They emerged into the canyon.
The air hit her like a slap—hot, dry, too bright after the cave’s darkness.The sun blinding.
Lydia’s brother, Jeremy, was there.
“Where is…”
She had no words as she faced him, his face streaked with dust and tears and his eyes wild, darting between her and the cave entrance.
A beat passed as he took in the blood on her hands, the expression on her face, and the way the SAR team wasn’t rushing.
And then he lunged at her.“You let her die!”
Noah caught him, stepped between them, and placed his hands on the kid’s shoulders.“Step back.Calm down.”
Jeremy pushed away from Noah and pointed at her.“You were supposed to save her, you useless—” His words cut off in a sob.Then he crouched with his hands over his head.
Meg flinched and was unable to move even as the words sliced into her.
She’d failed.Again.
God hadn’t answered.Again.
Jeremy looked up at her now, his expression wrecked.“You?—”
Noah moved to block Jeremy’s view of her, his six-four frame suddenly a wall.“It wasn’t her fault.”
He grabbed Meg’s hand and pulled her past Jeremy, past the others who’d gathered—Eddie with his face buried in his hands, Diana cradling her arm—down the path toward the rim.
She put her head down.The canyon air couldn’t chase away the chill in her bones.
Noah walked her away from them, down the trail and past boulders that could hide them.Then he let her go.
She sank to her knees on the sunbaked gravel, sharp stones biting into her skin and her hands still trembling.Lydia’s pale, still face burned into her mind.
Noah crouched in front of her, and his hand squeezed her shoulder.
But she couldn’t look at him.Not now.Not with the truth burning in her chest.
Again, she hadn’t been enough.
Two
Eventually you’ll realize you can’t outrun it.Not forever.Certain things only God can heal.
Noah’s own words to Liam last month taunted him as his boots hammered the beaten-down trail.Each step sent up a puff of dust in the pale morning light.The air bit at his lungs and was sharp with juniper and distant woodsmoke.Sweat chilled on his skin despite the exertion, his gray shirt clinging to his back.
The canyon yawned to his right, a vast chasm of layered rock—a reminder of how easily things could slip away.
Meg’s face haunted him—pale, hollow-eyed, with her hands shaking as she pressed them to Lydia’s still chest.
He knew that look.The devastation.The self-blame.He’d worn it himself.
Her soft voice in the cave echoed in his memory.And you believed that?
And his confession.I did.
He’d never been that open with anyone.Because hehadbelieved it.Right up until the moment the doctor had come to him in that sterile hospital hallway and told him his wife Mary was gone.That his unborn daughter, Penelope, was gone.Everything good in his life was gone.
