Large Marge was quiet for a moment. In the silence, Leni wondered if one person could ever really save another, or if it was the kind of thing you had to do for yourself.
“How’s your mom? I still can’t believe she let Ernt come back.”
“Yeah. The cops can’t do anything if she won’t.” Leni didn’t know what else to say. She knew it was impossible for someone like Large Marge to understand why a woman like Cora stayed with a man like Ernt. It should have been as easy as an elementary math equation: he hits you x broken bones = leave him.
“Tom and I begged your mama to press charges. I guess she’s too afraid.”
“It’s about more than fear.” Leni was about to say more when her stomach seized. She thought she might throw up. “Sorry,” she said when the nausea passed. “I feel terrible lately. Worry is making me physically sick, I guess.
Large Marge sat there a long time, then pushed to her feet. “Wait here.” She left Leni sitting on the settee, breathing carefully. She walked back toward the store’s shelving, bumping into one of the steel animal traps hanging on the wall.
Leni kept reliving the scene with Matthew, hearing his screams, seeing his eye roll around in the socket. He needs a diaper change.
Her fault. All of it.
Large Marge returned, her rubber boots squeaking on the sawdust floor. “You might need this, I’m afraid. I always keep one in stock.”
Leni looked down, saw the slim box in Large Marge’s palm.
And just like that, Leni’s life got even worse.
*
IN THE DARK of an early-fallen night, Leni made her way from the outhouse to the cabin beneath a starlit velvet blue sky. It was one of those vibrant, clear-skied Alaskan nights that were otherworldly. Moonlight reflected on snow and set the world aglow.
Once inside the cabin, she latched the door behind her and stood by the row of parkas and Cowichan sweaters and rain jackets, the box of mittens and gloves and hats at her feet. Unable to move, to think, to feel.
Until now, this second, she would have said blue was her favorite color. （A stupid thought, but there it was.） Blue. The color of morning, of twilight, of glaciers and rivers, of Kachemak Bay, of her mother’s eyes.
Now blue was the color of a ruined life.
She didn’t know what to do. There was no good answer. She was smart enough to know that.
And dumb enough to be in this situation.
“Leni?”
She heard her mother’s voice, recognized the concerned tone, but it didn’t matter. Leni felt distance spreading between them. That was how change came, she supposed: in the quiet of things unspoken and truths unacknowledged.
“How was Matthew?” Mama asked. She walked over to Leni, peeled off her parka, hung it up, and led her to the sofa, but neither of them sat down.
“He’s not even him,” Leni said. “He can’t think or talk or walk. He didn’t look at me, just screamed.”
“He’s not paralyzed, though. That’s good, right?”
That was what Leni had thought, too. Before. But what good was being able to move if you couldn’t think or see or talk? It might have been better if he’d died down there. Kinder.
But the world was never kind, especially not to kids.
“I know you think it’s the end of the world, but you’re young. You’ll fall in love again and … What’s that in your hand?”
Leni held out her fist, uncurled her fingers to reveal the thin vial in her hand.
Mama took it, studied it. “What is this?”
“It’s a pregnancy test,” Leni said. “Blue means positive.”
She thought about the chain of choices that had led her here. A ten-degree shift anywhere along the way and everything would be different. “It must have happened the night we ran away. Or before? How do you know a thing like that?”
“Oh, Leni,” Mama said.
What Leni needed now was Matthew. She needed him to be him, whole. Then they would be in this together. If Matthew were Matthew, they’d get married and have a baby. It was 1978, for God’s sake; maybe they didn’t even have to get married. The point was, they could make it. They’d be too young and college would have to wait, but it wouldn’t be the tragedy it was now.
How was she supposed to do this without him?
Mama said, “It’s not like in my day when they sent you away in shame and nuns took your baby. You have choices now. It’s legal to—”
“I’m having Matthew’s baby,” Leni said. She didn’t even know until then that all of this had already gone through her brain and she’d decided.