Turns. Switchbacks. River crossings. Up and up they went.
Finally, they pulled into a dirt parking lot and stopped abruptly. There were no other vehicles. A sign at the trailhead read:
BEAR CLAW WILDERNESS AREA
ALLOWABLE USES: Hiking, Camping, Rock Climbing.
DISTANCE: 2.8 miles one way.
DIFFICULTY: Challenging. Steep climbs.
ELEVATION GAIN: 2600 feet
CAMPING: Sawtooth Ridge, near marked Eagle Creek crossing.
Matthew helped Leni out of the truck. Kneeling, he checked her wafflestompers, retied her laces. “You okay?”
“What if he—”
“She got away. Large Marge will protect her. And she wanted you safe.”
“I know. Let’s go,” she said dully.
“We’ve got a long hike ahead of us. Can you make it?”
Leni nodded.
They headed for the trail, with Matthew leading and Leni following along behind him, struggling to keep up.
They climbed for hours, saw no one. The trail snaked along a sheer stone cliff. Below them was the sea, waves crashing into rocks. The ground trembled at each wave’s impact, or maybe Leni just thought it did because life felt so unstable now. Even the ground felt unreliable.
Finally, Matthew came to what he’d been looking for: a huge, grassy field, thick with purple lupine. Snow whitened the peaks; below lay folds of rock, dotted here and there by the white dots that were Dall sheep.
He dropped his pack into the grass and turned to face Leni. He handed her a smoked salmon sandwich and a can of warm Coke, and while she ate he set up a pup tent deep in the grass.
Later, with a fire crackling in front of the tent and the orange flaps pinned open, Matthew sat on the grass beside her. He put an arm around her. She leaned into him.
“You don’t have to be the only one protecting her, you know,” he said. “We’ll all take care of you. It’s always been that way in Kaneq.”
Leni wanted that to be true. She wanted to believe there was a safe place for her and Mama, a do-over of their lives, a beginning that didn’t rise from the ashes of a violent, terrible ending. Mostly, she didn’t want to feel solely responsible for her mama’s safety anymore.
She turned to Matthew, loving him so much, so desperately, it felt like she was being held underwater and needed oxygen. “I love you.”
“Me, too,” he said.
Up here, in the vastness of Alaska, the words sounded infinitesimal and small. A fist shaken at the gods.
TWENTY-ONE
His job was to keep her safe.
Leni was his North Star. He knew it sounded stupid and girlie and romantic and that people would say he was too young to know these things, only he wasn’t. When your mom died, you grew up.
He hadn’t been able to protect his mom, to save her.
He was stronger now.
He held Leni in his arms all night last night, loved her, felt her twitch at bad dreams, listened to her sobs. He knew how that was, nightmares like that about your mom.
Finally, when the first glimmer of daylight pulsed through the pup tent’s tangerine nylon sides, he eased away from her, smiling at the muffled sound of her snoring. He dressed in yesterday’s clothes, put on his hiking boots, and stepped outside.
Gray clouds muscled across the sky, lowered over the trail. The breeze was more a sigh than anything else, but it was the end of August. The leaves were changing color at night. They both knew what that meant. Change came even faster up here.
Matthew busied himself building a fire on the black remnants of last night’s blaze. Sitting on a rock, leaning forward, he stared into the wavering flames. The breeze kicked up, taunted the flames.
Now, sitting by the fire alone, he admitted to himself that he was afraid he’d done the wrong thing by bringing Leni here, afraid he’d done the wrong thing by leaving Cora in Kaneq. Afraid he’d turn around and see Ernt barreling up the trail with a rifle in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.
Mostly he was afraid for Leni, because no matter how this all worked out, no matter if she did everything perfectly and got away and saved her mom, Leni’s heart would always have a broken place. It didn’t matter how you lost a parent or how great or shitty that parent was, a kid grieved forever. Matthew grieved for the mother he’d had. He figured Leni would grieve for the dad she wanted.
He settled a camp coffeepot in the fire, right in the flames.
Behind him, he heard rustling, the zipping sound of nylon being moved. Leni pushed back the flaps and stepped out into the morning. A raindrop splatted into her eye as she braided her hair.
“Hey,” he said, offering her coffee. Another raindrop fell on the metal cup.