Epilogue Claire
One Year Later
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Red asked Claire.
Despite the blazing August sun, a chill prickled over Claire’s skin. “I told Beth I’d be there.”
Claire scooted nearer to Red’s solid presence as they turned onto Hebgen Lake Road. She hadn’t come this way since that night a year ago with Frannie and her friends. She pulled Jenny close. “We almost lost her,” she said.
Red’s eyes met hers, and she could see he was reliving that long night. “I almost lost you both.”
They reached Hebgen Lake, mirror-smooth and reflecting the cloudless blue sky, then Hebgen Dam, reinforced now in case of another quake. Claire caught a glimpse of the high ground above the dam, the place they called Refuge Point, where Bridget had worked to save the critically injured.
They dropped down into the canyon, where landslides still scarred the slopes and downed trees marred the beauty of the mountain. Claire put her hand to her pounding heart as the hum of the truck wheels quieted on the newly surfaced road. They were getting close.
Red glanced at her with a worried frown. “We don’t have to do this.”
“I want to.” It was time to revisit the place where she’d almost lost everything. The view widened and then . . . she could see it.
Earthquake Lake.
Claire struggled to swallow, her throat suddenly dry.
In her memory the flooded canyon was a churning dark ocean, but today the narrow lake was a placid strip of blue water.
The only hint of its deadly creation were the tips of lodgepole pines and Douglas firs reaching out of the water toward the blue sky.
As Red drove the six-mile length of the lake, memories rushed over Claire like the wind streaming through her open window. The icy water, the taste of mud and the grit of rock dust in the air. The rough bark of the branches biting into her skin. Holding on.
Red slowed and pulled the truck onto the shoulder where a dozen cars were already parked. Frannie and Paul waited beside Paul’s red convertible, identical to the one he’d lost in the quake. Frannie hugged Claire, squeezing her despite the bump between them. “How’s the littlest ankle biter?”
Claire held Frannie for a long moment, her emotions close to the surface. Her sister had saved her life—hers and Beth’s. She stepped back and swiped her eyes, offering a watery smile. “Ready to meet his—or her—Aunt Frannie.”
“You better get a move on,” Frannie said, blinking back tears of her own, but her voice was lighthearted as she spoke to Claire’s tummy. “Aunt Frannie only has another two weeks before it’s bye-bye savage and hello co-ed.”
Claire said hello to Paul, and Red shook his hand, then they all looked up at the massive rockslide, its steep slope blotting out the blue of the sky.
“Can you climb up there in your condition?” Frannie asked, eyeing the trail to the top.
Claire rolled her eyes. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”
“Good, because I don’t want you to miss out on my surprise.” Frannie gave Paul a knowing grin.
Claire frowned at her. “Frannie, this is supposed to be a memorial, not some—”
“Don’t worry.” Frannie poked her in the arm. “You’ll like it.”
Red led the way with Jenny riding on his shoulders. The trail wound upwards, cutting through the slide of dirt, boulders, and splintered trees. Frannie stopped to catch her breath. “It's terrible that Bridget is missing this. Can you believe she's in Alaska now?”
Claire was glad to take a rest. “At least she’s coming in a few weeks to help me with this little one.” She patted her stomach and got a sharp kick in her ribs. Bridget had insisted, and this time, Claire was glad to accept the help.
They reached the top, where an area of the slide had been leveled as a viewing platform and the memorial site. “Nice turnout,” Frannie said.
Claire searched the familiar faces in the solemn crowd. Friends from West Yellowstone—Grace Miller, Bucky, and Father Donahue. Mel, giving Frannie a bear hug. Then—there she was—walking toward Claire with a baby in her arms, her expression somber but her soft gray eyes alight with friendship.
“Beth!” Claire reached out and they embraced with Beth’s baby and Claire’s pregnant belly between them, and Claire felt Beth’s shuddering intake of breath. She pulled back and met her friend’s tearful gaze.
Claire understood. They had survived that deadly night, but so many had not.
“This must be DJ.” Claire touched the baby’s dark blond hair—just like his father’s—and he looked at her with wide gray eyes. He had survived as well.
Claire and Beth followed the crowd to the foot of a dolomite rock the size of a house. Red and Jenny stood on one side of Claire, Beth and DJ on the other. Frannie and Paul disappeared and Claire hoped Frannie wasn’t planning anything unseemly.
The Forest Service ranger—Joseph Shields had been picked to do the honors—stood on higher ground. “Thank you for coming to the dedication ceremony for the memorial to the victims of the Hebgen Lake Earthquake.”
Joseph talked about the magnitude of the earthquake, and the eighty million tons of rock that slid down one side of the canyon and up the other in less than thirty seconds.
“The slide generated hurricane-force winds and a twelve-foot wall of water that rushed upstream, destroying everything in its path.”
Claire’s chest tightened, remembering. The land had been forever altered in those cataclysmic moments, and so had their lives.
The Reilly sisters had lost each other, but found parts of themselves.
Frannie found her faith, and Bridget discovered her courage.
Claire had learned how to hope. They were stronger now—better sisters—and closer to each other even as their lives diverged.
Even Dad had been changed by the earthquake.
He hadn’t stopped worrying, but he was learning to hold on to his daughters a little less tightly.
The bronze plaque on the memorial boulder was unveiled, and all bowed their heads as Father Donahue prayed for the souls of the departed.
After the formalities, the crowd dispersed.
Beth and Claire approached the memorial, their hands clasped, as close in spirit as they had been that night one year ago, holding desperately to each other.
Red came to stand beside them, holding Jenny high enough to touch the words engraved in bronze, while he read them aloud without hesitation.
“This boulder is part of the huge slide caused by the earthquake of August 17, 1959. It is dedicated to the memory of the men, women, and children whose lives were lost as a result of the earthquake.”
Below the words In Memoriam, the twenty-eight names were listed.
Claire traced the names of the couple she thought of every day. Jeffrey and Dottie Gardner.
“But for the grace of God,” Beth murmured.
Dottie’s act of generosity had been the difference between life and death for Beth, Jenny, and Claire. They would never be forgotten.
Suddenly, a voice sang out—clear and confident and unmistakably Frannie—swelling over the boulder-strewn slide, across the scarred mountain and the hushed waters of the lake.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .”
Beth’s grip tightened on Claire’s hand. Claire’s heart surged with remembrance of the hope that song had given her and Beth when they most needed it.
“That saved a wretch like me.”
Paul and Mel joined their voices to Frannie’s. “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now, I see.”
As the echoes of the song died away in the canyon, Claire wiped the tears from her cheeks.
Frannie bounded up, dragging Paul by the hand.
“See, I told you she’d like it.” Frannie and Paul said goodbye and promised to visit Riverside before the end of the season.
Beth got a ride to West Yellowstone with Bucky after promising she’d come to the house later for dinner.
Claire wasn’t ready to leave.
She took one of Jenny’s hands and Red took the other.
With their daughter toddling between, Claire and Red walked to the edge of the slide.
Claire gazed over the silent mountain of rock, the memorial on the dolomite boulder, the lake with its drowned treetops—reminders of the despair and loss that night had wrought.
But looking closer, Claire could see hope.
Scarlet Indian paintbrush bloomed among the boulders, and purple harebells peeked through the rubble. Sage and grasses sprouted on the barren slopes. Above the placid waters of Earthquake Lake an osprey alighted on a nest built atop a flooded tree.
The Hebgen Lake Earthquake had brought destruction to the canyon, but it had also wrought a seismic shift in those who had survived. Courage arose out of fear, faith emerged from doubt . . . and hope transcended despair.
Claire rested her hand on her burgeoning middle. And weren’t children the ultimate sign of that hope? Beth with DJ in her arms. Jenny, saved by a miracle. Soon, a brother or sister to add to her and Red’s family.
It was enough—more than enough—to hold on to.
Claire turned to Red. “I’m ready to go home.”
He smiled at her, those Montana-sky eyes filled with all their tomorrows. He took her hand in his and they clung to each other, holding tight to what they had almost lost—and to what they’d been given in their darkest moments.
Holding on to hope.