“We’ll sneak out,” he said.
Leni couldn’t imagine taking that risk now. The banishment from the Harlans had broken the last thread of her father’s control. He cut trees and skinned logs daily and woke in the middle of the night to pace. He muttered under his breath constantly and hammered, hammered, hammered on his wall.
“We’re going to college together in September,” Matthew said （because he knew how to dream and to believe）。
“Yeah,” she said, wanting it more than she had ever wanted anything. “We’ll be normal kids in Anchorage.” It was what they said to each other all the time.
Leni walked beside him to the door, mumbled goodbye to Ms. Rhodes, who gave her a fierce hug and said, “Don’t forget the graduation party at the saloon tonight. You and Mattie are the guests of honor.”
“Thanks, Ms. Rhodes.”
Outside, Leni’s parents were waiting for her, holding a sign that read HAPPY GRAD DAY! She stumbled to a stop.
Leni felt Matthew’s hand at the small of her back. She was pretty sure he gave her a push. She moved forward, forcing a smile.
“Hey, guys,” she said as her parents rushed at her. “You didn’t have to do this.”
Mama beamed at her. “Are you kidding? You graduated at the top of your class.”
“A class of two,” she pointed out.
Dad put an arm around her, drew her close. “I’ve never been number one at anything, Red. I’m proud of you. And now you can leave that pissant school behind. Sayonara, bullshit.”
They packed into the truck and headed out. Overhead, a plane flew low, making a dull putt-putt-putt sound.
“Tourists.” Dad said the word as if it were a curse, loud enough that people heard. Then he smiled. “Mom made your favorite cake and strawberry akutaq.”
Leni nodded, too depressed to force a fake smile.
Down the street, a banner hung across the half-finished saloon. CONGRATULATIONS LENI AND MATTHEW!!! GRAD PARTY FRIDAY NIGHT! 9 P.M. FIRST DRINK FREE!
“Leni, baby girl? You look sad as a lost dollar.”
“I want to go to the graduation party at the saloon,” Leni said.
Mama leaned forward to look at Dad. “Ernt?”
“You want me to walk into Tom Walker’s damn saloon and see all the people who are ruining this town?” Dad said.
“For Leni,” Mama said.
“No way, José.”
Leni tried to see past his anger to the man Mama claimed he used to be, before Vietnam had changed him and Alaska’s winters had revealed his own darkness. She tried to remember being Red, his girl, the one who’d ridden his shoulders on The Strand in Hermosa Beach. “Please, Dad. Please. I want to celebrate graduating from high school in my town. The town you brought me to.”
When Dad looked at her, Leni saw what she saw so rarely in his eyes: love. Tattered, tired, shaved small by bad choices, but love just the same. And regret.
“Sorry, Red. I can’t do it. Not even for you.”
NINETEEN
Evening.
The sound of a chain saw whirring, sputtering, going silent.
Leni stood at the window staring out at the yard. It was seven o’clock: the dinner hour, a break in this season’s long workday. Any minute now, Dad would come back into the cabin, bringing tension in with him. The remnants of Leni’s three-person graduation party—carrot cake and strawberry akutaq, a kind of ice cream made from snow and Crisco and fruit—lay on the table.
“I’m sorry,” Mama said, coming up to stand beside her. “I know how badly you wanted to go to the party. I’m sure you considered sneaking out. I would have at your age.”
Leni scooped out a spoonful of akutaq. Usually, she loved it. Not tonight. “I planned a dozen ways to do it.”
“And?”
“They all end the same way: with you alone in a room full of his fists.”
Mama lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke. “This … wall of his. He’s not giving up on it. We’re going to have to be more careful.”
“More careful?” Leni turned to her. “We think about every single thing we say. We disappear in an instant. We pretend we don’t need anything or anyone except him and this place. And none of it is enough, Mama. We can’t be good enough to keep him from losing it.”
Leni saw how difficult this conversation was for her mother; she wished she could do what she’d always done. Pretend it would get better, that he’d get better, pretend it hadn’t been on purpose or it wouldn’t happen again. Pretend.