21. Eleanor Margaret Bie
Chapter twenty-one
Eleanor Margaret Bie
The sound of the waterfall reaches me before I see it, carrying through the trees as the trail narrows and drops toward the bend. Rain has turned the trail into a muddy obstacle course, and loose stones and roots shift under my boots.
My trauma bag keeps shifting against my side as my arms keep flapping around searching for balance. I move as fast as the trail allows without letting fear make me careless.
If I fall before I reach Ellie, I’m no help to her.
By the time I round the bend, the water is loud enough I can’t hear myself breathe and I finally see the falls through the rain.
“Ellie!” I pick up my pace, sweeping the flashlight across the lower rocks looking for hazards. Rain and spray cut through the beam.
I’m coming, El. I’m coming.
“Ellie!”
The rocks at the base of the climb are loose and wet. I want to rush and scale them, but reason keeps me calm and cautious. I start to climb.
Beth loved the place behind the falls. Ellie knows that. If she came here for her mother, she’s up there. I don’t let myself turn that into a question.
My mind starts to drift. What if she fell? I didn’t check around the water’s edge first. What if she didn’t even come here in the first place.
Jesus, Doc. Stop it.
Focus. Stay positive.
I close each negative thought and keep the only line that makes sense. If Ellie wanted Beth, this is where she is. But why isn’t she answering me?
The spray gets heavier the closer I get to the cave. Water is running over the rocks more like rivulets than mist gathering.
The first rock shifts under my boot. I reset my footing. The climb forces me to slow down. That helps more than I want it to.
“Ellie, it’s Dad,” I yell out again.
My hands have to choose where to go. My boots have to hold before I trust my weight. There’s no room to lose myself in the images trying to build behind my eyes, so I stay with the next grip, the next step, the next place the rock needs to take me.
Finally. I turn my shoulder into the spray and step into the cave behind the water.
In less than a second I see her. She’s lying on her back on the rock floor. I’m beside her in the next breath.
“Ellie.” I touch two fingers to her neck. “Sweetheart, open your eyes.”
Her pulse is there. Fast, but there. Thank God.
Her clothes are soaked, she’s shivering, and there is blood near her temple. She’s mumbling, but I can’t make it out.
I stroke her hair and lean closer. “Ellie, it’s Dad. I’m here.”
Her eyelids flutter.
I set the flashlight where it gives me enough light and open the trauma kit. My hands work before the rest of me catches up. I carefully check her head and neck first. That blood is from a pretty good bump on her head, but it’s not flowing anymore.
I move down along her arms. Left is good. She winces when I run along her right forearm. No issues at her torso. Right leg, good. But I can see her left knee is an issue without even touching her. The pant leg is torn and her knee is swollen and already bruised. I don’t even try to touch it.
“Ellie, I need you to wake up for me.”
I check her pupils, equal and responsive. I press two fingers to the inside of her wrist and check her pulse again out of habit.
I shake her shoulder gently. “Ellie, honey, it’s Dad.”
Her eyes open halfway. They don’t focus at first.
“Momma, you were right,” she murmurs.
I stop for a moment trying to make sure I heard her correctly. “No, El, it’s me. Daddy. I’m here.”
She tries to roll over and cries out.
“Don’t move.” The words come sharp. I pull them back. “Don’t move yet, sweetheart. I need to make sure it’s safe to move your head first.”
I open my bag and pull out a C-collar and work it around her neck gently. “I’ve got you. Let me make sure I don’t hurt you.”
Her eyes start to come into focus. “Daddy.”
I want to lift her off the rock and hold every part of her against me. I want to carry her out now and get her home where I can make her warm and feel loved. But, the reality is she’s cold, wet, and not fully with me yet.
So I do the job in front of me.
“Tell me where it hurts, El.”
“My head.”
“Good. What else?”
“My knee.” Her eyes squeeze shut. “My arm. I tried to get out.”
“I can see that you tried really hard.”
“I couldn’t get up.”
The words are weak. Exhausted. She drifts between each one.
I pull the thermal blanket from the bag and work it around her without moving her leg. “Stay with me, kiddo. You’re doing great.”
“Don’t leave me, Daddy.”
“Never.”
She lifts her hand toward me. Her fingers are cold enough to scare me. She tries to pull me closer.
“Careful.”
“I need a hug.”
“I know, sweetie.” I look at her knee, her arm, the blood on her face. “But you need to stay still.”
Tears slide down her cheeks.
That does it.
I shift close, brace against the wall, and lower myself over her as much as the space and her injuries allow. I don’t jostle her. I put my chest over her where she can feel me and let her hand grip my jacket.
“I’m here,” I say near her ear. “I’m right here.”
She makes a small sound against my jacket. “Momma said you’d find me.”
“I found you.”
“I tried to stay awake.”
Her fingers tighten, then she flinches. Pain moves through her face, and the father in me starts to outrun the doctor.
“El, what were you thinking?” I say.
Her eyes open.
The question is wrong before it finishes. I know it, and I still keep going.
“This place is dangerous. You came here alone. Ellie. You could have been…” I can’t complete the thought. “Something terrible might have happened to you.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
Her mouth opens, but I don’t let her have the chance.
“I’ve been worried sick about you, looking high and low all over this island for hours. Erin and Rhea are terrified. The entire town has been mobilized out looking for you. Jesus Ellie, I thought someone took you. I thought you were dead.”
“Stop,” she screams.
“No. I won’t. I don’t think you understand what could have happened?”
“Stop it!” She tries to sit up and immediately cries out.
I catch her shoulders to keep her flat. “Ellie, stay still.”
“Then stop yelling at me.” Her voice is loud, but brittle, but the anger in it is real. “Just stop. I wasn’t thinking. I know that…but, I couldn’t think… I just wanted my Mom.”
Everything in me stops.
Her breathing turns rough, and tears come hard now.
“I wanted Mom, and I wanted to know why the hell everything is falling apart.”
I let the word pass. Tonight, she can swear.
She cries harder.
“I’m sorry I yelled,” I say with a much calmer tone. “I was scared. I know that doesn’t make it right.”
Her eyes roll and she winces. She’s trying to stay with the conversation and ignore the pain.
I hate this.
“I didn’t know what was true,” she sobs. “That guy. He said awful things to Annie, and I didn’t know if Annie lied or you lied or if everybody knew things and I was the only one who didn’t. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started running.”
The anger leaves me wanting to break Ian in half. “El, I’m sorry.”
“Dad, was he right? Could Annie only be pretending to care about me?”
“No, El. I don’t think that’s possible at all. Annie does care about you.”
“Why would he say that?”
“I’m not sure, honey.”
“He said she wanted to play mommy when I was staying with her over the weekend.” She takes a deep breath.
“No sweetheart. No one gets to be Mom except Mom.”
She starts crying again, quieter this time, and I bring the blanket closer around her.
“I miss her,” she says.
“I know, kiddo. I do too.”
How the fuck does this asshole know so much about our lives?
“Annie cares about you.” I keep my voice firm. “That is what is real.”
Ellie looks at me. “He said she was using you to get a family.”
I want to leave the cave, find Ian, and do damage no one would ever be able to repair. I keep my hand under Ellie’s shoulder and answer my daughter.
“Annie isn’t using me. She isn’t using you. He doesn’t know anything about us.”
“He kept calling her Kitten. Why would he call her that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“No. But I know it sounds like he was trying to hurt her feelings.”
“He was really mean to her. Even her ovaries.”
Okay, that catches me off guard. “What?”
“He said she had shriveled up ovaries. She got quiet after that.” El turns her head. “Dad, why would someone say something like that?”
I take a breath before answering. “To be cruel. To poke at something just to make it painful. Sometimes, people are just mean. They say cruel things to hurt other people for no good reason. That doesn’t mean any of it is true.”
I look at the blood on my daughter’s face, the blanket around her, the rain cutting across the entrance to the cave. Ian did this.
“You should talk to Annie and see if you can help her, Dad.”
“That’s Annie’s private life,” I say. “If she wants me to help her, she’ll ask me. What I can tell you is that he had no right to say that to her.”
She turns her face away. “He said you and Annie were…”
I wait.
“Dad.” She covers her eyes with her hand. “I don’t know how to say this.”
“It’s okay El. Deep breath.”
“He used really bad words. He said you and Annie were doing the F word. You know Mommy and Daddy kind of stuff.”
And now, I’m past my limit. Ian has now forced intimacy from my private life, things a parent should never have to discuss with their child, out into the open.
That son of a bitch.
I could explain everything to Ellie. But I’m not going to. Yes, there are things I will have to tell her and things she will have to find out and adjust to about her father’s dating life, but having sex or not is not one of them.
That stays out of this.
I keep my voice even and divert the subject a little. “Ellie. I think I care about Annie a lot. But caring about her and what comes next is a big step. I have to think about things that will affect not just me or Annie, but you too.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“I probably should have already. I have been worrying about it for the last two days.”
“Worrying, why?”