“Water has to be over the road by now,” Mel said dolefully. “He’s not coming.”
Paul put his arm around her. “It’ll be okay.”
She swallowed against the egg-sized lump in her throat. Paul was being sweet, but if Claire and Jenny were... gone... nothing was ever going to be okay again. She peered through the veil of rain toward the rising water. “I wish I could do something,” she choked out. “Anything.”
Mel put another piece of wet wood on the fire.
“Let’s sing,” Paul said.
“Sing?” Was the cold getting to Paul’s brain? This wasn’t Canyon dinner hour.
“You know, like theTitanic.”
How was the mess they were in like a ship going down in the Atlantic?
“They sang hymns in the lifeboats while the ship was sinking, to keep calm maybe,” Paul explained. “And some survivors heard them and were able to swim to them in the dark.”
“Are we the lifeboat in this scenario?” Frannie asked. It did kind of feel like they were alone in an ocean.
Paul shrugged.
“It can’t hurt,” Mel said.
It wasn’t going to help. And anyway, what could they sing? “Tutti Frutti”? “Blue Suede Shoes”? That didn’t seem right when people were miserable. Suddenly, she had a spark of an idea.
No, it was too stupid.
But... it was a song everybody knew. And it was Claire’s favorite.
“Okay,” she said. “Here goes nothing.” She took a deep breath and started to sing as loud as she could. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...” She felt a sob coming up her chest. She should have sung with Claire at church. Why had she been such a brat? She faltered and stopped.
Paul took her hand in his. “That saved a wretch like me,” he sang in a pretty nice voice that reminded her of all the fun they’d had at dinner hour.
“I once was lost but now am found.” Mel’s voice was good—like he was part of a barbershop quartet or something. “Was blind but now I see.”
When she’d sung this song at St. Malachy’s, she hated it. Now, the words meant so much more. She’d been lost and found her way. Paul had been saved from a horrible death. She’d been blind, too. Blind to what a horrible sister she was.
They started the second verse together. Then the third, growing in volume. It was something to do, and that helped. She put her whole heart into it. “The Lord has promised good to me, his word my hope secures—”
“Did you hear that?” Paul said, holding up a hand for quiet.
They went silent. The rain was letting up and the clatter on the tarp died to a gentle rustle. Mel directed the beam of his flashlight toward the washed-out road. “Someone’s coming.”
Frannie’s hope soared. Help? A boat to get to Claire?
A flashlight beam bounced toward the campfire. She squinted. It was a man wearing a cowboy hat and something around his neck. He got closer, into the light of the campfire and the weak beam of light, and... it couldn’t be. Frannie wondered if she was finally losing her marbles. “Red?”
“Frannie.” He dropped something and ran to her, pulling her into a hug. “Thank God,” he said, squeezing her so tight she could barely breathe. He was dripping wet, too, but Frannie had never been so glad to see anybody in all her life.
Then she remembered about Claire and Jenny. Oh, no. She buried her face in his jacket. She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t even look at him. Not with how much he loved Claire, what a good dad he was to Jenny. Tears choked her throat. She should have tried harder, kept at it even with no light and the rain coming down. “Claire,” she choked out, “I think she might be—I think she’s...”
It was too terrible to say.
He stepped away. “Roberts told me.” His voice was tight, as if he was fighting not to cry himself.
Frannie brought him to the campfire and introduced him to Paul and Mel.
Red nodded at them but said to Frannie, “Tell me what happened.”
