“This is fun!” MJ said, banging his hands along the cell bars, running from side to side. “I sound like a helicopter. Listen.” He ran again, as fast as he could, his hand hitting the bars.
Leni couldn’t manage a smile. She couldn’t look at him but she couldn’t look away. It had taken endless pleading on her part to get them to let him be in here with her. Thank God she was in Homer, not Anchorage, where she was pretty sure the rules would be more strictly enforced. Apparently there still wasn’t much crime in the area. Mostly this cell was used to house drunks on the weekends.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
“MJ,” Leni said sharply. It wasn’t until she saw his face—the worried green eyes, the gaped mouth—that she realize she’d screamed it.
“Sorry,” she said. “Come here, kiddo.”
MJ’s moods were like the sea; one glance told you all you needed to know. She’d hurt his feelings, maybe even frightened him with her outburst.
Something else to feel bad about.
MJ shuffled across the small cell, purposely scuffling his rubber-soled tennis shoes. “I’m ice-skating,” he said.
Leni managed a smile as she patted the empty place beside her on the cement bench. He sat down next to her. The cell was so small the lidless toilet was practically touching his knee. Through the metal bars, Leni could see most of the police station—the front desk, the waiting area. The door to Chief Ward’s office.
She had to force herself not to take MJ into her arms and hold him tightly. “I have to talk to you,” she said. “You know how we’re always talking about your dad?”
“He’s brain damaged, but he would love me anyway. That’s a gross toilet.”
“And he lives in a facility where they take care of people like him. That’s why he doesn’t visit us.”
MJ nodded. “He can’t talk anyway. He fell down a hole and broke his head.”
“Uh-huh. And he lives up here. In Alaska. Where Mommy grew up.”
“I know that, silly. It’s why we’re here. Can he walk?”
“I don’t think so. But … you also have a grandfather who lives here. And an aunt named Alyeska.”
MJ finally stopped banging his plastic triceratops on the bench and looked at her. “Another grandpa? Jason has three grandpas.”
“And you have two now, isn’t that cool?”
She heard the station door open. Through it, the sound of a truck rumbling past outside, tires crunching on gravel. A horn honking.
And there was Tom Walker, striding into the police station. He wore faded jeans tucked into boots and a black T-shirt that had a huge, colorful Walker Cove Adventure Lodge logo on the front. A dirty trucker’s hat was pulled low on his broad forehead.
He came to a stop in the center of the station, looked around.
Saw her.
Leni couldn’t have remained seated even if she’d tried, which she didn’t. She eased away from MJ and got to her feet.
She felt a flutter of energy that was equal parts anxiety and joy. She hadn’t realized until right now, this moment, how much she’d missed Mr. Walker. Over the years, she’d romanticized him. She and Mama both had. For Mama, he’d been the chance she should have taken. For Leni, he’d been the ideal of what a dad could be. In the beginning, they’d talked about him often, until it had become too painful for both of them and they’d stopped.
He moved toward her, pulled the hat from his head, crushed it in his hands. He looked different, more weathered than aged. His long blond hair was gray around his face and had been pulled back into a ponytail. He had obviously been working in the woods when Chief Ward called him. Dried leaves and twigs stuck to his flannel shirt. “Leni,” he said when there was nothing but a set of jail-cell bars between them. “I didn’t believe Curt when he said you were here.” He clutched the bars in his big, work-reddened hands. “I thought your dad killed you.”
Leni’s shame reared up; she felt her face warm. “Mama killed him. When he started in on me. We had to run.”
“I would have helped you,” he said, lowering his voice, leaning in. “We all would have.”
“I know. That’s why we didn’t ask.”
“And … Cora?”
“Gone,” Leni said in a thick voice. “Lung cancer. She … thought of you often.”
“Oh, Leni, I’m so sorry. She was…”
“Yeah,” Leni said softly, trying right then not to think of all the ways her mother was special, or how much her loss hurt. It hadn’t been long enough yet; Leni hadn’t learned how to talk about her pain. Instead, Leni stepped sideways, so he could see the boy sitting behind her. “MJ—Matthew Junior—this is your Grandpa Tom.”
Mr. Walker had always seemed impossibly, superhumanly strong, but now, with one look at the boy who looked so much like his son, she saw how it cracked him open. “Oh, my God…”
MJ popped to his feet. He was clutching a red plastic dinosaur in one fist.
Mr. Walker squatted down to be eye to eye with his grandson through the cell bars. “You remind me of another boy with blond hair.”
Hold it together.
“I’m MJ!” he said with an oversized smile, jumping up. “You wanna see my dinosaurs?” MJ didn’t wait for an answer, started pulling his plastic dinosaurs from his pockets, producing each new one with flourish.
Over the sound of the growling (that’s what T. rex sounds like, grrr), Mr. Walker said, “He looks just like his dad.”
“Yeah.” The past muscled its way into the present. Leni looked down at her feet, unable to meet Mr. Walker’s gaze.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “We had to leave fast and I didn’t want to get you into trouble. I didn’t want you to have to lie for us, and I couldn’t let Mama go to prison…”
“Ah, Leni,” Mr. Walker said at last, rising to his feet. “You always had too many worries for a girl your age. So why are you in here if your mom killed Ernt? Curt should give you both a freaking medal, not lock you up.”
Leni could have crumpled at the kindness she saw in his eyes. How could he not be angry? She’d abandoned his brain-damaged son, lied for years by her absence, and stolen years of his grandson’s life from him. And now she had to ask him for another favor. “I helped her after the fact. You know … to get rid of the … body.”
He leaned in. “You admitted that? Why?”
“The chief outsmarted me. Anyway, maybe it’s the way it has to be. I needed to tell the truth. I’m tired of pretending to be someone else. I’ll figure it all out. My grandfather is a lawyer. I just … need to know MJ is safe until I’m … out. Will you take him?”
“Of course I will, but—”
“And I know I have no right to ask you this, but please don’t tell Matthew about his son. I need to do that myself.”
“Matthew won’t—”
“I know he won’t understand, but I need to be the one to tell him he has a son. It’s the right thing to do.”
She heard the jangle of keys, footsteps. Chief Ward was coming this way. He eased in past Mr. Walker and unlocked the cell door. “It’s time,” he said.
Leni bent down to her son. “Okay, baby boy,” she said, trying to be strong. “You need to go with your grandpa now. Mommy has … things to do.” She gave him a little shove, so that he was outside the cell.
“Mommy? I don’t wanna go.”
Leni looked to Mr. Walker for help. She didn’t know how to do this.
Mr. Walker laid his big hand on MJ’s little shoulder. “It’s a pink year, MJ.” His voice was as unsteady as Leni felt. “That means the humpies are clogging the rivers. We could fish the Anchor River today. Chances are good you’ll catch the biggest fish of your life.”
“Can my mommy and daddy come?” MJ asked. “Oh. Wait. My daddy can’t move. I forgot.”
“You know about your dad?” Mr. Walker said.
MJ nodded. “Mommy loves him more than the moon and the stars. Like she loves me. But he has a broke head.”
“The boy needs to leave now,” Chief Ward said.