Leni had thought about this all night. She knew it was crazy and maybe dangerous, but there was hope, too.
She wanted—needed—to be Leni Allbright again. To live her own life. Whatever the cost. “I know you think of Alaska as cold and inhospitable, a place where we were lost. But the truth is, we were found there, too. It’s in me, Grandma, that place. I belong there. All these years away have cost me something. And there’s MJ. He’s not a baby anymore. He’s a boy and growing up fast. He needs a dad.”
“But his dad is…”
“I know. I’ve spent years telling MJ as much of the truth as I could about his father. He knows about the accident and the rehab center. But its not enough to tell stories. MJ needs to know where he comes from, and it won’t be long before he starts asking real questions. He deserves answers.” Leni paused. “My mom was wrong about a lot of things, but one thing she had right was about the durability of love. It stays. Against all odds, in the face of hate, it stays. I left the boy I loved when he was broken and sick, and I hate myself for that. Matthew is MJ’s dad, whether Matthew can know what that means or not, whether he can hold him or talk to him or not. MJ deserves to know his own family. Tom Walker is his grandfather. Alyeska is his aunt. It is unforgivable that they don’t know about MJ. They would love him as much as you do.”
“They could try to take him from you. Custody is a tricky thing. You couldn’t survive that.”
That was a dark corner Leni couldn’t look around. “It’s not about me,” Leni said quietly. “I have to do the right thing. Finally.”
“It’s a bad idea, Leni. A terrible idea. If you’ve learned anything from your mother and what happened, it should be this: life—and the law—is hard on women. Sometimes doing the right thing is no help at all.”
*
SUMMER IN ALASKA.
Leni had never forgotten the exquisite, breathtaking beauty, and now, in a small plane, flying from Anchorage to Homer, she felt a great opening up of her soul. For the first time in years, she felt fully herself.
They flew over the green marshlands outside of Anchorage and the silvery expanse of Turnagain Arm, low tide revealing the gray sand bottom, where so many unwary fishermen went aground and the magical bore tide rolled in on waves big enough to surf.
And then Cook Inlet, a swath of blue, dotted with fishing boats. The plane banked left toward the snow-clad mountains, and flew over the glacial-blue Harding Icefield. Above Kachemak Bay, the land turned richly green again, a series of emerald humps. Hundreds of boats dotted the water, ribbons of white water fluttering out behind them.
In Homer, they bumped down onto the gravel runway and MJ squealed happily, pointed out the window. When the plane came to a stop, the pilot came around and opened the back door and helped Leni with her rolling suitcase (so Outside, that bag—it didn’t even have shoulder straps).
She held on to MJ with one hand and rolled her suitcase along the gravel runway toward the small aviation office. A big clock on the wall told her it was 10:12 A.M.
At the counter, she gained the receptionist’s attention.
“Excuse me. I understand there’s a new police station in town.”
“Well, not that new. It’s up past the post office on Heath Street. You want me to call you a cab?”
If Leni hadn’t been so nervous, she would have laughed at the idea of catching a cab in Homer. “Uh. Yes. Please. That would be great.”
Waiting for the cab, Leni stood in the small aviation office, staring in awe at the entire wall filled with four-color brochures advertising adventures for tourists: the Great Alaska Adventure Lodge in Sterling and Walker Cove Adventure Lodge in Kaneq; fly-out lodges in the Brooks Range, river guides who hired out for the day, hunting trips in Fairbanks. Alaska had apparently become the tourist mecca Tom Walker had imagined it could be. Leni knew that cruise ships pulled into Seward every week in the summer, off-loading thousands of people.
Moments after the cab arrived, she and MJ were at the police station, a long, low-slung, flat-roofed building set on a corner.
Inside, the station was brightly lit, freshly painted. Leni fought with her rolling suitcase, muscling it up over the doorsill. The only person in the place was a uniformed woman sitting at a desk. Leni moved resolutely forward, clutching MJ’s hand so tightly he squirmed and whined, tried to wrench free.
“Hello,” she said to the woman at the desk. “I’d like to speak to the police chief.”
“Why?”
“It’s about a … killing.”
“Of a human?”
Only in Alaska would that question ever be asked. “I have information on a crime.”
“Follow me.”
The uniformed woman led Leni past an empty jail cell to a closed door with a placard that read: CHIEF CURT WARD.
The woman knocked hard. Twice. At a muffled, “Come in,” she opened the door. “Chief, this young woman says she has information on a crime.”
The chief of police stood slowly. Leni remembered him from the search for Geneva Walker. His hair was trimmed into a tall crew cut. A bushy red mustache stood out against the auburn stubble that had obviously grown since he shaved this morning. He looked like a once-gung-ho high school hockey player turned small-town cop.
“Lenora Allbright,” Leni said in introduction. “My dad was Ernt Allbright. We used to live in Kaneq.”
“Holy shit. We thought you were dead. Search and Rescue went out for days looking for you and your mom. What was it, six, seven, years ago? Why didn’t you contact the police?”
Leni settled MJ in a comfortable chair and opened a book for him. Her grandfather’s advice came back to her: It’s a bad idea, Leni, but if you’re going to do it, you have to be careful, smarter than your mother ever was. Say nothing. Just give them the letter. Tell them you didn’t even know your dad was dead until your mother gave you this letter. Tell them you were running from his abuse, hiding so that he wouldn’t find you. Everything you’ve done—the changed identities, the new town, the silence—it all fits in with a family hiding from a dangerous man.
“I wanna go, Mommy,” MJ said, bouncing on the seat. “I want to see my daddy.”
“Soon, kiddo.” She kissed his forehead and then went back to the chief’s desk. Between them was a wide swath of gray metal decorated with family photographs, studded with sloppy stacks of pink while-you-were-out messages, and cluttered with fishing magazines. A fishing reel with impossibly tangled line was being used as a paperweight.
She pulled the letter out of her purse. Her hand was shaking as she handed over her mother’s confession.
Chief Ward read through the letter. Sat down. Looked up. “You know what this says?”
Leni dragged a chair over and sat down facing him. She was afraid her legs would stop supporting her. “I do.”
“So your mother shot your dad and disposed of his body and you two ran away.”
“You have the letter.”
“And where is your mother?”
“She died last week. She gave the letter to me on her deathbed and asked me to deliver it to the police. It was the first I’d heard of it. The … killing, I mean. I thought we were running from my father’s abuse. He … was violent. Sometimes. He beat her really badly one night and we ran away while he slept.”
“I’m sorry about her death.”
Chief Ward stared at Leni for a long time, his eyes narrowed. The intensity of his gaze was unsettling. She fought the urge to fidget. Finally he got up, went to a file cabinet in the back of the room, riffled through a drawer, and pulled out a folder. He dropped it on his desk, sat down, and opened it. “So. Your mother, Cora Allbright, was five-foot-six. People described her as slight, fragile, thin. And your dad was nearly six feet tall.”
“Yes. That’s right.”