The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

you don’t stop loving a person when they’re hurt. You get stronger so they can lean on you.

WHEN IT CAME TIME to dress for the barbecue, Leni kind of lost her mind. Honestly, she didn’t know what was wrong with her.

love took shape in the air around them, a regret- and memory-filled version, maybe, sad around the edges, but love.

“Enough!” Mad Earl finally said, raising his skeletal hands in the air. “I can’t have this happening to my family. And we do got little ones.” He turned to Dad. “Sorry, Ernt. I gotta side with Thelma.”

Alaska. The Great Alone.

for the definition of love she’d handed down to her daughter like a dark incantation.

Not funny ha-ha.

She said to me once that she felt like she’d been nothing, a reflection of other people.

Love doesn’t fade or die, baby girl.