The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

It’s like his back is broken, Mama had said, and you don’t stop loving a person when they’re hurt. You get stronger so they can lean on you. He needs me. Us.

“Two kinds of folks come up to Alaska, Cora. People running to something and people running away from something. The second kind—you want to keep your eye out for them.

Up here you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.”

You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

They lived on a piece of land that couldn’t be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you. There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream. For the first time, she really understood what her dad had been saying. Remote.

(Never tell the truth, never that Dad had trouble keeping a job and staying in one place, and never that he drank too much and liked to yell.)

“So we’re friends, right?” Matthew said. “No matter what?” Leni nodded. “No matter what.”

We shut out the world and lived on love, but the world came roaring back.”

Nothing you did could hold back that rising tide.

He taught her something new about friendship: it picked right back up where you’d left off, as if you hadn’t been apart at all.

“The Great Alone,” Leni said. That was what Robert Service called Alaska.

“It’s going to get worse,” Leni said. “Every day is darker and colder.”

so Leni had stopped taking pictures and Mama barely smoked.

Dad was sick and sorry, that if they loved him enough, he would get better and it would be like Before. Only Leni didn’t believe that anymore.

All this time, Dad had taught Leni how dangerous the outside world was. The truth was that the biggest danger of all was in her own home.

Mama could never leave Dad, and Leni would never leave Mama. And Dad could never let them go. In this toxic knot that was their family, there was no escape for any of them.

“Now what?” Leni said. “You go,” Large Marge said. “I’ve talked to Tom. He’s going to pay for it. Tica and I are buying your books and Thelma is giving you spending money. You’re one of us and we have your back. No excuses, kid. You leave this place the second you can. Run like hell, kid, and don’t look back. But Leni—” “Yeah?” “You be careful as hell until the day you leave.”

She looked at Leni. “It was worth it. I want you to know that. I’d do it again for you.”

Leni and her mama would finally—finally—be unafraid.

Leni stood beside her, imagining the sight of her dad’s pale, stiff body being dragged down into the dark. The thing he hated most.

The irony was not lost on her. It was what her dad had wanted them to be. Survivors.

She left him there, alone with strangers. A choice she knew he would never have made about her.

“Welcome home, Coraline. Lenora. Let’s get some ice on those bruises.

“I’m sorry, Leni. I’ve made such a mess of your life.” “We did it,” Leni said. “Together. Now we have to live with it.” “There’s something wrong with me,” Mama said after a pause. “No,” Leni said firmly. “There was something wrong with him.”