Chapter 56 Frannie
It was raining cats and dogs and horses and cows.
Frannie couldn’t hear a thing across the water with the rain beating down on the plastic tarp she and Paul and Mel held over their pitiful selves and their pitiful campfire. Cold needles of water trickled down the neck of her sweater and a shiver wracked through her.
It had to be Claire out there. It just had to be.
Hold on Claire, she said silently to her sister. If you die out there, I’ll kill you. And so will Bridget and Dad.
Frannie stared into the red coals of the fire. “I should have told her I was sorry,” she said to Paul. She’d been horrible to Claire. She figured there would be plenty of time to make it up to her. Now, she might never see her sister and little Jenny again.
Another aftershock rocked the hillside. Frannie crouched down and braced herself.
Stone scraped on stone, and the crack of trees falling broke through the beat of the rain.
“When is it going to stop?” She didn’t want to sound like a baby, but she was sick and tired of the ground shaking her around like a maraca.
Paul poked another wet log into the campfire. “The aftershocks could go on for days.”
Frannie left the shelter of the tarp and walked to the edge of the ridge. No headlights coming out of the dark. No Roberts coming with a boat.
“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 the Titanic.”
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.”
Frannie skipped all the stuff about the camping trip and finding Claire and Jenny and Beth in the broken-down truck.
And the part about how it looked like Claire was leaving Red.
She told him about the trailer, and the water and the wind.
How she’d searched everywhere. And how they’d heard shouts from out in the water but couldn’t reach whoever it was.
“I think there’s more than one person out there.
” She hoped it was three. Claire and Beth and Jenny.
“Now with the rain coming down,” Paul put in, “we can’t hear a thing.”
“And the water is treacherous,” Mel added. He eyed the life vest in Red’s hand. “Is that the boat we asked for?”
Frannie’s hopes sank.
“Show me where you heard them,” Red said.
Frannie grabbed the other life vest and the rope they’d used with Mel, and the four of them went down the slope. The rain had lightened to a drizzle.
“They’re out that way somewhere.” Mel pointed into the dark.
Red lifted his flashlight, but the beam was swallowed in the veil of misty darkness. He shouted, “Claire!” The desperation in his voice was unmistakable.
No answer.
Red waded into the water. With a sudden sickening lurch, Frannie remembered something from that day they went to Yellowstone. Something really important. She splashed toward Red, and grabbed him by the arm. “You’re not going out there, Red,” she told him.
“I have to,” Red said, holding out his hand for the vest Frannie carried. “I’ll bring her back.”
Frannie waded out of his reach, holding the vest behind her back. “Nope.”
“Frannie!” His voice was sharp, like a dad threatening a naughty child.
This time, Frannie wasn’t being a brat just for kicks. She couldn’t let him go out there. No way, no how. It had to be her.
“Frannie, give it to me.” Red waded toward her.
“No,” she snapped.
In the past six hours, she’d survived an earthquake, that horrid wind, and a flood.
She’d rescued a dozen people, learned to pray, and witnessed a miracle.
Now, she was going to save her sister—and her brother-in-law.
But she wasn’t going to swim in this bulky sweater.
“Turn around unless you want to see me in my underwear.”
That stopped Red for a moment.
She pulled the sweater over her head and threw it to Paul.
He caught it and sputtered, “Frannie, what are you doing?”
She tied the vest around her neck, and the length of rope to her waist. It would help her on the way back. “Give me the other vest, Red.”
He came closer and his voice held an edge of anger. “I’m not going to let you go out there, Frannie.”
She was going to have to lay it out for him.
“Red.” She stopped him with an upraised hand. “I know you want to be the one to save them, but I’m the only one that can get out there and”—she emphasized the word with a glare—“get them back.”
Red’s jaw went tight. “How do you figure that?”
She gave him an exasperated look. “What happens when you get to them?” she demanded. “There are at least two people out there. And we figure they aren’t able to swim, right?” She looked at Paul for confirmation. He nodded reluctantly. “And we have two life vests.”
Red grimaced, and she could see he was beginning to understand.
“I can swim back without a vest . . . and you can’t.”
His shoulders sagged and she knew she was right.
Red couldn’t swim. She’d remembered when she saw him wade into the water, how they had gone to the Firehole River that first day touring the park.
They’d all taken a dip to cool down except for Red.
He hadn’t gone in any farther than knee-deep.
“Claire will kill me if I let you drown.”
Red rubbed a hand over his face. “Frannie . . . if something happens to you . . .” He didn’t have to finish.
“I know,” she said. Her dad would hate Red even more. She’d just have to make it back alive with Claire and whoever was with her. “Trust me, Red.” She held out her hand for the other vest.
He hesitated, then untied the vest and gave it to her, his jaw tight. “Be careful.”
Frannie hugged it to her chest, and a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold went clear up her scalp. She was really going to do this. She tried not to think about the dark water, and what was floating in it. Or if she could find Claire. Or if she could make it back.
“Frannie,” Paul said from the bank. It was too dark to see his face but she could tell by his voice he was trying to be brave for her. “Go get ’em.”
She threw him a kiss as if this was just another prank. “Abso-poso-lutely,” she said, and was glad that her voice didn’t sound as scared as she felt.
Then she plunged into the icy water and started swimming into the dark.