Was it? The trailer was listing sideways. Claire and Beth had slid down to the foot of the bed.
“We need to get outside,” Claire said. She gathered Jenny into her arms and stood carefully on the uneven floor. “Careful,” she warned Beth, “there’s glass.” Claire started picking her way toward the door when a roar like a freight train ripped through the silence. The trailer jerked like it had been hit. Claire flew forward, clutching Jenny to her chest, as she hit the kitchenette with her shoulder. The trailer rolled as the sound rent the night and everything went black.
The deafening sound faded to an echo. “Claire,” Beth moaned. “Is Jenny okay?”
Claire ran a hand over Jenny in the pitch dark—where had the moonlight gone? Jenny let out a furious wail. “I think so.”Lord, let hernot be hurt.Claire felt carefully in the dark with one hand, trying to determine where she was. She felt the wall, the handle of a cupboard door. The trailer moved again, not jerking but listing, as if it were teetering on a precipice.
“My arm,” Beth said. “It hurts.”
Claire was calm, her thoughts strangely clear.Find the door. Get out.
A shout from outside, “Are you okay in there?”
“Help us!” Claire yelled back, supporting herself with one arm, the other keeping Jenny tight to her body. She half crawled along the wall, groping for the door in the dark. She felt her way along the cupboards, the small sink, the dinette table. The door must be opposite. “Help us, please!” Claire called out again.
She reached up and found the door, now tipped to the sky like an escape hatch. She twisted the knob and pushed upward, flinging it open. The night sky was pitch black and dust choked the air. With Jenny in one arm, Claire found a foothold and pushed herself upward.Get out. Get help for Beth.
Claire’s shoulders cleared the door and now she could smell the sharp scent of pine. Jenny’s cries increased in volume.
“Where are you?” A man’s voice, close by.
Claire raised her voice. “In the trailer! Help us, please. I have a baby.”
“Climb down to me,” he said. “The water is rising.”
Water? Claire thought she must have heard wrong. She could see the dim form of a man, his arms reaching toward her. Claire wavered, then decided. “Take the baby,” Claire said, leaning toward him. “My friend is stuck. I have to help her.”
Claire groped for his hands, found them, made herself unclamp her grip on Jenny.
“I’ve got her,” the voice said as Jenny’s weight left her arms. “Hurry, I think the trailer’s going.”
Going where? Claire clambered back down into the dark trailer. She could hear other cries along with Jenny’s now. Yells and shouts. Frannie and her friends? Or Dottie and Jeffrey? She prayed no one was hurt. “Where are you?” she called to Beth.
“Here.” Beth’s voice was strained with pain and fear.
Claire used both hands to stay upright, stepping over debris with her bare feet as she followed Beth’s voice. A hand brushed against hers. Claire grabbed at it. “Come on,” she pulled Beth back toward the door.
“We’re coming,” Claire yelled, her calm replaced now with a desperate urgency to have Jenny back in her arms. She could still hear her crying and it pulled her like a tether around her heart.
“Climb up,” Claire told Beth, as they reached the spot below the open door.
Suddenly, the trailer rolled back with a sickening lurch, throwing them both into the opposite wall. Claire lost hold of Beth. “Beth,” Claire choked out before the trailer bucked again. She groped for Beth, bracing them both until the violent movement ceased into sudden silence.
Claire couldn’t hear Jenny.
“Jenny!” Claire cried out. Panicked, Claire let go of Beth and clambered toward the door. Claire grasped the frame but could see nothing but black beyond the confines of the trailer. “Jenny!”Oh, God. Where is she?
A new sound, that of rushing water, filled the air. Cold coming over the threshold of the door like a waterfall, covering her feet and ankles. Water? She didn’t stop to wonder why and where the water was coming from.Get out. Find Jenny.
Beth was there, clutching at her arm.
The water was to her knees. How was it rising so fast?
“Climb up,” Claire ordered. Claire boosted Beth upward toward the top of the trailer. By then, the water was at Claire’s waist, glacier cold and thick with silt.
“Claire!” Beth called back. “Take my hand.”
Claire climbed, Beth pulled, and Claire was up and out of the water, on the flat top of the swaying trailer. Claire lay for a moment, her breath coming in gasps. She lifted her head. No moon, nothing but black. Where was Jenny?
