It was between them now, years of yelling and hitting, of being afraid … and smiles and laughter, Dad saying, Heya, Red, and begging for forgiveness.

“’Bye, Dad” was all Leni could summon. Maybe, in time, this wouldn’t be her last memory of him; maybe, in time, she would remember how it felt when he held her hand or put her on his shoulders as he walked along The Strand.

Mama pushed him across the ice, traps clanking, into the open hole. His body plunged down, snapping his head back.

His face peered up at them, a cameo in cold black water, skin white in the moonlight, beard and mustache frozen. Slowly, slowly he sank into the water and disappeared.

There would be no trace of him tomorrow. The ice would close up long before anyone else came out here. His body would be dragged by the heavy traps to the lake floor. In time, he would be worn down by the water and become only bones, and bones could wash ashore, but the predators would likely find them before the authorities would. By then no one would be looking, anyway. Five out of every thousand people went missing in Alaska every year, were lost. That was a known fact. They fell down crevasses, lost their way on trails, drowned in a rising tide.

Alaska. The Great Alone.

“You know what this makes us,” Mama said.

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. “Survivors,” Leni said. The irony was not lost on her. It was what her dad had wanted them to be.

Survivors.

*   *   *

LENI KEPT REPLAYING IT in her mind, seeing the last glimpse of her dad’s face before the black water pulled him under. The image would haunt her for the rest of her life.

When they finally returned to the cabin, exhausted and cold to the bone, Leni and her mother had to haul in wood to feed the fire. Leni tossed her gloves into the flames. Then she and Mama stood in front of the fire, their trembling hands outstretched to the heat, for how long?

Who knew? Time lost its meaning.

Leni stared numbly down at the floor. There was a bone shard near her foot, another on the coffee table. It would take all night to clean this up and she feared that even if they wiped all his blood away, it would come seeping back, bubbling up from the wood like something out of a horror story. But they had to get started.

“We need to clean up. We’ll say he disappeared,” Leni said.

Mama frowned, chewed worriedly at her lower lip. “Go get Large Marge. Tell her what I did.” Mama looked at Leni. “You hear me? You tell her what I did.”

Leni nodded and left Mama alone to start cleaning.