Dad let out a long breath. “I told her that if she left, it was for good. That if she walked out that door, not to come back.”
The memory rose in Claire’s mind.Marie, I meant what I said.
“I thought it was best for you girls,” he said, raising his gaze with a pleading look. “A clean break. No coming in and out of your lives. Visits in the summer, passing you back and forth like a used car. It would be too hard on you. And,” he looked down at his hands, “too hard on me.”
Frannie’s brows were pulled down. “So it wasn’t my fault?”
Dad let out a breath that sounded like a sob. “No, sweetheart, it was mine.”
“It would have been nice to know that,” Frannie said, but without anger.
Claire reached across the table to Frannie. They had learned not to talk about Mother, because it hurt Dad. Frannie—growing up with no answers to her questions—had filled in the blanks herself, and gotthe answers wrong. She took Frannie’s hand in hers, as she’d done for so many years.
Bridget let out a breath. “Did she try to come back?”
He nodded. “On each of your birthdays for a couple years.” A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “I did what I thought was best. But now, well”—he took a deep breath—“I see it was a mistake, and I’m sorry.”
Claire wasn’t sure how she felt. Relief, that their mother hadn’t forgotten them. Sorrow that they could have known her. Hope that perhaps it wasn’t too late to find her... to know their mother again. There was a hint of anger, too, even as she knew that what Dad had done, he’d done out of love for his daughters.
“You girls are everything to me,” he said. “And now that you’re grown, it’s—” He reached out to Bridget and clasped his hand over hers. “It’s so hard to let you go.”
“Dad,” Frannie said as if he was a child himself. “You can keep holding on.” She gave him a stern look. “Just not so tight.”
Frannie grabbed Dad’s hand so that they were all linked together. Frannie and Dad and Bridget and Claire. The Reilly sisters and their father—broken apart, but by the grace of God brought back together.
Stronger and closer than they’d ever been.
epilogue:CLAIRE
One Year Later
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Red asked Claire.
Despite the blazing August sun, a chill prickled over Claire’s skin. “I told Beth I’d be there.”
Red helped Claire into the truck, and Jenny scrambled up the running board and climbed onto what remained of Claire’s lap. As they drove out of Riverside and turned north on highway 191, Claire’s heartbeat quickened. They passed the spot on the road where Beth and Claire ran out of gas, then crossed Duck Creek where a fault line ran close to the road, splitting the earth in a silent testimony to the seismic shift that broke open the earth and their lives.
Claire scooted nearer to Red’s solid presence as they turned onto Hebgen Lake Road. She hadn’t come this way since that night a year ago with Frannie and her friends. She pulled Jenny close. “We almost lost her,” she said.
Red’s eyes met hers, and she could see he was reliving that long night. “I almost lost you both.”
They reached Hebgen Lake, mirror-smooth and reflecting the cloudless blue sky, then Hebgen Dam, reinforced now in case of another quake. Claire caught a glimpse of the high ground above the dam, the place they called Refuge Point, where Bridget had worked to save the critically injured.
They dropped down into the canyon, where landslides still scarred the slopes and downed trees marred the beauty of the mountain. Claire put her hand to her pounding heart as the hum of the truck wheels quieted on the newly surfaced road. They were getting close.
Red glanced at her with a worried frown. “We don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.” It was time to revisit the place where she’d almost lost everything. The view widened and then... she could see it.
Earthquake Lake.
Claire struggled to swallow, her throat suddenly dry. In her memory the flooded canyon was a churning dark ocean, but today the narrow lake was a placid strip of blue water. The only hint of its deadly creation were the tips of lodgepole pines and Douglas firs reaching out of the water toward the blue sky.
As Red drove the six-mile length of the lake, memories rushed over Claire like the wind streaming through her open window. The icy water, the taste of mud and the grit of rock dust in the air. The rough bark of the branches biting into her skin. Holding on.
Red slowed and pulled the truck onto the shoulder where a dozen cars were already parked. Frannie and Paul waited beside Paul’s red convertible, identical to the one he’d lost in the quake. Frannie hugged Claire, squeezing her despite the bump between them. “How’s the littlest ankle biter?”
Claire held Frannie for a long moment, her emotions close to the surface. Her sister had saved her life—hers and Beth’s. She stepped back and swiped her eyes, offering a watery smile. “Ready to meet his—or her—Aunt Frannie.”
