Chapter 9 #2
We worked through two more sections without talking much.
She hummed something under her breath while she drove staples, a song I didn’t recognize, and I held the wire taut and let the rhythm of the work fill the space the conversation had left behind.
The sun was warm on my back and the wind pushed through the grass along the fence line, and for a while, it was just the two of us and the sound of hammers.
She was reaching overhead to loop wire around a tall post, both arms extended, her sleeves pushed back past her elbows when I noticed the scar.
It ran along the inside of her left forearm.
Four inches long, slightly raised, the skin around it paler than the rest. It wasn’t the kind of mark you got from catching your arm on a fence.
“What happened there?” I kept my voice even. A question, not a demand.
She glanced down at her forearm. Her face didn’t change.
“Asshole ex-husband.”
The words landed flat and hard. She’d been married. To someone who’d left a mark like that on her.
“Recent?”
“No.” She pulled her sleeve down. “Ancient history.”
“How long were you married?”
“Three years too long.” She picked up the next staple and drove it into the post with one clean swing. The conversation was over. Her hands said so, her posture said so, the precise controlled force of the hammer said so.
I didn’t push. I wanted to. I wanted to know about the man who’d given her that scar. Wanted to beat the shit out of him without even knowing his name. Wanted to know more about her life in Upstate New York and how exactly she’d ended up here.
But she wasn’t talking so I drove my own staple in and we kept working.
Eleanor. The scar. The ex-husband. The family who wouldn’t use the name she’d chosen. Pieces of a picture I could see the edges of but not the center, and every piece she gave me made it clearer that the center was something she’d spent years building walls around.
We worked in silence for a while after that. She handed me staples when I needed them and I held the wire taut when she needed me to, and neither of us tried to fill the quiet.
The sky changed while we were working the last section.
What had been blue and clear went dark in the time it took me to drive four staples.
The clouds didn’t just build up along the ridgeline.
They blackened, piling over one another in thick, heavy layers that swallowed the afternoon light.
The wind came in hard from the west, shifted south, then came back from the west again.
The temperature dropped fast enough that I stopped working and looked up.
The brief storm four days ago had been all noise. Thunder and rain for forty-seven minutes, then nothing. This was different.
“We should go,” Lark said. She was already gathering tools, her eyes on the sky. “That’s not messing around, and we’re at the wrong side of the property to get caught in it. Montana storms can get ugly quick.”
We moved fast toward the truck, a quarter mile back along the fence line on the low ground near the access road. We made it about halfway before the rain hit.
It didn’t build. The sky opened and dumped, a wall of water so dense I could barely see Lark ten feet ahead of me. Within a minute, we were soaked through, the ground under our boots turning to mud.
Then it got fucking worse at a speed I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t been in the middle of it.
The low ground between us and the truck started collecting runoff. At first, it was just standing water in the ruts. It was shin-high and cold, but we could still walk through it.
Then it started moving. Brown water channeling through the natural low point, picking up speed as more flowed off the ridgeline above us, the rain still pouring down in stinging sheets everywhere.
I could see the truck, barely, maybe eighty yards ahead, parked where we’d left it. The water around it was already up to the wheel wells and still rising.
Lark stopped. She was staring at the truck, face grim.
“What’s wrong?”
“If that water gets into the engine intake, it’s done.” She had to shout over the rain. “And if we get in and it won’t start, we’re trapped in a cab while the water rises around us. It’s a death trap. I know better than to park in that ravine. Stupid. Damn it.”
I looked at the eighty yards between us and the truck. The water was brown and fast and climbing. She was right. “We’re not getting to the truck. But we can’t stay here either.”
She grabbed my arm and pointed uphill, toward the rocky slope to the north. “There’s an overhang up on the ridgeline. Rock shelf. I’ve been up there before. We have to go up. Now.”
I didn’t argue. She was definitely right. The water was already up to our knees in the fifteen minutes since the storm started. This was a flash flood zone. Going back the way we came wouldn’t help either—we’d be completely open to the storm.
She turned and started climbing. I followed.
The terrain was steep and slick. Wet rock, loose shale, mud that gave way under every step.
The rain drove sideways into us, and the wind tried to push us back down.
Lark knew the ground and moved fast, her boots finding holds I couldn’t see, but the wet rock made everything uncertain.
She slipped. Her boot hit a patch of shale and her leg went out from under her, and she started sliding back down the slope.
I caught her arm and pulled her up before she’d gone two feet.
Her hand gripped my forearm hard, fingers digging in, and for a second, her face was close to mine, rain running down both of us, her breath coming fast.
“Thanks.” I saw her lips form the word more than heard it. She let go and kept climbing.
We reached the overhang five minutes later. A shelf of rock jutting out from the ridgeline, maybe fifteen feet deep and eight feet high at the opening, narrowing toward the back. Protected from the wind on two sides, open on the third facing the valley below.
At least it was out of this goddamned torrential rain.
I looked down. The low ground had become a channel. The truck was still visible, water halfway up its doors. The rain wasn’t letting up. If anything, it was getting worse, the sky so dark it looked like evening even though it was early afternoon.
We weren’t going anywhere.
Lark stood at the opening, arms wrapped around herself.
“Are you okay?”
She was staring down at the truck. “Stupid. So damn stupid. I know better.”
“You couldn’t have known this crazy-ass storm would show up out of nowhere.”
She shook her head. “I know enough to know I shouldn’t park in the ravine. Ever. The truck…”
“Hey.” I touched her shoulder, turning her away from the opening. “The truck is replaceable. You knew enough not to let us get in it, which is more than I knew. We’re safe to wait this out. That’s what matters.”
She nodded but didn’t look anywhere near convinced.
And she was shuddering hard. Now that we weren’t moving, our wet clothes and the wind had made hypothermia a real danger.
Maybe we weren’t safe. I needed to get her warmed up.
Lark’s smaller form wasn’t producing anywhere near as much heat as she needed.
I found dry material at the back of the overhang where the rock had kept the ground sheltered.
Dead leaves, strips of bark, small branches.
I built a fire the way the Army had taught me, kindling first, then larger pieces, patient and methodical.
The wood caught. I fed it carefully until the flame held, then added two larger branches and let it build.
The fire was small, but it pushed warmth into the space. Smoke curled along the rock ceiling and drifted out the open side.
Lark hadn’t sat down. She was still at the edge of the overhang with her arms wrapped around herself, watching the water below. Her whole body was wound tight, vibrating with the same energy that had powered her up the hillside. The adrenaline hadn’t faded. It had nowhere to go.
“My truck is sitting in a river right now.” Her voice was too fast. “I just put new brake pads on it last month, and now it’s sitting in a river.”
“The water will drop. Flash floods move through fast. A couple hours at most. Come sit near the fire and get warmed up.”
“If that water gets into the intake, the engine is done. And a new engine—” She turned from the edge and paced the length of the overhang, six steps one way, six steps back.
Her hands wrung water from her hair, then pulled at the hem of her jacket.
“It’s fine. It’ll be fine. The water will go down and the truck will start and everything will be fine. ”
It was obvious that not one cell in her entire being thought everything would be fine.
“Lark. Come sit by the fire. You’re freezing.”