Leni did. She pushed, she screamed, she sweated, she swore.

And then, as quickly as her pain had come, it ended.

Leni collapsed into the bed.

“A baby boy,” the doctor said, turning to Mama. “Grandma Eve, do you want to cut the cord?”

As if through mist, Leni watched her mother cut the cord and follow the doctor over to an area where they wrapped the newborn in a pale blue thermal blanket. Leni tried to sit up but she had no strength left.

A boy, Matthew. Your son.

Leni panicked, thought, He needs you, Matthew. I can’t do this …

Mama helped Leni to a sitting position and put the tiny bundle in her arms.

Her son. He was the smallest thing she’d ever seen, with a face like a peach and muddy blue eyes that opened and closed and a little rosebud mouth that made sucking motions. A pink fist burst out of the blue blanket and Leni reached down for it.

The baby’s minuscule fingers closed around hers.

A searing, cleansing, enveloping love blew her heart into a million tiny pieces and reshaped it. “Oh, my God,” she said in awe.

“Yeah,” Mama said. “You’ve been asking what it’s like.”

“Matthew Denali Walker, Junior,” she said quietly. A fourth-generation Alaskan who would never know his father, never feel Matthew’s strong arms around him or hear his steadying voice.

“Hey, you,” she said.

She knew now why she had run away from their crime. She hadn’t known before, hadn’t understood, truly, what she had to lose.

This child. Her son.

She would give up her life to protect him. She would do anything and everything to keep him safe. Even if that meant listening to her mother and cutting the last, tender thread to Alaska and Matthew—the calls to the rehab center. She wouldn’t call again. The very thought tore her heart, but what else could she do? She was a mother now.

She was crying softly. Maybe Mama heard and knew why and knew there was nothing to say; or maybe all mothers cried right now. “Matthew,” she whispered, stroking his velvet cheek. “We’ll call you MJ. They called your Daddy Mattie sometimes, but I never did … and he knew how to fly … he would have loved you so much…”

1986

1986

Chapter Twenty-Seven

TWENTY-SEVEN

“I don’t know how to live with what I’ve done to her life,” Cora said.

“It’s been years,” her mother said. “Look at her. She’s happy. Why must we keep having this conversation?”

Cora wanted to agree. It was what she said to herself on a daily basis. Look, she’s happy. Sometimes, she was able to almost wholly believe it. And then there were days like today. She didn’t know what caused the change. Weather, maybe. Old habits. The kind of corrosive fear that once it moved in, pitted your bones and stayed forever.