ALLOWABLE USES: Hiking, Camping, Rock Climbing.

DISTANCE: 2.8 miles one way.

DIFFICULTY: Challenging. Steep climbs.

ELEVATION GAIN: 2600 feet

CAMPING: Sawtooth Ridge, near marked Eagle Creek crossing.

Matthew helped Leni out of the truck. Kneeling, he checked her wafflestompers, retied her laces. “You okay?”

“What if he—”

“She got away. Large Marge will protect her. And she wanted you safe.”

“I know. Let’s go,” she said dully.

“We’ve got a long hike ahead of us. Can you make it?”

Leni nodded.

They headed for the trail, with Matthew leading and Leni following along behind him, struggling to keep up.

They climbed for hours, saw no one. The trail snaked along a sheer stone cliff. Below them was the sea, waves crashing into rocks. The ground trembled at each wave’s impact, or maybe Leni just thought it did because life felt so unstable now. Even the ground felt unreliable.

Finally, Matthew came to what he’d been looking for: a huge, grassy field, thick with purple lupine. Snow whitened the peaks; below lay folds of rock, dotted here and there by the white dots that were Dall sheep.

He dropped his pack into the grass and turned to face Leni. He handed her a smoked salmon sandwich and a can of warm Coke, and while she ate he set up a pup tent deep in the grass.

Later, with a fire crackling in front of the tent and the orange flaps pinned open, Matthew sat on the grass beside her. He put an arm around her. She leaned into him.

“You don’t have to be the only one protecting her, you know,” he said. “We’ll all take care of you. It’s always been that way in Kaneq.”

Leni wanted that to be true. She wanted to believe there was a safe place for her and Mama, a do-over of their lives, a beginning that didn’t rise from the ashes of a violent, terrible ending. Mostly, she didn’t want to feel solely responsible for her mama’s safety anymore.

She turned to Matthew, loving him so much, so desperately, it felt like she was being held underwater and needed oxygen. “I love you.”

“Me, too,” he said.

Up here, in the vastness of Alaska, the words sounded infinitesimal and small. A fist shaken at the gods.

Chapter Twenty-One

TWENTY-ONE

His job was to keep her safe.

Leni was his North Star. He knew it sounded stupid and girlie and romantic and that people would say he was too young to know these things, only he wasn’t. When your mom died, you grew up.

He hadn’t been able to protect his mom, to save her.

He was stronger now.

He held Leni in his arms all night last night, loved her, felt her twitch at bad dreams, listened to her sobs. He knew how that was, nightmares like that about your mom.