“Can they hear us?” Beth asked. “Will someone come?”
“They have to,” Claire said, trying to quell her panic. She tightened her grip on the rough bark. Someone had to come. She couldn’t hold on for much longer.
“Pray with me,” Claire told Beth.
“I don’t know how,” Beth said. “I’ve never prayed before.”
“I’ll help you.” Claire said the Lord’s Prayer, slowly. She asked the Lord to take care of Jenny and Frannie and her friends. Everyone inthe Canyon. “Send someone to us, Lord.” Beth said amen and they waited. The water swirled around them and the tree swayed.
Fear rose into Claire’s throat.Please, Lord.
“We have to keep trying,” she told Beth. Claire shouted again for help. Listened. She prayed again, desperation thudding as she looked up into the dark sky. Her body shivered and her arms shook with the effort of supporting her own weight and Beth.
No one was coming.
Suddenly, the sound of crashing rock rumbled through the dark. The water heaved, the tree swayed, and an icy wave broke over Claire. Beth went under. Claire gasped and coughed, Beth pulling her down. “Beth!” Claire grabbed for her and somehow got her head above the water.
Beth struggled, one arm useless while the other groped for a hold on Claire. “What’s happening?”
It was another earthquake—an aftershock—shaking the rising water.
Another swell hit them, gritty water filling Claire’s mouth. “We have to climb higher.” The tree bent, swaying like a reed in a current. Claire, blindly searching higher, found a thick branch, her palm burning from the scrape of bark on her waterlogged skin.
She pulled them both up. “Hold on,” she ordered Beth.
“I can’t.” Beth’s voice was choked with panic.
“You have to.” Claire couldn’t hold them both. Not for much longer. “You’re stronger than you think.” Beth had defied the Henshaws, tried twice to escape. She had it in her to fight for herself, and for her child.
Beth’s breath was a gasp, a small whimper of pain, but she reached with her uninjured arm, found the branch Claire clung to. Her weight eased and Claire could breathe again. The echo of crashing rock faded across the canyon.
“That’s what Dell said,” Beth whispered, when she’d caught her breath. “He told me I’m stronger than I think, when we got married and my parents—they were so angry.”
Claire adjusted her weight and pulled Beth closer. She had to keep Beth’s spirits up. “He’d want you to be strong for the baby.”
“Claire, I’m sorry.” Beth’s voice was small. “If it wasn’t for me...”
Claire swallowed, her mouth tasting of dirt. “Don’t, Beth.” Claire stopped her from going on.
“You should swim for shore,” Beth said, and Claire could tell she was trying to be strong. “I’ll stay, and you can send someone back when you get help.”
Claire had already considered the idea and discarded it, but now she weighed it again. She was a strong swimmer—Dad made sure all of his girls were—but Claire couldn’t see farther than a few feet. What direction should she go? And the water was treacherous. She could be hit by an uprooted tree or tangled in branches or who-knows-what else. Not to mention the surge of waves if another aftershock hit.
Could Beth even hold on without Claire?
And if Claire did reach shore, what if no one was there to help Beth? Claire couldn’t risk it. She’d lost Jenny, and she had no idea where Frannie was or if she was even alive. She couldn’t abandon Beth. She tightened her grip on Beth. “We stay together.”
“But... you have to think of Jenny.”
Claire’s stomach twisted. She was sick with the thought of Jenny. Claire couldn’t lose Jenny—and Jenny couldn’t lose her mother. The thought of Jenny growing up without a mother to tuck her into bed, without a mother to hear about her friends, and talk to her about boys, and see her get married... all the things Claire’s own mother had given up. She wouldn’t let that happen to Jenny.
“Claire.” Beth’s voice was little more than a whisper. “What are we going to do?”
“We hold on, Beth,” Claire answered, trying to sound confident and failing as her own voice wavered and broke. “And we hope.”
The words sounded heavy and impossible in the darkness. She was weakening, the cold water sapping her strength, the moonless night stealing her courage. The temptation to give up hope weighed on her, pulling her down toward the cold water. It had hurt too much to keep hoping for her mother to come back. It had hurt to hope for a life with Red. That same hopelessness had crushed her when Red left for Libby.
Claire wasn’t good at hope. She’d told Red in her letter—the letter that had not brought him home. It was his hope that she had relied on, that had saved her. Now he was gone, and her own hope was dwindling.
