The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

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.

Leni stared down at her father. She saw the man who had used his fists when he was angry, saw the blood on his hands and the mean set to his jaw. But she saw the other man, too, the one she’d crafted from photographs and her own need, the one who’d loved them as much as he could, his capacity for love destroyed by war. Leni thought maybe that he would haunt her. Not just him, but the idea of him, the sad and scary truth that you could love and hate the same person at the same time, that you could feel a deep and abiding loss and shame for your own weakness and still be glad that this awful thing had been done.

Samwise Gamgee would never leave Frodo like this. No hero would ever do this. But books were only a reflection of real life, not the thing itself. They didn’t tell you about boys who broke their bodies and had their brains sheared down to the stem, who couldn’t talk or move or say your name. Or about mothers and daughters who made terrible, irrevocable choices. Or about babies who deserved better than the messed-up lives into which they were born.

Leni was tired of crying, of feeling this grief that kept opening and closing inside of her, but even so, she felt tears sting her eyes.

Love doesn’t fade or die, baby girl. People tell you it does, but it doesn’t. If you love him now, you’ll love him in ten years and in forty. Differently, maybe, a faded version, but he’s part of you now. And you are part of him.”

Silence followed Leni’s declaration. In it, Leni glimpsed the largeness of the world for her and Mama now, the ocean of troubles they faced on their own, and it frightened her, but not as much as the idea of the world she would inhabit if she gave up this baby. Some choices you didn’t recover from; she was old enough to know that.

Most would never go, and of the few who did, the vast majority would leave before the end of their first winter, but Leni had always known they would be changed simply by the magnitude of the dream and the possibility they glimpsed in the distance.

Cancer. I have cancer. She couldn’t imagine saying it out loud. She closed her eyes, exhaled. Imagined—remembered—a little girl with wild red hair and chubby little hands and freckles like cinnamon flakes, reaching out for her, saying, Mama, I love you.

I have cancer. She couldn’t imagine saying it out loud. She closed her eyes, exhaled. Imagined—remembered—a little girl with wild red hair and chubby little hands and freckles like cinnamon flakes, reaching out for her, saying, Mama, I love you.

Cora had gone through so much. Lived when she could have died. She’d imagined her life a hundred different ways, practiced a thousand ways to atone. She’d imagined growing old, growing senile, laughing when she was supposed to cry, using salt instead of sugar. In her dreams, she’d seen Leni fall in love again and get married and have another baby. Dreams. In a breathtaking instant, Cora’s life crashed into focus, became small. All of her fears and regrets and disappointments fell away. There was just one thing that mattered; how could she not have known it from the beginning? Why had she spent so much time sea...

Leni stood there, connected to her mother by breath and touch and a lifetime of love.

see now how grief becomes thin ice. I haven’t lost my mom yet, but a single word has pushed her away from me, created a barrier between us that never existed before. For the first time ever, we are lying to each other. I can feel it. Lying to protect each other.

single moment mattered and every breath was a gift. Leni had learned to submerge fear, push it down to a quiet place and cover it with a smile, but it was there always, the thought, Is that breath the end? Is that the

“I’m so tired, but … I can’t leave you. I … can’t. I don’t know how. You are it for me, you know. The great love of my life.” “Peas in a pod,” Leni whispered. “Two of a kind.”

But Leni knew that sometimes you grabbed hold of whatever you could to stay afloat. And maybe all that black was a shield, a way to say to people: Don’t talk to me, don’t approach me, don’t ask your ordinary, everyday questions when my world has exploded.

Leni hated that there was nothing she could do to help. How could three drowning people save each other?

She pressed the picture and the medal to her chest, as if she could imprint them onto her soul. These were the memories Leni wanted to keep: their love, his heroism, the image of them laughing, the idea of her mother beachcombing.

I’ll be watching out for you. Always. You have a child, so you know. You are my heart, baby girl. You are everything I did right. And I want you to know I would do it all again, every wonderful terrible second of it. I would do years and years of it again for one minute with you.

Mama had wanted Leni to come home, but home was not just a cabin in a deep woods that overlooked a placid cove. Home was a state of mind, the peace that came from being who you were and living an honest life. There was no going halfway home. She couldn’t build a new life on the creaky foundation of a lie. Not again. Not for home.

Grief this deep was a silent, lonely thing. From now on, the only time Leni would hear her mother’s voice would be in her own mind, thoughts channeled through another woman’s consciousness, a continual quest for connection, for meaning. Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who had carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; through her, Mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.

“I love you, Mama,” Leni said, feeling loss settle deep, as much a part of her now as love. They’d been more than best friends; they’d been allies. Mama had called Leni the great love of her life and Leni thought maybe that was always true for parents and their children. She remembered something Mama had said to her once. Love doesn’t fade or die, baby girl. She’d been talking about Matthew and sadness, but it was equally true for mothers and their children. This love she felt for her mother and her son and Matthew and the people around her was a durable thing, as vast as this landscape, as immutable as the sea. Stronger than time itself.

She knew that from now on, she would feel her mother’s touch in the breeze, hear her voice on the sound of the rising tide. Sometimes, berry-picking or making bread, or even the smell of coffee would make her cry. For the rest of her life, she would look up into the vast Alaskan sky and say, “Hey, Mama,” and remember. “I will always love you,” she whispered to the wind. “Always.”