And once he finished it, bolted the gate shut, would Leni—or Mama—ever get out?

Leni glanced at her parents: two thin figures, angled together, touching with lips and fingers, murmuring about love, Mama trying to keep him calm, Dad trying to keep her close. They would always be the way they’d been, nothing would ever change.

In the naïveté of youth, her parents had seemed like towering presences, omnipotent and all-knowing. But they weren’t that; they were just two broken people.

She could leave them. She could break free and go her own way. It would be frightening, but it couldn’t be worse than staying, watching this toxic dance of theirs, letting their world become her world until there was nothing left of her at all, until she was as small as a comma.

Chapter Eighteen

EIGHTEEN

At ten P.M., the night of Mad Earl’s funeral, the sky above Walker Cove was a layer of deep blue, fading to lavender at the edges. The evening’s bonfire had burned down; logs turned to ash and crumbled into one another.

An extreme low tide had pulled back the sea, revealing a wide swath of mud, a mirror of slick gray that reflected the color of the sky and the snow-covered mountains that rose up on the opposite shore. Clumps of shiny black mussels clung to exposed pilings; the aluminum drift boat lay angled in the mud, its line tied to the buoy.

For hours there had been talk. Stories about Mad Earl, told in halting voices. Some had made them laugh. Most had made them all fall silent and remember. Mad Earl hadn’t always been the crotchety, angry man he’d become in old age. Grief over the loss of his son had twisted him. Once, he’d been Grandad Eckhart’s best friend. Alaska was tough on people, especially once they got old.

Now, quiet. There was only the occasional popping of the fire, the thunk of a falling bit of burnt wood, the lapping of the outgoing tide.

Matthew sat in one of their old beach chairs, his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, watching a young eagle picking at a salmon carcass on the beach. A pair of seagulls flew close, waiting for scraps.

There were only three of them left now. Dad and Large Marge and Matthew.

“Are we going to talk about it, Tom?” Large Marge said after so long a silence that Matthew was sure they’d kicked out the fire and climbed the beach stairs. “Thelma pretty much as banished Ernt from their place.”

“Yeah,” Dad said.

Matthew didn’t like the way his father looked at Large Marge. The worry in his eyes.

“What are you two talking about?” Matthew asked.