As soon as Matthew was better.
“Leni?” Mama said, her voice uncertain. She, too, was confused and frightened by this change in Leni. She sensed an upheaval in emotion that could move the continents of their past.
Leni walked past them both, climbed awkwardly up the loft ladder, and crawled into bed.
* * *
Dear Matthew,
I never really knew the weight of sorrow before, how it stretches you out like an old, wet sweater. Every minute that passes with no word from you, without hope of word from you, feels like a day, every day feels like a month. I want to believe that you will just sit up one day and say you’re starving, that you’ll swing your legs out of bed and get dressed and come for me, maybe carry me off to your family’s hunting cabin, where we will burrow under the furs and love each other again. That’s the big dream. Strangely, it doesn’t hurt as much as the little dream, which is just that you open your eyes.
I know what happened to us was my fault. Meeting me ruined your life. No one can argue with that. Me, with my screwed-up family, with my dad, who wanted to kill you for loving me and who beat my mother for simply knowing about it.
My hatred of him is a poison burning me from the inside out. Every time I look at him something in me hardens. It scares me how much I hate him. I haven’t spoken to him since I got back.
He doesn’t like that, I can tell.
Honestly, I don’t know what to do with all these emotions. I’m furious, I’m desperate, I’m sad in a way I never knew existed.
There’s no outlet for my feelings, no valve to shut them down. I listen to the radio every night at seven P.M. Last night, your dad broadcast how you’re doing. I know you’re out of the coma and not paralyzed and I try to make that good enough, but it’s not. I know you can’t walk or talk and that your brain is probably irreparably damaged. That’s what the nurses said.
None of it changes how I feel. I love you.
I’m here. Waiting. I want you to know that. I’ll wait forever.
Leni
* * *
LENI SAT IN THE BOW of the fishing skiff, leaned over, fluttering bare fingers through cool water, watching it cascade and pool. The cast on her other arm looked starkly white against her dirty jeans. Her broken ribs made her conscious of every breath.
She could hear her parents talking softly together; her mama was closing the cooler, full now of silvery fish. Dad started up the engine.
The boat motor started; the bow planed up as they sped for home.
At their beach, the boat crunched up onto the pebbles and sand, made a sound like sausage sizzling in a cast-iron pan. Leni jumped into the ankle-deep water, grabbed the frayed line with her one good hand, and pulled the skiff aground. She tied it to a huge, limbless driftwood log that lay angled on the beach and went back for the dripping metal net.
“That was quite a silver Mom landed,” Dad said to Leni. “I guess she’s the day’s big winner.”
Leni ignored him. Slinging the gear bag over her shoulder, she headed up the steps, making her way slowly to dry land.
Once there, she put her gear away and headed to the animal pens to check that their water was okay. She fed the goats and the chickens, stayed to turn the compost in the bin, and then started hauling water from the river. It took longer with only one strong arm. She stayed outside as long as she could, but finally she had to go inside.
Mama was in the kitchen making dinner: pan-fried, fresh-caught salmon, drizzled with homemade herb butter; green beans fried in preserved moose fat; a salad of freshly picked lettuce and tomatoes.
Leni set the table, sat down.
Dad took a seat across from her. She didn’t look up, but she heard the clatter of chair legs on the wood, the squeak of the seat as he sat down. She smelled the familiar combination of perspiration and fish and cigarette smoke. “I was thinking we would head over to Bear Cove tomorrow, pick blueberries. I know how much you love them.”
Leni didn’t look at him.
Mama came up beside Leni, holding a pewter tray of the crispy-skinned fish, with bright green beans tucked in alongside. She paused, then set it down in the middle of the table next to an old soup can full of flowers.
“Your favorite,” she said to Leni.
“Uh-huh,” Leni said.
“G-damn it, Leni,” her father said. “I can’t abide this moping. You ran off. The kid fell. What’s done is done.”