleys, across frozen rivers, and around cliffs of soaring rock. Mama kept the snow machine’s speed so low it was barely faster than walking; speed wasn’t their objective now. Invisibility was. And the sled needed to stay steady.
They came at last to a small lake high on the mountain, ringed by tall trees and cliffs. Sometime in the last hour the snow had stopped falling and the clouds had departed to reveal a velvety blue night sky awash in swirls of starlight. The moon came out, as if to watch two women in the midst of all this snow and ice or to mourn their choices. Full and bright, it shone down on them, its light reflected across the snow, seeming to lift skyward, a radiant glow illuminating the snowy landscape.
In the sudden clarity of the night, they were visible now, two women on a snow machine in a glowing, silver-white world with a dead body on a sled.
At the frozen lakeshore, Mama eased off of the gas, came to a trembling stop. The insect drone of the engine was the loudest noise out here. It drowned out the harsh sound of Leni’s breathing through the neoprene face mask and helmet.
Was the lake fully frozen? There was no way to know for sure. It should be, at this high elevation, but it was early, too. Not midwinter. The snow radiated with moonlight across the flat, frozen lake.
Leni tightened her hold.
Mama barely turned the throttle, then inched forward. In this dark, they were like astronauts, moving through a strange, impossibly illuminated world, like deepest space, the sound of cracking ice all around them. In the center of the lake, Mama killed the engine. The snow machine slid to a stop. Mama dismounted. The cracking sound was loud, insistent, but not the kind of sound that mattered. It was just the ice breathing, stretching; not breaking.
Mama took off her helmet, hung it on the throttle, and removed her face mask. Her breath shot out in humid plumes. Leni set her helmet on the duct-taped vinyl seat.
In the silver-blue-white light of the moon, ice crystals sparkled across the surface of the snow, glittered like gemstones.
Quiet.
Only their breathing.
Together they pulled Dad’s body off the sled. Leni used the emergency shovel to clear a divot in the snow. When she came to the glassy silver ice, she put her shovel away and retrieved the auger and the chain saw. Mama used the auger to drill an eight-inch hole in the ice. Slushy water seeped up, bounced the round disc of ice.
Leni pulled off her face mask and shoved it in her pocket, then started up the chain saw, the wa-na-na-na excruciatingly loud out here.
She pointed the blade downward, stuck it in the hole, and began the long, arduous process of turning the hole into a big square opening in the ice.