“Sure,” Leni said, scooting sideways.
Mama climbed through the open window and made her way onto the roof, then sat beside Leni, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I used to climb down that tree and sneak out on Saturday nights in high school to hang out with boys at Dick’s Drive-In on Aurora. Everything was about boys.” She sighed, dropped her chin into the valley between her knees.
Leni leaned against her mama, stared out at the house across the street. A blaze of wasteful lights. Through the windows, she saw at least three televisions flashing color.
“I’m sorry, Leni. I’ve made such a mess of your life.”
“We did it,” Leni said. “Together. Now we have to live with it.”
“There’s something wrong with me,” Mama said after a pause.
“No,” Leni said firmly. “There was something wrong with him.”
*
“IT’S THERE, believe me. Right there,” Mama said five days later, when their bruises had healed enough to be covered with makeup. They had spent almost a week huddled in the house, never venturing outside. They were both going a little stir-crazy.
Now, with Mama’s hair cut in a pixie and dyed brown, they finally left the house and took a bus into busy downtown Seattle, where they merged into the eclectic crowd of tourists, shoppers, and punk rockers.
Mama pointed up into the cloudless blue sky.
Leni didn’t care about The Mountain (that was what they called Rainier down here—The Mountain—as if it were the only one that mattered in the world) or the other landmarks Mama had pointed out with such pride, as if Leni had never seen them before. The bright neon PUBLIC MARKET sign that looked down on the fish market booth; the Space Needle, which looked like an alien spacecraft placed on pick-up sticks; the new aquarium that jutted defiantly out into the cold waters of Elliott Bay.
Seattle was beautiful on this sunny, warm November day; that was true. As green as she remembered, and bordered by water and covered in asphalt and concrete.
People crawled like ants over all of it. All noise and movement: honking horns, people crossing streets, buses puffing smoke and grinding gears on the hills that propped the city up. How could she ever be at home here, among all these people?
There was no silence in this place. For the last few nights, she’d lain in her new bed (which smelled of fabric softener and store-bought laundry soap), trying to get comfortable. Once an ambulance or police siren had blared all of a sudden, red light snapping on and off through the window, painting the lace bloodred.
Now she and Mama were north of the city. They had taken a cross-town bus, found seats among the sad-looking travelers out this early, and walked through the busy “Ave” and uphill to the sprawling University of Washington.
They stood at the edge of something called Red Square. For as far as Leni could see, the ground had been layered in red brick. A large red obelisk pointed up at the blue sky. More brick buildings created a perimeter.
There were literally hundreds of students moving through the square; they came and went in laughing, chattering waves. Off to her left, a group dressed all in black was holding up protest signs about nuclear power and weapons. Several demanded a shutdown of something called Hanford.
She was reminded of the college kids she’d seen in Homer every summer, clots of young adults in REI rain gear looking up at the jagged, snowcapped peaks as though they heard God calling their names. She would hear whispered conversations about how they were going to chuck it all and move off the grid and live more authentic lives. Back to the land, they’d said, as if it were biblical verse. Like the famous John Muir quote—The mountains are calling and I must go. People heard those kinds of voices in Alaska, dreamed new dreams. Most would never go, and of the few who did, the vast majority would leave before the end of their first winter, but Leni had always known they would be changed simply by the magnitude of the dream and the possibility they glimpsed in the distance.
Leni drifted through the crowd alongside her mother, clutching the small backpack she’d had since she was twelve years old. Her Alaska backpack. It felt totemic, the last durable remnant of a discarded life. She wished she’d been able to bring her Winnie the Pooh lunch box.
They arrived at their destination: a sugary pink Gothic building with sweeping arches and delicate spires and intricately scrolled windows.
Inside was a library unlike any Leni had ever seen. Row upon row of wooden desks, decorated with green banker’s lamps, were positioned beneath an arched ceiling. Gothic chandeliers hung above the desks. And the books! She’d never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn’t alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had. If only Matthew could see this …
She walked in step with her mother, their clunky boot heels clattering on the floor. Leni kept expecting people to look up, to point them out as intruders, but the students in the Graduate Reading Room didn’t care about strangers in their midst.
Even the librarian didn’t seem to make any judgments about them as she listened to their questions and gave them directions to another desk, where another librarian listened to their request.
“Here you go,” the second librarian said, handing them a collection of bound newspapers.
Mama said, “Thank you,” and sat down. Leni doubted the librarian heard the tremble in Mama’s voice, but Leni did.
She sat down on the wooden bench next to Mama, scooted close.
It didn’t take much time to find what they were looking for.
KANEQ FAMILY MISSING
FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED
State authorities released information about a missing Kaneq family. Neighbor Marge Birdsall called State Troopers on November 13 to report her neighbor, Cora Allbright, and her daughter, Lenora, missing. “They were supposed to visit me yesterday. They never showed. I worried right off that Ernt had hurt them,” said Birdsall.
On November 14, Thomas Walker reported finding an abandoned truck not far from his homestead. The vehicle—registered to Ernt Allbright—was found at Mile Marker 12 on the Kaneq road. Authorities reported finding blood on the seat and steering wheel, as well as Cora Allbright’s purse.
“We are investigating this as both a missing persons and as a potential homicide,” said Officer Curt Ward of Homer. Neighbors reported that Ernt Allbright had a history of violence and they fear he killed his wife and daughter and ran off.
No additional information is available for release at this time, as the investigation is ongoing.
Anyone with information on any of the Allbrights is asked to call Officer Ward.
Mama leaned back, sighing quietly.
Leni saw the pain Mama carried and would now always carry—for all of it, for staying when she should have left, for loving him, for killing him. What came of pain like that? Did it slowly dissipate or did it congeal and turn poisonous?
“Dad says they’ll declare us dead at some point—but it might take seven years.”
“Seven years?”
“We have to go forward, learn to be happy, or what was it all for?”
Happy.
The word had no buoyancy for Leni, no lift. To be honest, she couldn’t imagine ever being happy again, not really.
“Yeah,” Leni said, trying to smile. “We’ll be happy now.”
TWENTY-SIX
That evening, after dinner, Leni sat on her twin bed, reading. The Stand by Stephen King. In the past week, she’d read three books by him and discovered a new passion. Goodbye science fiction and fantasy, hello horror.
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.