Chapter 29
ALEX
It takes me three weeks to decide. At first, I don’t even consider it. I’m not going to leave Mattie, it’s as simple as that, and she clearly won’t be moved. She tries to move me, but it turns out I’m just as stubborn as she is.
“Mom…it’s not like we’d be saying goodbye forever,” she huffs in exasperation, as we peel potatoes in the kitchen and outside it snows steadily. It’s March, and Kyle and Winn are leading the maple syrup making. “If the world is getting back to normal, at least in North Dakota, you’ll be able to come back or I’ll be able to visit. We might even be able to email, or, I don’t know, Skype.” She rolls her eyes, but I can’t share her certainty.
“You and Kyle,” I say instead, because it’s a conversation we need to have. “Is that a thing?”
“A thing ? Mom. Ew.”
I put down my peeler. “Mattie, I’m serious.”
She stares at me for a moment. “Fine, then, so am I,” she says. “And yes, we’re a thing. But we’re not…like, don’t give me that lecture, okay? I don’t think I can take it.” She rolls her eyes again, even more theatrically. “It’s early days. And he’s not the reason I’m staying. I just…like it here. I liked it at the cottage, too. And I really, really don’t want to live in North Dakota.” She gives me a glimmer of a smile then, along with a tilt of her chin, and I realize my defiant Mattie is still there; she’s just choosing something different. Something right.
And I need to, too. I talk to Sam, who has been on the radio with Vicky and has learned about the college that is starting, with six hundred students.
“Six hundred ,” he marvels, and I realize how hungry he is for socializing, for friends . Ruby, too, loner that she’s been, lights up at the thought of a school with real grades, a science class, an art room. Things we thought were gone forever but have now—maybe—been given back to us.
It occurs to me then that maybe I’m being selfish, insisting that we stay because I don’t want to lose Mattie. And maybe I won’t lose her even if I go. The thought is terrifying, but it also feels weirdly right. I can almost hear Daniel whisper his encouragement, spurring me on.
Another week passes, of sleepless night and anxious days, wondering whether I’m the worst mother in the world, or just a pragmatic one, or maybe even a noble one. Vicky gets more reports on the radio about the new settlements in North Dakota—they will be self-sustaining in terms of food; they already have a lignite coal mine back in production. The internet is up, too, and the water and sewer systems are working. Everything feels like a miracle. “It’s like pioneers,” I told Vicky, “but with infrastructure.”
I ask Mattie again if she’s sure she wants to stay.
“Yes, I’m sure.” She sounds exasperated, almost amused. “Mom, come on. Stop nagging me.”
“I haven’t exactly been nagging?—”
“I really won’t be mad if you go.” Her voice gentles. “I think you should. And Sam and Ruby, too. They want to. I know they do.”
I’m still sitting on the fence about it all when Stewart approaches me. I’m down on the dock, staring at the lake, which is now breaking up from the ice, the loud cracks of it echoing across its expanse. Dark water swirls and surges and huge chunks of ice bob in its eddies.
I smile a cautious greeting because, even though Stewart took Daniel’s funeral and was so kind about it, I haven’t really gotten to know him. Maybe I’m keeping my distance for a reason; I don’t want his pious sympathy, and I also don’t want to be pushed into anything, which says more about me than him, I know, but I still feel it.
“I’ve heard you have a big decision to make,” he remarks, his kindly face creasing into a smile, as he comes to stand with me on the edge of the dock.
I eye him a little warily. “Yes…”
“If you want to talk about it…” He leaves that suggestion open, and I manage to give him an apologetic smile.
“I’m not sure how much there is to say. I’m still thinking about everything.”
He nods equably, not quite taking it as the brush-off I meant it to be. “There’s a speech by Martin Luther KingJr.,” he remarks after a moment, which seems to come completely out of left field. “A sermon, actually. He gave it in Chicago to the Women’s Auxiliary.”
“Okay…” I wait for more, because clearly he must be going somewhere with this.
“It starts with him declaring that it’s midnight in our world today.” He pauses, his face tilted toward the sky, and then quotes, “‘Man is experiencing a darkness so deep that he can hardly see which way to turn. The best minds of today are saying that our civilization stands at the midnight of its revolving cycle.’”
“I’d say that’s pretty much true today,” I remark after a pause when he seems as if he isn’t going to say anything more. It’s certainly a dark and dangerous world out there. Midnight, as it were.
“He goes on,” Stewart continues, “to say that it is midnight in the social order, the psychological order, the moral order. And in this midnight hour, the darkness is interrupted by a knock on the door.” Another pause. “King was talking about the world knocking on the door of the church. But I see it another way, too. The only way out of that darkness, any darkness, is to open the door…to whatever is there, waiting for you.”
I stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out what he’s trying to say. “So you think I should go to North Dakota?” I finally ask, surprised he’d give me such one-sided advice. What about the community here? What about Mattie? And Kyle and Phoebe too, and even Nicole and Ben, who are both choosing to stay? I’d be leaving them all behind, and for what?
“I think,” Stewart responds, “you should open that door.”
And as I stare at him, still longing to resist, I realize he’s right. I need to open that door, but I also need to close the one to the past: the world as I once knew it, the cottage I once loved—and the man I killed, whether he was good or bad or something in between. The past, with all its regrets and longings, can’t hinder me now. For the sake of my children, as well as myself, I have to look forward.
A week later, I do it. It’s not easy, it’s not even exciting, to open that door. It’s just terrifying and faintly wrong and yet… and yet , unsettlingly right, like a settling in my bones, in my very self. Daniel made me promise I’d do something like this, and now here I am, doing it.
Mattie hugs me, happy for me even though it means saying goodbye to her, at least for a while, although we make promises to keep in touch via the radio and maybe email, and if we are able to visit, we tell each other, we will. I say goodbye to Kyle and Phoebe too, along with Nicole and Ben. Nicole hugs me tightly and whispers to me, fiercely, that she’s glad I’m being brave. I can’t believe I’m leaving them, that they’re letting me, that I’m letting myself.
Sam and Ruby are, of course, sad to leave Mattie, but I see the excitement in their faces about the future. A future that isn’t about running, or hiding, or just surviving. They’re ready for this attempt at real life, just as I am, even as every joy will now be tinged with sorrow. Mattie. Daniel .
They will both come with me, in their own ways; I know I will think of them, miss them, every single day. And Mattie is already planning her visit, once the world opens up again, which it surely will, now that it is the midnight hour, and the knock is at the door. We have heard it, and we are answering. And I will come back, I tell her fiercely. One day, I will come back. I promise.
But for now…we go forward. We leave Red Cedar Lake behind, and all the community there, everyone waving as we take one of their cars, so kindly given, and head down the rutted dirt road, toward the future.
The drive to Mackinaw City is surprisingly uneventful, three hundred miles through western Ontario and then south through Michigan. There are signs everywhere that normality is something that can be reached for, maybe even grasped—houses being built, signs along the road offering food and water and medical aid, a phone number you can call if you’re in distress. We pass a dozen or more cars; when I catch a glimpse of the other driver, she smiles at me. The world is finally reawakening to what it once was, or at least a shadow of it.
In Mackinaw City, a military plane is waiting for us, along with two dozen other people who have also decided to settle in North Dakota, everyone looking wary and hopeful, and more than a little shell-shocked, too. As we board, a man in military uniform greets me gravely .
“Good to see you here, ma’am.”
I find myself, suddenly and surprisingly, near tears.
We settle in the plane, all the passengers offering each other shy and uncertain smiles; we all seem similarly emotionally moved, as if we’ve been evacuated from a war zone. We’re being rescued, I think, and then I correct myself.
We are rescuing ourselves. We are choosing this, whatever it is. Whatever lies ahead of us.
Ruby slips her hand into mine and Sam gives me an excited and slightly shamefaced smile; he’s like a little kid and he knows it, but that’s okay. That’s how I want him to be. I give them both smiles and hugs and then I take a deep breath as I think of Daniel, of Mattie, of the pain I carry with me that is now part of me, and always will be. But maybe that kind of pain can make you stronger, or at least wiser.
Then I think of the cottage, picturing it as if it is still there, tranquil and solid, with the sun setting over the placid lake, the comforting sound of the whippoorwill as twilight falls on the peaceful, eternal scene. I remember Kawartha and the NBSRC, the community at Red Cedar Lake, the journey we took without ever knowing where we were going or how long it would be.
And now this…the future, whatever it holds. Whatever happens, we’re ready for it.
I turn to the window and tilt my face to the sky.
*
If you were captivated by Alex and her family’s incredible story, you can find out what happens next in the heartwrenching final instalment of the Lost Lake trilogy, Where the Dawn Finds Us .