Chapter 8 #2
“Wren!” Keely plopped onto her stomach, reaching into the hole. Some five feet deep, easily. If Keely went in headfirst, she’d never escape.
She turned around and slid down into the hole, feetfirst.
Wren groaned as Keely touched her. “Wren? It’s Keely.” Wren lay on her side, but what if she’d hit her head, broken her neck—
Wren started to cry, reached up for Keely. Before she could stop her, Wren wrapped her arms around her waist. “It was too fast!”
“Okay. Shh. I’m here.”
Above her, Caspian barked.
“Get help, Casp!”
The dog barked again.
She hauled Wren up. “Where did you hit?”
“My shoulder. And my body, and my arm hurts . . .” Wren wiped her lip, saw the blood, and started to hiccup breaths.
“Calm down. Okay, let me see.” She met Wren’s big brown eyes, searched them. Pupils looked normal, so maybe she hadn’t hit her head, but Keely wasn’t a doctor.
Hadn’t even played one on TV. And where that thought came from she didn’t know. Most likely panic, because staying out here probably meant hypothermia, given the frigid temperatures.
“You said your arm hurt?”
Wren held it up, and Keely cradled the girl’s wrist in her grip. “Can you move your fingers?”
She moved her hand, and her mitten flexed.
“Anything else hurt?”
“My tummy.”
“Yeah, you probably got the wind knocked out of you. Okay, let’s get you home.”
Wren blinked, tears clinging, frozen to her eyelashes. “Where’s my sled?”
“It’s not in good shape, but I’ll bet your daddy can fix it.” She stood up. The bank came to her shoulders. Still, if she pushed Wren out, she could probably use the tree to leverage herself out.
“Wren, can you step into my hands?” Keely bent and made a basket with her hands. Wren tried to raise her foot, then cried out and fell back.
“What’s wrong?”
“My tummy hurts!”
Keely stood over her. “Okay. Listen. I have to get you out of here. Otherwise, we’ll freeze to death.”
“I’m scared.” Wren hunkered down in the well. “Daddy is going to be so mad.”
Yeah, well. And she got that. Probably better than Wren could imagine.
She crouched in front of her. “Listen. Dads get worried about their little girls. They want to protect them, but sometimes they can’t.
They can’t always protect them from all the hurt and pain that they’re afraid of.
Like your dad. He’s sad because of your mom, right? ”
Wren nodded. “He cries sometimes, at night.”
She got that too. “So, we’re going to forgive your dad for being scared. And raising his voice, and no, he shouldn’t, but you going sledding without his permission probably wasn’t a great idea, right?”
Wren’s eyes welled up.
“But he’d be even sadder if something happened to you, right?”
Wren nodded.
“So, let’s not make him even sadder. Let’s get you out of this hole. And home. And even if he gets mad at you, try to remember it’s because he loves you, and he’s just really bad at showing it.” Keely bit back arguments to her own explanation and reached for Wren.
The little girl put her arms around Keely’s neck. Then Keely lifted her, turned her, and pushed her up, her mittens on her boots.
Wren launched out of the tree well and landed somewhere above.
Keely put her hands on the snowbank and tried to pull up, but the snow crumbled under her mittens. Right. Think, Keely.
Only this time, it wasn’t her father in her head but stupid Chase Sterling. “You made this decision, not me! So you’ll have to deal with it.”
The memory boiled inside her. Yeah, well, she was trying, okay?
She turned, studied the tree. Branches, maybe six feet up, but if she used the tree trunk, and made footholds for herself . . .
Kicking into the snow, she made divots, then she leaned one arm against the tree, stepped into the divots, and pivoted herself up, to the branch.
It sagged, but she grasped it with the other hand and used it to kick more divots into the snow. Another leap, and she grabbed an upper branch, pulled herself up, got one foot on the lower branch, then the other.
She was Tarzan, perched in a tree, swaying in the wind, the wind sharp against her skin.
Wren sat in the snow, her arms around Caspian, who lay next to her, watching Keely, unmoving.
It felt a little like being watched by a panther.
She worked her way out to the edge of the branch. A crack, the branch jerking—
She leaped for the bank.
Purchase, mostly, but she turned onto her back and scrabbled away from the edge, landing finally beside Wren.
Caspian got up, barked again, backing away.
“I know, I know,” she whispered. “That was nearly a tragedy.” Then she looked at Wren. “Let’s go home.”
It felt good to hurt. To ache from a morning of hard work, Dawson’s body reacting to the hauling and climbing and effort of freeing the community generator from the fallen tree.
And they’d gotten the boiler damper working, along with the generator that pumped warm water into the lodge and the other homes.
“No burst pipes on our watch.” Griffin held out a fist to him as they peeled off their work gear in a snow room off the lodge entrance. Different from the front door, this entrance held all the Carhartt coveralls, shovels, fur hats, and, of course, the weapons, locked in a case on a wall.
Dawson met the fist. “You sure it’s okay for us to take your only working snow machine? I don’t want to leave you without a way out.”
“Yeah. Just send a plane in with the rest of the plugs and a couple fuel lines. Or Sully. He’ll probably be by in a week or so with Kennedy to see River. I’ll snowshoe over to his place in a couple weeks and pick up the sled.”
Dawson hung up his coveralls. “Why to see River?”
“Kennedy’s pregnant.”
No wonder Sully had been in such a hurry to get back to her.
“I hadn’t realized they’d gotten married.”
“Yeah, last summer. Small ceremony, here in the community. Your cousin Axel was here with his girlfriend, Flynn. She’s Kennedy’s sister.
” Griffin held open the door to him, then held out his hand.
“You’re welcome back anytime, Daws. Consider yourself an honorary artist.” He winked and slapped him on the back.
Dawson headed inside the main room of the lodge, the smells of bread baking and something tangy, maybe pizza, or lasagna, emanating from the kitchen. Outside, the wind had picked up, the temperatures plummeted, and snow drifted from the slate-gray sky.
They’d need to leave, and soon, if they hoped to get to Sully’s before the blizzard socked them in. And even if they did make it to the outpost, Moose probably wouldn’t be able to fly in, the ceiling too low.
So, they’d be bunked up with Sully for a day or two, waiting out the next surge of storm.
Maybe they should stay put. And right then, the image of Keely standing in the snow, her eyes widening after he’d made that silly joke about packing something—what an idiot. Hopefully Moose had picked up the suitcases from the crash.
Probably not. Which only drove home the memory of the plane crash. It seemed so long ago, the blizzard having separated tragedy from the relative safety of the community.
“You sure you want to leave?”
The question jerked him out of his thoughts. Griffin stood there, hands in his pockets. “I can’t help but feel like you’re supposed to be here. To stay.”
Dawson frowned.
Griffin looked over at the kitchen, then back to Dawson. “It’s just . . . I don’t know. I think God has you here for a reason.”
He frowned. “Have you been talking to Moose?”
“Who?” Griffin shook his head, clamped his hand on Dawson’s shoulder.
“When I first got here, I wasn’t sure this place was right for me.
I felt trapped. Even like maybe I’d run away from the world.
And then I realized that sometimes we need a time-out.
From the world. From expectations. Even from ourselves.
The people we’ve told ourselves we have to be instead of who we were made to be. ”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“I mean that the world tells you that if you look inside, you’ll find yourself, and in doing that you’ll find peace.
But peace doesn’t come from inside. It comes from knowing that you’re forgiven.
Accepted. Safe. It’s about standing in that place of love and letting it set you free.
” He lifted a hand to River reading to one of the children by the fire.
Sweet. And yes, this place felt . . . well, he’d slept last night, all the way through, without his silly dog jerking him awake, so even Caspian felt it.
But he couldn’t hide from life. “I’m good, Griff. And I made a promise to Keely. So . . .” He held out his hand.
Griffin gripped it. “I’ll have River pack you guys a go bag. Keep the duds.”
Dawson headed upstairs to his room. He decided to leave his clothing. Why not? Then he knocked on Keely’s door.
No answer.
He opened it. Her bed lay mussed, her clothing on a pile in the chair.
Huh.
He went out and looked over the room below. Spotted Nance and Donald and Oliver, Griffin, and River talking, and a few other families.
No Keely.
And no Caspian.
Maybe she’d taken him outside.
He went back downstairs, grabbed his borrowed Sorels and parka, pulled on his hat, pocketed his gloves, and headed outside.
The sun barely bled through the clouds, the sky a deep gray, bruised around the edges as if it fought slumber. The wind had picked up, snow starting to billow.
Yeah, they had two hours max before everything went dark. “Keely!”
His voice hung on the wind a moment, then scurried away down the snowy main street. He whistled.
No Caspian, no bark.
Weird.
He spotted someone coming from the barn, one of the community members hauling a hay bale out to a wheelbarrow.
He headed down to Landon, one of the guys who’d helped him off the ice.
He had a couple of spry teenage boys who’d worked with them today on the generator.
He lifted a hand. “Have you seen Keely?”
The man, late forties, shook his head.
Really weird.