I guess my mama was right about love. As screwed up as she is, she understands the durability and lunacy of it. You can’t make yourself fall in love, I suppose, and you can’t make yourself fall out of it.

I am trying to fit in down here. Trying hard. I mean, Susan Grant is trying to fit in. The streets are jammed with cars and the sidewalks are wall-to-wall people and pretty much no one looks at anyone else or says hello. You were right about the beauty, though. When I let myself see it, it’s there. I see it in Mount Rainier, which reminds me of Iliamna and can magically appear and disappear. Down here, it’s called The Mountain because really they only have the one. Not like home, where mountains form the exposed spine of our world.

My grandparents care about the weirdest things. How the table is set, what time we eat, how well I tuck the sheets into the bed, how tightly I braid my hair. My grandmother handed me tweezers the other day and told me to pluck my eyebrows.

But we have a nice little rental house not far from them and we can visit if we are careful. I think Mama is surprised to find that she likes to be with her parents. We have plenty to eat and new clothes and when we all sit around the dinner table, we try to knit our lives together, dropped stitches and all.

Maybe that’s what love is.

* * *

Dear Matthew,

Christmas here is like an Olympic event. I’ve never seen so much glitter and food. My grandparents gave me so many gifts it was embarrassing. But afterward, when I was in my own room alone, staring out the window at neighbors we stay away from, looking at houses strung in twinkling lights, I thought of real winter. Of you. Of us.

I looked at the picture of your grandparents and reread your grandmother’s newspaper article.

I wonder what it’s like for our baby. Does she feel how uncertain I am? Does the song of my broken heart play for her? I want her to be happy. I want her to be the child of our love, of who we were.

I think I felt the baby move today …

I’m thinking of her as Lily. After your grandma.

A girl needs to be strong in this world.

* * *

Dear Matthew,

I can’t believe it’s 1979. I called the rehab facility again today and heard the usual. No change.

Unfortunately, my mother overheard my call. She blew her stack and said I was being stupid. Apparently the police can trace the call if they wanted to. So I can’t call anymore. I can’t put us all at risk, but how can I stop? It’s all I have left of you. I know you’re not going to get better, but every time I call, I think, maybe this time. That hope is all I have, useless or not.

But that’s bad news and that’s easy. You want good news. It’s a new year.

I am going to the University of Washington. My grandmother pulled some strings and got Susan Grant registered with no evidence of graduation from high school. Life sure is different in the Outside. How much money you have matters.

College isn’t what I expected. Some of the girls wear these fuzzy Shetland sweaters and plaid skirts and knee socks. I guess they’re sorority girls. They giggle and clump together like sheep and the boys who follow them around are so loud a bear could hear them coming from a mile away.

In class, I pretend you’re beside me. Once I believed it so much I almost wrote a note to pass you under my desk.

I miss you. Every day and even more at night. So does Lily. She’s started to kick me awake sometimes. When she does get all squirrelly, I read her Robert Service poems and tell her about you.

That quiets her right down.

* * *

Dear Matthew,

Spring here is nothing like breakup. No earth falling away, no house-sized blocks of ice snapping free, no lost things seeping up from the mud.

It’s just color everywhere. I’ve never seen so many flowering trees; pink blossoms float through the campus.

My grandfather says the investigation is still open, but no one is looking for us anymore. They assume we are dead.

In a way, it’s true. The Allbrights vanished into nothing.

At night I talk to you and Lily now. Does that mean I’m crazy or just lonely? I imagine all three of us huddled in bed, with the northern lights putting on a show outside our window while wind taps on the glass. I tell our baby to be smart and brave. Brave like her dad. I try to tell her to protect herself from the terrible choices she might someday face. I worry that we Allbright women are cursed in love and I hope she will be a boy. Then I remember you saying that you wanted to teach your son the things you had learned on the homestead and … well, it makes me so sad I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and pretend I’m in Alaska in the winter. My heartbeat turns into wind pounding on the glass.

A boy needs a father and I am all Lily has.

Poor girl.

* * *

“THOSE LAMAZE CLASSES were bogus,” Leni yelled when the next contraction twisted her insides and made her scream. “I want drugs.”

“You wanted natural childbirth. It’s too late for drugs now,” Mama said.

“I’m eighteen years old. Why would anyone listen to what I want? I know nothing,” Leni said.

The contraction ebbed. Pain receded.

Leni panted. Sweat itched and crawled across her forehead.

Mama picked up an ice chip from the plastic cup on the table by the hospital bed and popped it in Leni’s mouth.

“Put morphine in it, Mama,” Leni begged. “Please. I can’t take this. It was a mistake. I’m not ready to be a mother.”

Mama smiled. “No one is ever ready.”

The pain began building again. Leni gritted her teeth, concentrated on breathing (like that helped), and clutched her mother’s hand.

She squeezed her eyes shut, panting, until the pain crested. When it began—finally—to subside, she sank back into the bed, spent. She thought: Matthew should be here, but she pushed the thought aside.

Another contraction hit seconds later. This time Leni bit her tongue so hard it bled.

“Scream,” Mama said.

The door opened and her doctor came in. She was a thin woman wearing blue scrubs and a surgical cap. Her eyebrows were unevenly plucked, which gave her a slightly askew look. “Ms. Grant, how are we feeling?” the doctor asked.

“Get it out of me. Please.”

The doctor nodded and put on gloves. “Let’s check, shall we?” She opened the stirrups.

Normally Leni would not be relieved when a relative stranger sat between her spread legs, but right now she would have splayed herself at the observation deck of the Space Needle if it would end this pain.