The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

That was the thing about her dad: he might be moody and sharp-tempered, even a little scary sometimes, but that was just because he felt things like love and loss and disappointment so keenly. Love most of all.

She knew how sorry he was. She could see it on his face. When she was younger, she’d sometimes wondered what good all those sorries were if nothing ever changed, but Mama had explained it to her. The war and captivity had snapped something in him. 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.

Natalie put on her yellow gloves. “I never found another man worth having. You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

“Well. You aren’t the first cheechakos to come up here with a dream and a poor plan.” “Cheechako?” Leni asked. “Tenderfoot. Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become. You are out here in the wild, girls. That isn’t some fable or fairy tale. It’s real. Hard. Winter will be here soon, and believe me, it’s not like any winter you’ve ever experienced. It will cull the herd, and fast. You need to know how to survive. You need to know how to shoot and kill to feed yourselves and keep yourselves safe. You are not the top of the food chain here.”

The world could tumble, change radically in two days, with just one less person living in it.

In literature, death was many things—a message, catharsis, retribution. There were deaths that came from a beating heart that stopped and deaths of another kind, a choice made, like Frodo going to the Grey Havens. Death made you cry, filled you with sadness, but in the best of her books, there was peace, too, satisfaction, a sense of the story ending as it should. In real life, she saw, it wasn’t like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world.

She could hardly imagine a thing as terrible as losing your mother. The very thought of it made Leni sick to her stomach. A girl was like a kite; without her mother’s strong, steady hold on the string, she might just float away, be lost somewhere among the clouds.

“I’m glad he has you. He’s … struggling now, aren’t you, Mattie?” Aly’s voice broke. “But he’ll be fine. I hope.” Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary. What happened to you if you hoped too hard for the best and got the worst? Was it better not to hope at all, to prepare? Wasn’t that what her father’s lesson always was? Prepare for the worst.

Leni couldn’t begin to understand the hows and whys of her parents’ love. She was old enough to see the turbulent surface, but too young to know what lay beneath. 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.

At last he straightened, turned. His father was close now; he pulled Matthew into a bone-jarring hug that went on so long Matthew had to gasp for breath. Dad drew back finally, looked at him, and love took shape in the air around them, a regret- and memory-filled version, maybe, sad around the edges, but love. It had been only a few months since they’d seen each other. (Dad made it a point to come to several of Matthew’s hockey games and visit in Fairbanks as often as the harsh weather and homesteading chores allowed, but they had never really talked about anything that mattered.)

Love and fear. The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid.

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.

“A lot of it was great,” Leni said. “I loved Alaska. I loved Matthew. I loved you. I even loved Dad,” she admitted quietly. “There was fun. I want you to remember that. And adventure. When you remember, I know it’s easy to pull the bad up. Your dad’s violence. The excuses I made. My sad love for him. But there was good love, too. Remember that. Your dad loved you.” This hurt more than Leni could bear, but she saw how much her mama needed to say these words. “I know,” Leni said.

I wish you remembered him from before … How often had her mother said that over the years? 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.

“Your grandfather says it’s a bad decision, and he should know.” She paused. “Stay here. Don’t give them that letter.” “It was her dying wish.” “She’s gone.” Leni couldn’t help smiling. She loved that her grandmother was a complex mixture of optimism and practicality. The optimism had allowed her to wait almost two decades for her daughter’s return; the practicality had allowed her to forget all the pain that had preceded it.

So many memories. She wondered how long it would take her to work through them all. Even now, standing here, she didn’t know exactly how she felt about this place, but she knew, she believed, she could find a way to remember the good in it. She would never forget the bad, but she would let it go. She had to. There had been fun, too, Mama had said, and adventure.