Processed.
Before today, Leni associated that word with food that had been stretched out of recognition and changed into something bad for you. Like spray cheese.
Now it had a whole new meaning.
Fingerprints. Mug shots. Turn to the right, please. Hands patting her down.
“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.
MJ looked at Leni. “So I’m going fishing with my new grandpa, right?
Then we’ll play jail more?”
“Uh-huh,” Leni said, doing her best not to cry. She had taught her son to trust her, always, and to believe her, and so he did. She reached out and pulled him into a hug, imprinting the feel of him. Of all the courage she had expended so far—coming home, telling the truth, calling for Tom Walker— it took the greatest toll on her to simply let her son go. She managed a shaky smile. “’Bye, MJ. Be good for Grandpa. Try not to break anything.”
“’Bye, Mommy.”
Mr. Walker swept MJ into the air, planted him on his shoulders. MJ’s high-pitched giggle rang out.
“Look, Mommy, look! I’m a giant!”
“She doesn’t deserve to be here,” Mr. Walker said to Chief Ward, who shrugged. “You always were a by-the-book prick.”
“Insulting me. Good plan. Tell it to the court, Tom. We’ll arraign her quickly. Three o’clock. Judge wants to be out on the river by four.”
“I’m sorry, Leni,” Mr. Walker said.
She heard the gentleness in his voice and knew that the man was ready to offer comfort. Leni didn’t dare reach out. Any kindness now could break what little control she had. “Take care of him, Tom. He’s my world.”
She stared up at her son on his grandfather’s shoulders, and she thought,
Please let this be okay, and then the cell door clanged shut.
The rest of the day passed slowly, in unfamiliar sights and sounds, in a phone jangling, in doors opening and closing, in lunch orders being taken and delivered, in boots stomping across the station floor.
Leni sat on the hard concrete bench, slumped back against the cold wall. Sunlight streamed through the small cell window, heated everything. She pushed the damp hair out of her eyes. She’d spent the last two hours crying and sweating and muttering curses. Everywhere she could be damp, she was. Her mouth tasted like the inside of an old shoe. She went to the small, lidless toilet, pulled down her pants, and sat down, praying no one saw her.
How was MJ? She hoped Mr. Walker had found the stuffed orca (inexplicably named Bob) in his suitcase. MJ wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight without him. How had Leni forgotten to tell Mr. Walker that?
The station door opened. A man walked in. He had hunched shoulders and hair so tangled it looked like he’d been electrified. He wore hip waders and carried a scuffed green nylon briefcase. “Hey, Marci,” he said in a booming voice. Leni returned to her place on the bench.
“Morning, Dem,” said the female officer at the front desk. He glanced sideways. “That her?”
The female officer nodded. “Yep. Allbright, Lenora. Arraignment at three o’clock. John’s coming in from Soldotna.”
The man headed her way, came to a stop outside the jail cell. With a sigh, he pulled a folder out of his dirty nylon briefcase and started reading. “Pretty detailed confession. Don’t you watch television?”
“Who are you?”
“Demby Cowe. Your court-appointed attorney. We’re going to zip in, enter a plea of not guilty, and zip out. The pinks are running. Okay? All you have to do is stand up when the court tells you to and say not guilty.” He closed the file. “Do you have someone who can pay bail?”
“Don’t you want to hear my side of it?”
“I’ve got your confession. We’ll talk later. Plenty, I promise. Brush your hair.”
He was gone before Leni could even really process that he’d been there.
* * *
THE COURTROOM LOOKED more like a small-town doctor’s office than a hallowed hall of justice. There was no shining wood, no pewlike seats, no big desk up front. Just linoleum floors, a bunch of chairs set out in rows, and desks for the prosecutor and the defense. In the front of the room, beneath a framed picture of Ronald Reagan, a long Formica desk awaited the judge; beside it, a plastic chair awaited witnesses.
Leni slid into her chair alongside her attorney, who was sitting close to the desk, studying tide charts. The prosecutor was seated at the desk across the aisle. A skinny man with a bushy beard, wearing a fishing vest and black pants.
The judge walked into the courtroom, followed by the stenographer and the bailiff. The judge wore a long black robe and Xtratuf fishing boots. He took his place behind the desk and glanced at the clock. “Let’s be quick, gentlemen.”
Leni’s lawyer stood. “May it please the court—”
The courtroom door banged open behind them. “Where is she?”
Leni could live to be one hundred and ten and still know that voice. Her heart did a little flip of joy. “Large Marge!”
Large Marge barreled forward, bracelets rattling. Her dark, aging face was speckled with tiny black moles and her hair was a tangle of fuzzy dreadlocks held back from her face by a folded bandanna headband. Her denim shirt was too small—stretched taut across her large breasts—and her pants were stained blue from berry picking and tucked into rubber boots.
She yanked Leni right out of the chair and hugged her. The woman smelled of homemade shampoo and wood smoke. Of Alaska in the summer. “Damn it to hell,” the judge said, banging his gavel. “What’s going on
here? We are arraigning this young woman on serious criminal charges—”
Large Marge extricated herself from the hug and pushed Leni back down into the chair. “Goddamn it, John, this proceeding is what’s criminal.”
Marge strode up to the judge’s bench, her boots squeaking at every step. “This girl is innocent of everything and Whack Job Ward coerced a confession out of her. And for what? Rendering criminal assistance? Accessory after the fact? Good God. She didn’t kill her piece-of-shit old man, she just ran when her terrified mother told her to. She was eighteen years old with an abusive dad. Who wouldn’t run?”
The judge slammed his mallet on the desk. “Marge, you got a mouth on you like a king salmon. Now shut up. This is my courtroom. And this is just a damned arraignment, not a trial. You can present your evidence when it’s time.”
Large Marge turned to face the prosecutor. “Drop the damn charges, Adrian. Unless you want to spend the last days of the season in court. Everyone in Kaneq—and probably on the pipeline—knew Ernt Allbright was abusive. I will bring an endless stream of folks to testify on this girl’s behalf. Starting with Tom Walker.”
“Tom Walker?” the judge said.
Large Marge faced the judge again, crossed her arms in a way that communicated a settling-in, a willingness to stand here all day arguing her point. “That’s right.”
The judge glanced over at the skinny prosecutor. “Adrian?”
The prosecutor looked down at the papers spread out in front of him. He tapped a pen on the desk. “I don’t know, Your Honor…”
The courtroom door opened. The woman from the front desk at the police station walked through. She was nervously smoothing her pant leg. “Your Honor?” she said.
“What is it, Marci?” the judge boomed. “We’re busy here.”
“The governor is on the line. He wants to talk to you. Right now.”
* * *
ONE MINUTE, Leni was standing beside her lawyer at the desk in the courtroom, and the next thing she knew, she was leaving the police station.
Outside, she saw Large Marge standing beside a pickup truck. “What happened?” Leni asked.
Large Marge took Leni’s suitcase and tossed it into the rusted bed of the pickup. “Alaska isn’t so different as everyplace else. It helps to have friends in high places. Tommy called the governor, who got the charges dropped.” She touched Leni’s shoulder. “It’s over, kiddo.”
“Only part of it,” Leni said. “There’s more.”
“Yeah. Tom wants you to come to the homestead. He’ll take you to see Matthew.”
Leni couldn’t let herself think about that yet. She walked around to the passenger side of the pickup and climbed up into the blanket-covered bench seat.
Large Marge stepped up into the driver’s seat, settling her bulk with a shimmying motion. When she started the engine, the radio came on.
Another little piece of my heart now, baby came growling through the speaker. Leni closed her eyes.
“You look fragile, kiddo,” Large Marge said.
“Hard not to be.” She thought about asking Large Marge about Matthew, but honestly, Leni felt as if the smallest thing could break her. So she stared out the window instead.
As they drove down to the dock, Leni couldn’t help but stare in awe at the magical drizzle of light. The world seemed illuminated from within, fantastical colors bold and gilded, knife peaks of snow and rock, vibrantly green grass, blue sea.
The docks were full of fishing boats and noise. Seabirds cawing; engines growling, puffing black smoke into the air; otters gliding in the water between boats, chattering.
They boarded Large Marge’s red fishing boat—the Fair Chase—and sped across a calm blue Kachemak Bay, toward the soaring white mountains. Leni had to shield her eyes from the glare of sunlight on the water, but there was no way to shield her heart. Memories came at her from all sides. She remembered seeing these mountains for the first time. Had she known then how Alaska would take hold of her? Shape her? She didn’t know, couldn’t remember. It all felt like a lifetime ago.
They rounded the tip of Sadie Cove and ducked in between two green, humped islands, their shorelines littered with silvery driftwood and kelp and
pebbles. The boat slowed and motored around the rock breakwater.
Leni got her first glimpse of Kaneq Harbor and the town set on stilts above it. They tied down the boat and walked up the gangplank toward the chain-link fence that created the entrance to the harbor from town. She didn’t think Large Marge had said anything, but Leni couldn’t really be sure. All she could hear was her own body, coming alive again in this place that would always define her—her heart beating, her lungs drawing breath, her footsteps on the gravel of Main Street.
Kaneq had grown in the past years. The clapboard-fronted storefronts were painted bright colors, like pictures she’d seen of fjord-side towns in Scandinavia. The boardwalk that connected everything looked brand-new. Streetlamps stood like sentinels, planters full of geraniums and petunias hung from their iron arms. Off to her left was the General Store, expanded to twice its original size, with a new red door. The street boasted one shop after another: the Snackle Shop, the diner, the yarn shop, souvenir places, ice-cream stands, outfitters, guides, kayak rentals, and the new Malamute Saloon and Geneva Inn, which boasted a giant white rack of antlers above the door.
She remembered their first day here, with Mama in her new hiking boots and a frothy peasant blouse, saying, I’m a little suspicious of people who use dead animals in their decorating.
Leni couldn’t help smiling. Good Lord, they’d been unprepared.
Tourists mingled with locals (one still easily distinguishable from the other by clothing). Vehicles lined the street in front of the Malamute Saloon: a few ATVs, some dirt bikes, two pickup trucks, and a lime-green Pinto with a duct-taped fender.
Leni climbed into Large Marge’s old International Harvester. They drove past the General Store. A newly painted bridge (fishermen with lines in the water on either side) swept them over the crystal-clear river and deposited them on the gravel road that soon turned to dirt.
For the first half mile, there were new signs of civilization: A travel trailer was on blocks in the tall grass; beside it, a tractor was rusted through. A couple of new driveways. A mobile home. An old school bus parked near the ditch had no tires.
Leni noticed that Large Marge had a new sign at her place. It read KAYAK AND CANOE RENTALS HERE!
“I love exclamation marks,” Large Marge said.
Leni was going to say something, but then she saw the start of Walker land, where the arch welcomed guests to the adventure lodge and promised
FISHING, KAYAKING, BEAR VIEWING, AND SIGHTSEEING FLIGHTS.
Large Marge eased up on the accelerator as they neared the driveway.
She glanced at Leni. “You sure you’re ready to do this? We could wait.”
Leni heard the gentleness in Large Marge’s voice and knew that the woman was offering to give Leni time before she saw Matthew again. “I’m ready.”
They crossed beneath the Walker arch and rumbled along, the road evened out by gravel. To her left, eight new log cabins had been built among the trees, each one positioned to have a sweeping view of the bay. A twisting, handrailed trail led down to the beach.
Not much farther and they came to the Walker house, now Walker Lodge. Still a crown jewel; two stories of skinned logs, with a huge porch and windows that overlooked the bay and the mountains. There was no junk showing in the yard anymore; no rusting trucks or coils of wire or stacked pallets. Instead, there were wooden partitions here and there, freestanding walls to hide whatever was behind. Adirondack chairs populated the deck. The animal pens had been moved to the distant tree line.
Down at the dock, a float plane was tied up alongside three aluminum fishing boats. There were people walking along paths, fishing on the beach. Employees in brown uniforms and guests in color-coordinated rain gear and brand-new fleece vests. Leni got out of the truck, looked around.
MJ bolted out of the lodge, bounded across the deck, maneuvering around the chairs, and came at her, waving something in his hand.
Leni bent down and scooped him up, holding him so tightly he started to wiggle to get free. She didn’t realize until right then how afraid she’d been of losing him.
Tom Walker headed toward her. Beside him was a pretty, broad- shouldered Native woman with hip-length black hair that was going gray in a single wide streak. She wore a faded denim blouse tucked into khaki
pants, with a knife sheathed at her belt and a pair of wire cutters sticking out of her breast pocket.
“Hey, Leni,” Mr. Walker said, “I’d like you to meet my wife, Atka.”
The woman held out her hand and smiled. “I have heard so much about you and your mother.”
Leni’s throat felt tight as she shook Atka’s rough hand and said, “It’s nice to meet you.” She looked at Mr. Walker. “Mama would be happy for you.” Leni’s voice cracked.
They fell silent after that.
MJ dropped to his knees in the grass, making his blue triceratops fight his red T. rex, with growling sound effects.
“I’d like to see him now,” Leni said. She knew instinctively that Mr. Walker was waiting for her to tell him she was ready. “Alone, I think. If that’s okay with you.”
Mr. Walker turned to his wife. “Atka, would you and Marge watch the little one for a minute?”
Atka smiled, swept the long hair to her back. “MJ, do you remember the starfish I told you about? The animal called Yuit by my people, the wrestler of the waves? Would you like to see one?”
MJ shot to his feet. “Yes! Yes!”
Leni crossed her arms as she watched Large Marge and Atka and MJ walk toward the beach stairs. MJ’s high, chattering voice faded gradually away.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Mr. Walker said.
“I wish I could have written,” she said. “I wanted to tell you and Matthew about MJ, but…” She took a deep breath. “We were afraid they’d arrest us if we came back.”
“You could have trusted us to protect you, but we don’t need to talk about what happened back then.”
“I abandoned him,” she said quietly.
“He was in so much pain he didn’t know who he was, let alone who you were.”
“You think that eases my conscience? That he was in pain?”
“You were in pain, too. More than I knew, I guess. You knew you were pregnant?”
She nodded. “How is he?” “It’s been a rough road.”
Leni felt acutely uncomfortable in the quiet that fell between them.
Guilty.
“Come with me,” he said, and took her by the arm, steadying her. They walked past the lodge’s cabins, past where the goat pens used to be, and across a sheared hayfield, into a stand of black spruce.
Mr. Walker stopped. Leni expected to see a truck, but there wasn’t one. “Aren’t we going to Homer?”
Mr. Walker shook his head. He led her deeper into the trees, until they came to a slatted boardwalk, lined with gnarly branch railings on either side. Just below it, on a lip of land surrounded by trees, was a log cabin that overlooked the bay. Geneva’s old cabin. A wide wooden bridge led from the boardwalk to the front door. No, not a bridge. A ramp.
A wheelchair ramp.
Mr. Walker walked on ahead, his boots thudding on the ramplike bridge.
He knocked on the door. Leni heard a muffled voice and Mr. Walker opened the door and led Leni inside. “Go on,” he said gently, pushing her inside a small, cozy cabin with a wall of windows overlooking the bay.
The first thing Leni saw was a series of large paintings. One of them—a huge work-in-progress canvas—was propped on an easel. On it, an explosion of color; drops and splatters and streaks that somehow— impossibly—gave Leni the impression of the northern lights, although she couldn’t say why. There were strange, misshapen letters in all that color; she could almost make them out but not quite. Maybe it said, HER? The painting made her feel something. Pain first, and then a rising sense of hope.
“I’ll leave you two,” Mr. Walker said. He left the cabin and closed the door at the same time Leni saw the man in the wheelchair, sitting with his back to her.
He executed a slow turn, his paint-splattered hands agile on the wheelchair, maneuvering himself around.
Matthew.
He looked up. A network of raised pale pink scars ran across his face, gave him an odd, stitched-together look. His nose was flattened, had the splayed look of an old boxer’s, and his right eye was tugged just the slightest bit downward by a starburst of scar tissue at the top of his cheekbone.
But his eyes. In them, she saw him, her Matthew. “Matthew? It’s me, Leni.”
He frowned. She waited for him to say something, anything, but there was nothing, just this aching, drawn-out silence where once there had been an endless stream of words.
She felt tears start. “It’s Leni,” she said again, softer. He stared at her, just kept staring, like he was dreaming. “You don’t know me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t. And you won’t understand about MJ. I knew that. I knew it, it’s just…” She took a step backward. She couldn’t do this now, not yet.
She would try again later. Practice her words. She’d explain it to MJ, prepare him. They had time now, and she wanted to do this right. She turned toward the door.
