Mama gave her a sad, tired smile. “There will be no talk of that. None. You’re the chick. I’m the mama bird. Either you take flight on your own or I shove you out of the nest. It’s your choice. Either way, you’re going off to college with your boy.”

“You think it’s possible?” Leni let the amorphous dream turn solid enough that she could hold it in her hands, look at it from different angles.

“When do classes start?”

“Right after Labor Day.”

Mama nodded. “Okay. You’re going to have to be careful. Smart. Don’t risk everything for a kiss. That’s the kind of thing I would have done. Here’s what we’ll do: You stay away from Matthew and the Walkers until September. I will squirrel away enough money to buy you a bus ticket to Anchorage. We’ll fill your bug-out bag with what you need. Then, one day, I’ll arrange for a trip to Homer for all of us. You’ll say you have to use the bathroom and slip away. Later, when Dad calms down, I’ll find a note you left, saying that you’ve gone to college—without saying where—and you’ll promise to be back on the homestead for summer. It will work. You’ll see. If we’re careful, it will work.”

Don’t see Matthew until September.

Yes. That was what she would need to do.

But could she do it, really? Her love for Matthew was elemental, as powerful as the tide. No one could hold back the tide.

It reminded her of that movie she’d watched with Mama a lifetime ago. Splendor in the Grass. In it, Natalie Wood had loved Warren Beatty in that overwhelming way, but she lost him and ended up in a loony bin. When she got out, he was married, with a kid, but you knew neither one of them would love anyone else in that way again.

Mama had cried and cried.

Leni hadn’t understood then. Now she did. She saw how love could be dangerous and beyond control. Ravenous. Leni had it in her to love the way her mother did. She knew that now.

“Seriously, Leni,” Mama said, looking worried. “You will need to be smart.”

*   *   *

IN JUNE, Dad worked on his wall every day. By the end of the month, the skinned log stanchions were all in place; they stuck up from the ground every ten feet along the property line, an elliptical boundary between their land and the main road.