“Do you think she will forgive me someday?” she asked, staring out at Leni.
“Oh, for the love of Pete. For what? Saving her life? That girl loves you, Coraline.”
Cora took a long drag on her cigarette, exhaled. “I know she loves me. I have never doubted for a second that she loves me. But I let her grow up in a war zone. I let her see what no child should ever see. I let her know fear of a man who was supposed to love her, and then I killed him in front of her. And I ran and made her live life under an alias. Maybe if I’d been stronger, braver, I could have changed the law like Yvonne Wanrow.”
“It took years for that woman’s case to get to the Supreme Court. And you were in Alaska, not Washington. Who knew the law would finally recognize a battered woman defense? And your dad still says it rarely works. You have to let all of that go. She has. Look at her, down there with her son, teaching him how to fish. Your daughter is fine, Cora. Fine. She’s forgiven you. You need to forgive yourself.”
“She needs to go home.”
“Home? To the cabin with no plumbing or electricity? To the brain-damaged boy? To an accessory-after-the-fact charge? There’s that new blood test now. Something about DNA. So don’t be ridiculous, Cora.” She reached out, slid her arm around Cora’s shoulder. “Think of all that you’ve found here. Leni is getting an education and becoming a wonderful photographer. You like your job at the art gallery. Your home is always warm and you have a family you can count on.”
What she’d done to her daughter had been forgiven, it was true, and Leni’s forgiveness was as real and true as sunlight. But Cora, try as she had for all of these years, couldn’t forgive herself. It wasn’t the shooting that haunted her; Cora knew she would commit the same crime again in the same circumstances.
She couldn’t forgive herself for the years that came before, for what she allowed and accepted, for the definition of love she’d handed down to her daughter like a dark incantation.
Because of Cora, Leni had learned to be happy with half a life, pretending to be someone else, somewhere else.
Because of Cora, Leni could never see the man she loved or go home again. How was Cora supposed to forgive herself for that?
*
SMILE.
You’re happy.
Leni didn’t know why she had to remind herself to smile and look happy on this bright day, when they were at the park to celebrate her graduation from college.
She was happy.
Really.
Especially today. She was proud of herself. The first female in her family to graduate from college.
（It had taken a long time.）
Still. She was twenty-five years old, and a single mother, with—as of tomorrow—a college degree in visual arts. She had a loving family, the best kid in the world, and a warm place to live. She was never hungry or freezing or afraid for her mother’s life. Her only fears now were garden-variety parenting fears. Kids crossing the street alone, falling off swing sets, strangers appearing out of nowhere. She never fell asleep to the sound of screaming or crying and never woke to a floor strewn with broken glass.
She was happy.
It didn’t matter that she sometimes had days like today, where the past poked insistently into her view.
Of course she would think of Matthew today, on this day, which was one they’d talked about so often. How many times had a conversation between them begun with: When we finish college…？
Instinctively, she lifted her camera and minimized her view of the world. It was how she managed her memories, how she processed the world. In pictures. With a camera, she could crop and reframe her life.
Happy. Smile.
Click, click, click and she was herself again. She could see what mattered.
Unbroken blue sky, not a cloud in sight. People all around.
Sunshine called out to Seattleites in a language they understood, dragged them out of their hillside homes and encouraged them to put on expensive sneakers and enjoy the mountains and lakes and winding forest roads. After which they would stop by their local Thriftway Grocery Store for prepackaged steaks to put on their grills at weekend barbecues.
Life was soft here in Seattle. Safe and contained. Crosswalks and traffic lights and helmets and policemen on horses and bicycles.
As a mother, she appreciated all that protection, and she had tried to settle into this comfortable life. She never told anyone—not even Mama—how much she missed the howling of wolves or a day spent alone on the snow machine or the echoing crack of ice in the spring breakup. She bought her meat instead of hunting it; she turned on the faucet for water and flushed her toilet when she was finished. The salmon she grilled in the summer came already cleaned and filleted and washed, caught like strips of silver and pink silk behind cellophane canopies.