Chapter 28
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Graham Whittaker gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his knuckles tight.
“I don’t know about this,” he said, something he’d been thinking for the past twenty minutes.
They’d made it out of the canyon, and for whatever reason, the snow intensified the further north he went, where usually they got hit hard up at Whiskey Mountain Lodge.
“We’re almost there,” Laney said, and Graham wanted to argue with her.
Instead, he poured his energy into making sure he didn’t slip sideways around the curves through the apple orchards on their way to the northern highway.
It ran east and west, and acted as a border between Coral Canyon and Dog Valley, though the actual city limits were a couple of miles past it.
Bailey had purchased a property on that highway in the midst of several other farms, and one of Graham’s good friends, Ames Hammond, owned his canine dog training facility on the same highway.
When he had to turn his windshield wipers on double speed, he thought about pulling over and calling Ames to go help Bailey. But he’d only thought about it, and he’d actually kept driving.
“The storm wasn’t supposed to be this bad,” Eli said, and Graham only gritted his teeth. His phone rang, and his eyes flitted to the screen of the truck, just for a moment to see who it was.
“It’s an unknown number,” his wife said from the passenger seat.
“Why does it say they’ve called three times?” Graham said. “My phone hasn’t rung.”
“Maybe they called while we were coming down the canyon,” Laney said, the weight of her gaze on the side of his face.
“Answer it.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Laney said.
“Answer it,” Graham said again, raising his voice this time. “It could be one of Bailey’s friends or a neighbor.” He glanced over to his wife and immediately put his attention back on the road. “Area codes come from anywhere these days.”
Laney reached out and tapped the screen to answer the call. “Let me deal with it,” she said, her tone turning a bit grumpy, as if Graham had summoned the snow on the day their daughter was returning to Coral Canyon after an eternal absence. “Hello?”
“Hey,” a man said. “Praise the Lord, you finally answered.”
Graham exchanged another glance with his wife. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“My name is Reeves Durham,” he said. “And I’m with your daughter.”
Graham’s heartbeat started to thrash against his ribs.
“What’s wrong?” Laney asked.
“I found her passed out in the driveway,” Reeves said. “She was covered with snow, and I managed to carry her inside and get a fire built.”
“Did you call nine-one-one?” Graham asked.
“I wasn’t sure they’d be able to make it through the snow,” he said. “It’s coming down pretty thick. You might not be able to make it either, but I don’t know…I felt like you should know.”
“Yes, of course,” Laney said. “We’re on our way.”
“Graham, I could call nine-one-one,” Eli said from the back seat.
He shook his head, trying to focus on one problem at a time. “Is she hurt?”
“I couldn’t see anywhere that she was,” Reeves said. “She’s not bleeding, and she didn’t appear to have broken bones.”
“Why would she pass out then?” Laney asked.
“I don’t know, ma’am. When I found her, it was pretty obvious she’d been lying there for….” He trailed off, and Graham almost didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
“Several minutes,” Reeves finished. “She’s groaned a few times and she’s breathing. I keep telling her who I am and that you’re on your way, so I’m glad that wasn’t a lie.”
Graham opened his mouth to say something, but then Reeves went, “Oh, and I called my friend at the electric company, and she got the electricity turned on, so the furnace is pumping.”
“I wonder if she slipped,” Graham said, and he wished he could reach across the console and hold his wife’s hand.
They’d both worried so much over Bailey in the past fifteen years, and he’d held her for countless nights as she wept into his chest, and they’d both begged God to take care of their girl.
“We’re coming up to the northern highway right now,” Graham said, his voice a little wobblier than he’d like. “It’s probably another ten minutes from there.”
Laney looked out the side window, but Graham could only see her in his peripheral vision as he refused to look away from the rapidly disappearing black ribbon of highway in front of him.
“Well, now you know,” Reeves said. “I can call nine-one-one, if you think I should.”
“I’ve got my brother with me,” Graham said. “Let us talk about it.”
“You bet,” Reeves said, and Graham leaned forward for some reason.
“Thank you so much, Reeves,” he said, and he couldn’t wait to get to Bailey’s house so that he could hug the man who’d surely saved his daughter.
Silence blanketed them in the car, and then his wife sniffled. “She’s okay,” Graham said. “Reeves said she was okay.”
“Should I call nine-one-one?” Eli said. “Honestly, Graham, she should be checked out if she passed out.”
“She doesn’t have seizures or anything,” Laney said.
“There should be no reason she passed out unless she hit her head,” Stockton said, from where he rode on Laney’s side of the truck in the back seat.
“I suppose we could call them,” Graham said. “But they’re going to be piled up, and my gut is telling me to wait.”
“Then let’s wait,” Laney whispered.
Graham made the turn onto the northern highway, grateful for a good truck with powerful four-wheel drive. He wouldn’t drive anything else in Wyoming, especially because he and Laney lived up the canyon, about thirty minutes from town, and had to deal with snow and steep roads all the time.
None of their children lived at home anymore, but when they had, Graham had kept an extra vehicle filled with gas at all times, just to be sure they could get off the mountain if necessary.
“Maybe we should say a prayer,” Eli said.
Graham nodded. “Why don’t you do that, brother?” he asked. “And I’ll get us there as fast as I can.”
The mood in the truck shifted, and Graham couldn’t fold his arms and bow his head physically, but he did so emotionally, mentally, and spiritually as his younger brother began to pray.
“Dear Lord,” Eli said. “We know we have called on Thee regularly and asked for our fair share of blessings over the years, but we come before Thee again in humility and gratitude to do so one more time.”
Graham’s thoughts settled, and though his nerves continued to parade through him, they didn’t necessarily scream at him about Bailey. They warned him to be careful driving, to be alert, to check his mirrors, and to see everything possible.
He prayed for those things for himself silently, while Eli said, “Please bless Bailey. We don’t know how else to say it, and I don’t have anything specific, but Thou knows all things, Lord.
Thou knows what happened to her and what she needs.
We’re humbly asking Thee that she be granted those things for her long-term well-being and health.
“We just got her back, Lord.” Eli’s voice broke, and Graham swallowed hard in an attempt to keep his own emotions in check.
Eli cleared his throat once and then twice. “We just got her back,” he said again, more calmly now. “And we can’t lose her again. Amen.”
“Amen,” Graham whispered. He’d felt the personal loss of Bailey when she’d delivered OJ on Christmas Eve, almost fourteen years ago. It had taken her several years before she’d even come home again, and longer before she’d interact with OJ.
But Graham believed that she had never been lost to the Lord. He’d always known precisely where she was, and exactly who she needed in her life, and what He could place there to bring her to this Friday where she was moving in to her new house in Coral Canyon.
“It’s going to be okay,” Laney said.
He nodded, and a few seconds later, Graham eased off the accelerator and started to slow the truck so he could make the turn into Bailey’s driveway. He put his blinker on, though this road held no other traffic, and he made the turn without slipping at all.
“The moving truck is here,” Stockton said, and they definitely expected that.
Bailey’s driveway was quite narrow until it got closer to the house, and then Graham was able to pull alongside the truck.
“The garage door is open,” Eli said, and irritation ran through Graham at the running commentary from the back seat. He put the truck in park, and Laney was the first to open her door and fly from the vehicle.
She’d never been overly emotional or irrational, but Graham followed her at a quick pace, leaving the truck running and the keys inside. None of that mattered. He needed to see Bailey and make a decision about calling the paramedics or not.
His mind moved fast enough to note the sectional couch pieces in the garage while he and Laney reached the steps leading into the house. He let his wife go first, confusion riddling through him and making his heartbeat accelerate all over again. How long had Bailey been here?
She pushed right into the house, saying, “Hey, it’s Laney Whittaker.”
“In the living room,” a man called, and Graham estimated him to be somewhere in his thirties, the same as Bailey.
His boots squeaked wetly against the new tile he and his brother, Beau, had installed just last week. It looked really great, but he didn’t have time for that right now. He found boxes on the kitchen counter and a heap of wet clothes and coats in the empty dining area.
Walking past all of it, he joined Laney in the living room, where a man poked his head out of a bundle of blankets. Cardboard boxes stood three tall in front of the fireplace, with two on the end near his head tilting inward.