Darkness was over the surface of the deep. The deep isn’t really Alaska. It comes from the Hebrew word for chaos, for confusion. For the restless motion of waves. If there’s one thing you learn from the Bible, it’s metaphor.
The chaos continues until God creates the earth. The story is meant to tell us God’s power, his might, but all I ever thought, as a little girl in a dirt-floor room, is that something existed before him.
The darkness was here first.
Chapter Eight
That’s how I end up at Mrs. Lawson’s door again empty-handed. Luca stands a few yards back, watching to make sure no one from the Last Stop comes around. It makes me shiver to imagine those bodies—how many were there? They’ll be hard by now, lying on the pavement. When will someone find them? It might not be until tomorrow at ten when the cook opens for lunch.
There’s a move in the white lace. I’m sure Mrs. Lawson sees Luca. There’s a longer pause before she opens the door. Her eyes narrow as she glances over my shoulder.
Luca normally looks terrifying, but with those bruises, the blood, it’s an especially scary sight.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Lawson.”
Her harrumph says she knows what she knows. “Come inside, child.”
As soon as she shuts the door, she turns the deadbolt. “I’m calling the police. Don’t matter what he takes from your place or if he trashes it. You and the child are both inside here, and he’s not coming inside. Not without meeting the side of my baseball bat.”
I give her a kiss on the cheek, and she blinks in surprise.
She’ll be one of the few things I’ll miss about Alaska. “He’s not going to hurt me.”
He’s not going to hurt Delilah, which is the important thing. What he does to me alone, in the dark, when I’m his bait…that might hurt. Not the kind of pain he has now, from being hit and kicked. The kind inside you, in places you don’t know about until they’re rubbed raw.
The hallway is still dark, the door still open.
Delilah’s still asleep, her dark curls stark against her curved cheek.
I pull her warm body into my arms, cuddling her close. She makes a sound almost like a squeak before nuzzling her face against me. She wears the warmest wool nightgown I could find in preparation for these little walks, her hands and feet covered with the same thick material. It helps even inside the apartments, where cracks in the insulation make it impossible to keep warm.
Mrs. Lawson blocks the doorway. “I’m not gonna see you again, am I?”
I can’t ever come back here, even if I escape Luca again. “I’ll miss you.”
She shakes her head. “If you ever need to run away from that man outside, you call me first.”
My tears prick. When I imagined running all those years in Harmony Hills, I never thought anyone would help me. They told me stories about the sin outside. That didn’t scare me half as much as the calloused disregard. We were a community, they said. We took care of our own.
They didn’t take care of me, though. They hurt me. And I’ve found little pockets of community all along the way, shining like diamonds in the gutter.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice thick.
She steps aside. “I’ll miss that little angel, besides.”
The little angel doesn’t stir even when the cold night air touches her cheek. I say goodbye to Mrs. Lawson not with a word, but with a long look that tells a thousand warnings—the kind that women who’ve known violent men can share.
Luca’s face looks worse under the flickering lamplight, more wild. He gazes down at Delilah’s sleeping face with an expression I can’t read. “We’ll stay the night,” he says. “Our flight leaves in the morning.”
I don’t know whether Delilah’s sleeping face gives us the reprieve, but I take it. Keeping her warm inside my apartment is hard enough. Out here it’s below freezing.
“Thank you.” I cross the small walkway quickly, slipping into my apartment with practiced ease. Luca follows behind, glancing around before locking us in.
Her little bedroll is still laid out in the one bedroom of the apartment, where she usually sleeps. She curls up against the pink and purple stars on the pillow, arms immediately wrapping around her stuffed unicorn. In some ways she’d had to live like me—in a bare room, with only a thin comforter as her mattress. In other ways her life is completely different, filled with color, with wonder. With love.
I turn to leave her and almost run into Luca.
“Dark hair,” he says, but he’s not looking at Delilah.
He’s looking at my long blonde locks.
Delilah’s curls crown her face, a beautiful raven color that I’ve never seen before. Leader Allen had already grayed by the time I knew him. I like to think it’s hers alone, that she didn’t even have a father. That’s what my brother believes. That it was a virgin birth, the baby given to me by God. Only despite what I’d rather believe, I know the truth.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “She’s beautiful.”