Cora lit a cigarette, drew the smoke into her lungs, and let it linger there; instantly she was calmed by the familiar act. She exhaled and lifted her chin, trying to get comfortable on the camp chair. Her lower back ached from a night spent in the pseudo-wilderness sleeping in a tent; her breathing was ragged from a persistent cold.
Not far away, Leni stood at the river’s edge with a little boy on one side of her and an old man on the other. She cast her line out in a graceful, practiced arc, the line snapping and dancing in the air before it cascaded into the calm water. Late spring sunlight painted all of it gold; the water, the three mismatched figures, the nearby trees. Even as the sun shone down on them it began to rain, tiny droplets drawn from the damp air.
They were in the Hoh Rain Forest, one of the last refuges of pure wilderness in the populated western half of Washington State. They came here as often as they could and pitched their tents on campsites that offered both electricity and water. Here, away from the crowds, they could be who they really were. They didn’t have to worry about being seen together or making up stories or telling lies. It had been years since anyone had mentioned the Allbright family in Alaska or gone looking for any of them, but still, they were always on guard.
Leni said she could breathe in this wilderness, where the trees were as big around as Volkswagens and grew high enough to block out the recalcitrant sun. She said she had things to teach her son that were part of his heritage, lessons that couldn’t be taught where the world was paved and lit by streetlamps. Things his father would have taught him.
In the past few years, Cora’s father had become an avid fisherman—or maybe he was just an avid grandfather who did anything and everything to make Leni and MJ smile. He’d quit practicing law and had become a putterer around the house.
So they came camping out here as often as they could, regardless of the rain that greeted them ten times out of twelve, even in midsummer. They caught fish for dinner and fried it in cast-iron skillets over an open flame. At night, while they all sat around the campfire, Leni recited poems and told stories set in the wilderness of Alaska.
It wasn’t fun for Leni. It was something different. Vital. A way to release the pressure that built up all week as she walked among the hordes at the sprawling University of Washington campus, as she sold books to patrons at her part-time job at the giant Shorey’s Bookstore on First Avenue and took photography classes at night.
Leni came out here to re-find herself in nature, to recover whatever small piece of her Alaskan soul she could find, to connect her son to the father he didn’t know and the life that was his by birthright but not in fact. Alaska, the last frontier, the land that would always and forever be home to Leni. The place where she belonged.
“You can hear him laughing,” her mother said.
Cora nodded. It was true; even with the percussive drumbeat of the increasing rain, drops landing on nylon tents and plastic hoods and plate-sized leaves, she could hear her grandson’s laughter.
MJ was the happiest of kids—a boy who made friends easily and followed the rules and still held your hand when you walked down the sidewalk toward school. He cared about the usual things for a boy his age—action figures and cartoons and Popsicles in the summer. He was still young enough that he didn’t ask a lot of questions about his father, but that would come. They all knew it. Cora knew, too, that when MJ looked at his mother’s smile, he saw none of the shadows crouched behind it.
“Do you think she will forgive me someday?” she asked, staring out at Leni.
“Oh, for the love of Pete. For what? Saving her life? That girl loves you, Coraline.”
Cora took a long drag on her cigarette, exhaled. “I know she loves me. I have never doubted for a second that she loves me. But I let her grow up in a war zone. I let her see what no child should ever see. I let her know fear of a man who was supposed to love her, and then I killed him in front of her. And I ran and made her live life under an alias. Maybe if I’d been stronger, braver, I could have changed the law like Yvonne Wanrow.”
“It took years for that woman’s case to get to the Supreme Court. And you were in Alaska, not Washington. Who knew the law would finally recognize a battered woman defense? And your dad still says it rarely works. You have to let all of that go. She has. Look at her, down there with her son, teaching him how to fish. Your daughter is fine, Cora. Fine. She’s forgiven you. You need to forgive yourself.”
“She needs to go home.”
“Home? To the cabin with no plumbing or electricity? To the brain-damaged boy? To an accessory-after-the-fact charge? There’s that new blood test now. Something about DNA. So don’t be ridiculous, Cora.” She reached out, slid her arm around Cora’s shoulder. “Think of all that you’ve found here. Leni is getting an education and becoming a wonderful photographer. You like your job at the art gallery. Your home is always warm and you have a family you can count on.”
What she’d done to her daughter had been forgiven, it was true, and Leni’s forgiveness was as real and true as sunlight. But Cora, try as she had for all of these years, couldn’t forgive herself. It wasn’t the shooting that haunted her; Cora knew she would commit the same crime again in the same circumstances.
She couldn’t forgive herself for the years that came before, for what she allowed and accepted, for the definition of love she’d handed down to her daughter like a dark incantation.
Because of Cora, Leni had learned to be happy with half a life, pretending to be someone else, somewhere else.
Because of Cora, Leni could never see the man she loved or go home again. How was Cora supposed to forgive herself for that?
*
SMILE.
You’re happy.
Leni didn’t know why she had to remind herself to smile and look happy on this bright day, when they were at the park to celebrate her graduation from college.
She was happy.
Really.
Especially today. She was proud of herself. The first female in her family to graduate from college.
(It had taken a long time.)
Still. She was twenty-five years old, and a single mother, with—as of tomorrow—a college degree in visual arts. She had a loving family, the best kid in the world, and a warm place to live. She was never hungry or freezing or afraid for her mother’s life. Her only fears now were garden-variety parenting fears. Kids crossing the street alone, falling off swing sets, strangers appearing out of nowhere. She never fell asleep to the sound of screaming or crying and never woke to a floor strewn with broken glass.
She was happy.
It didn’t matter that she sometimes had days like today, where the past poked insistently into her view.
Of course she would think of Matthew today, on this day, which was one they’d talked about so often. How many times had a conversation between them begun with: When we finish college…?
Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.
Happy. Smile.
Click, click, click and she was herself again. She could see what mattered.
Unbroken blue sky, not a cloud in sight. People all around.
Sunshine called out to Seattleites in a language they understood, dragged them out of their hillside homes and encouraged them to put on expensive sneakers and enjoy the mountains and lakes and winding forest roads. After which they would stop by their local Thriftway Grocery Store for prepackaged steaks to put on their grills at weekend barbecues.