Big & Lily

Prologue

I move the muddy toe of my boot an inch closer to the edge of the trail, testing the ground for stability, fearing the earth

may break away beneath me.

Dark dirt, twisted roots, sharp rocks, and muscular scrub come in and out of focus, layering vertigo and a roiling nausea

on top of my abject fear and panic. The sound of raging water fills my ears. Or is that the blood threatening to burst my

eardrums? I remember hearing the creek down there, before all the shouting had drowned it out.

“No, no, no, no,” I whisper, chant, pray, plead as if the words were an eraser that would, if rubbed briskly across the scene

below, make all of this disappear.

After this week of trying to protect my sister, I may have just killed her. Shit.

I manage one more small step. If I’m not careful, if I don’t stop to breathe, to watch my feet, to step around the gnarled

root reaching up through the ground like a claw from a grave, I will suffer Lily’s fate.

My hands are shaking. Sweat rolls down my chest, between my breasts. The pain from my earlier fall bites at my back. I’d said

I was fine, but I am not fine. None of this is fine.

I always imagined I’d be prepared for these situations, when disasters happen in a flash, without warning.

Twenty-two years of motherhood taught me to be vigilant.

Prepared to leap in, a Band-Aid, a Tylenol, a needle and thread, all in my Mother’s Survival Kit.

But now I am frozen. This is no skinned knee.

If Lily were okay, she’d be shouting at me. Yelling obscenities up the mountain, blaming this on me, and demanding that I

get her the hell out of here right now! I don’t hear anything from my sister. Again, it could be the swarm of bees in my brain that won’t shut the hell up long enough

for me to suss out the situation. Or it could be the worst. My mother would be so disappointed in me if she could see us now.

Lily’s my baby sister.

One more tiny step toward the edge. It feels like hours that Lily has been down there, but I know it’s only seconds. I just

need to peer over and see what’s what, even if it’s as bad as my worst fear. Do it, you coward.

The early morning sun does nothing to warm me; my teeth chatter in my jaw. “What’s the point of twenty hours of sunlight if

it can’t do its job?” I grumble.

This wasn’t my idea. I came out here to keep an eye on her. But Lily is like Jell-O. Goo in my hands, oozing out of my grip no matter how I tighten it.

Now the toes of both boots are on the ledge. One dizzy spell, one slip of the foot, a little weight too far in one direction

or the other, and down I’ll go. With excruciating effort, I slow my breathing, keeping my eyes on a focal point, a tree with

a twisted trunk, growing out of the slanted earth on the other side of the gully. I’ve been working on my fear of heights

all week, but this is going to do me in. Finally, I will myself to peer down into the ravine that swallowed Lily. I scan the

muddy, leaf-strewn forest floor, and I ask myself the question I’ve been muttering since we arrived in Alaska. Why the hell did I agree to any of this?