by Jodi Picoult
A horn went off, three long blasts. “Get back,” Meredith yelled, urging them into the hollow of the cave they’d found. She covered her head, as if that might make a difference, just as the charge went off on the other side of the pit. The explosion was far enough away from where she huddled, but reverberations made the ground shake beneath her hands and feet. She felt the stone slide beneath her, her slick fingers scrabble for purchase, and then she was falling and landing all wrong, her bad leg brittle as a twig, as it snapped beneath the weight of the granite plate that pinned her.
Not again.
Ross saw the dynamite burst in slow motion; he heard the scrape and drag of rubble reshifting and it echoed in his ears with his own racing pulse. He could not speed up time; he could not make his arms and legs move fast enough. The entire world was being blown to bits around him and he was hypersensitive—the blasts louder, the explosions more brilliant—yet even in this cataclysm, Ethan’s cry for help rang clear above everything else.
Ross was not aware of the unstable ground, the oncoming detonations, the sheer odds of getting across safely to the other side of the quarry pit. All he knew was that he would not let someone he loved die, again. That Ross was the only person who could save him. That this was what had to be done.
That history was not going to repeat itself.
By the time he reached Meredith, his calves were shredded to ribbons from the jagged granite. Blood ran down the side of his face where one flying shard had cut his temple. She was trapped beneath a shelf of rock as large as a grown man. “The kids,” she gasped, and he nodded at her.
He jammed his boot into a fissure between two stones, stretched out with his hands, and then hauled himself forward. Again, and again. Sometimes the rocks would move beneath his feet or his hand would slip; from the bottom of the rubble Ross got up and kept inching forward. He kept his eyes on Ethan and Lucy, standing on that ledge behind a screen of dust, waiting for him.
The two leaning blocks that had formed a shelter for Lucy and Ethan suddenly collapsed. Lucy screamed and stepped as far out onto the ledge as she could. “Hurry,” she cried. “Please!”
After a thousand years, or maybe a heartbeat, Ross reached the base of the crumbling hill. He stretched for a handhold, and wedged his boot against the rubble, and started to climb. One hand over the other. One foot at a time. When he lifted his head, he could see the toes of Ethan’s black sneakers.
A blast thundered behind his back, and then Ross was falling along with the wall he’d been trying to scale. He rolled to the left, a guess, and covered his head as rocks rained down in five-foot square cubes. Lucy’s sobbing was louder now, and he could hear both Ethan and Meredith yelling his name. He stood up, wildly looking around to see how much damage had been done.
The ledge where Ethan and Lucy had been was still standing. But between it and the rock where he now stood was a chasm. A space six feet across and fifteen feet deep ran the length of the quarry, isolating the children on an island of stone.
Ross looked in both directions, and then into the new, vaulted pit. Its steep walls had been cut along the grain of the granite, a sheer drop. The only other way around was to cross all the way along the fissure to the southern edge of the quarry, scale the walls to the guardrail, and climb back in on the far side of the gap. “Listen to me,” Ross yelled across. “You’re going to have to jump.”
Meredith had seen the whole thing—Ross’s amazing progress across the devastated wreckage, his careful climb up toward Lucy and Ethan, the terrifying moment when the very mountain he was on deteriorated under his feet. When he disappeared out of her line of sight, she screamed for him, trying to turn so that she could locate him and setting off a wave of pain in her leg that nearly rendered her unconscious. Fighting to stay alert, she’d watched the ripple effect as a canyon split the bottom of the quarry in half, with the children on the other side.
It would be impossible for Ross to get all the way to the quarry wall and climb out, not before another explosion hit. He was right—the only way to save Lucy and Ethan was to catch them, once they leaped. Ethan would do what his uncle had asked. But Lucy—well, Lucy wouldn’t jump. That required a depth of bravery that her daughter had never possessed.
Tears came to Meredith’s eyes. “Lucy,” she yelled, “do it!”
They would die here, she and Lucy, buried by the rubble. She wished for courage, something that she might wing to her daughter. And just as she was thinking about fearlessness and taking flight, Meredith saw Lucy take a step back, run for all she was worth, and soar into the air.
She landed hard in Ross’s arms, knocking them both down; and on the side of safety now, she did not seem capable of letting go of him. Delighted, amazed—he hadn’t expected her to jump, not before seeing Ethan make it to the other side—Ross kissed her forehead. “I’ve got you,” he whispered into her hair as she sobbed against his shoulder. “You’re all right now.” He peeled the little girl away from him. “I need to get Ethan, okay?”
“Okay,” Lucy sniffed. She wrapped her arms around her knees and ducked her head, still shaking.
Ross stood up again, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Ethan, I won’t let you fall.” He watched his nephew nod, race as fast as he could to the edge, and jump.
Ethan was Superman, and he was flying, and nothing—nothing—could stop him from saving the world, or at least himself. With his eyes closed he didn’t have to look at how far away it was where Uncle Ross was standing, or at the broken-toothed rocks that were just waiting at the bottom of the pit. He stretched the tips of his fingers as far forward as they could go, and he chanted silently in his mind: I am a bird; I am a plane; I am already there.
When his fingers brushed something solid, he blinked right away and found himself hurtling into his uncle’s embrace. He grabbed on tight and that was when the tears came, so quick and thick he couldn’t even speak. His feet slid down Ross’s legs, planting themselves firmly on the ground.
“You,” Uncle Ross gasped, “are punished.”
And that was when the ground disappeared beneath them.
Ross felt them skidding down the slope into the crevasse, and he turned his body at the bottom so that he would bear the brunt of the fall. Ethan landed hard on top of him, and rocks dug into his legs and back. “Get up,” Ross said, hauling his nephew to his feet. “Are you all right?”
Ethan couldn’t find words, but he nodded. Ross looked up. “Lucy!” he cried. “Where are you?”
A tiny white face appeared at the edge of the cliff overhead. Tears striped through the dust on her cheeks. Ross looked at the precipitous wall of rock—there were some spots where he could find holds to climb up, but he would never make it carrying Ethan. And Lucy wasn’t strong enough to haul them up together.
“Ethan, I’m going to need you to help me,” Ross said. “I’m going to put you on my shoulders, and you’re going to have to climb up to the top by yourself. Lucy!” he yelled. “I need you to grab hold of Ethan when he gets close, all right?”
He waited for her to answer, but she didn’t. From where he stood, he could no longer even see where Lucy was. But if they waited, another explosion might go off. Another opportunity to climb could be lost. “Come on,” he said to Ethan, crouching down so that the boy could scramble onto his shoulders. “By the time you get to the top, she’ll be there.”
Lucy was shaking so hard she could not catch her breath. She had seen the world turn inside out—the dawn go gray, the solid ground vanish, her mother trapped. Ross and Ethan were stuck in the bottom of that hole, and she was up here, and nothing was the way it should be. She covered her head with her arms, wishing she could make it all go away. It had worked before, after all—when you didn’t want to see what was before your eyes, you simply had to keep them shut.
“Lucy!” That was Ross’s voice. He wanted her to help Ethan up. But that would mean moving to the edge of that cliff, the one whose last edge had collapsed. And Lucy could not bring her
self to do it.
“Hey!” Ethan’s hand popped up over the lip of the chasm. “Hey, Lucy, where are you? Uncle Ross, she’s not coming!”
“Lucy!”
Lucy held her hands up to her ears. They would go away, all this would go away, and when she woke up she would be in her bed at home and the sun would be streaming through the windows and she wouldn’t have to worry about ghosts.
She didn’t have to worry about ghosts, though, not anymore. Lucy looked up, brought her hands to her side. Being brave didn’t mean that you weren’t scared out of your wits. You were—the whole time—but you just kept on doing what you had to.
She started to crawl to the edge of the cliff again, stopping only once when a little chunk of pebbles slid from beneath her palm into the ravine. Swallowing hard, she peered over the rim and saw Ethan, just a few feet beneath her, clinging to the rock wall like a spider.
Lucy lay down on her belly and pressed her cheek against the rock. Then she stretched out her right hand, the one that was closest to Ethan. She felt his fingers brush against hers, and then grab tight, a key to a lock.
Because she couldn’t lift his weight, she made herself an anchor. He inched his way up her arm, grasping onto her shoulder and then hitching himself over the edge.
They stared at each other, panting, breathing in each other’s air. “Lucy,” Ethan said, his voice so husky that it was easy to imagine the man he might never become.
She managed a tiny smile. “What took you so long?” she whispered.
Ross carried Lucy on his back, and guided Ethan footstep by footstep, as he carefully picked a path through the wreckage to the ladder on the other side of the quarry. Several times, he had to change his course as another distant explosion led to a rearrangement of the rocky landscape. It never occurred to him that they would not make it, and that alone was enough to propel him forward.
At the rusty ladder, he set Lucy on the rungs and told her to climb. Ethan went up behind her. “Call 911,” Ross instructed. “Break into the office if you have to.”
Ethan nodded. “Aren’t you coming?”
Ross looked over his shoulder. “Not yet,” he said, and he squeezed Ethan’s calf. “Go.”
Then he crawled back the way he had come, frantically searching for the large tablet that had pinned Meredith. He hadn’t heard her screaming for some time—either because she hadn’t been, or because he’d been too busy to listen. By now there were many broad plates of granite scattered in the quarry; it was difficult to remember exactly where she had been. He crested a small rise of stone and saw Meredith’s arm.
“Meredith!” he called, and she shook herself awake.
“Lucy?”
“Is fine. She’s out.”
She could not see it, but her leg was bent back at a grotesque angle from her body. The large slab that had her pinned at the thigh was twice as wide as Ross, and as thick as his arm. To free her, he would need a smaller rock to make a lever, lift the slab, and drag Meredith away before the makeshift jack collapsed. Then he would have to immobilize her leg enough to carry her on his back across the rubble, like he had done with Lucy. “Go get help, Ross,” Meredith said, crying.
“I am help.” He searched for something—anything—that might help him budge the rock. “I’m going to try to lift this.”
She was shivering, a combination of pain and panic. “Go back.”
Ross tried to get his weight underneath the rock, but it wouldn’t move. In the distance a sounding horn blared, the warning of another round of explosions. He looked around frantically, trying to locate the dynamite or blasting cap. His eyes landed on Meredith, and the truth that stretched between them.
He couldn’t help her.
He leaned down and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Ssh,” he whispered, and a charge shuddered somewhere to the left.
“Ross, go. Please.” She began to cry harder. “I need to know that you got out of here safe.”
He forced a crooked smile onto his face. “How many times do I have to tell you? I can’t die.”
She reached for his hand, and the small movement unsettled the rocks beneath them. Ross lost his footing, going down hard on one knee beside Meredith’s head. At the same time, they both noticed the small red tube about three feet beyond them.
Ross leaped over the rock that pinned Meredith and reached the stick of dynamite. He grabbed it in his fist and started running, sprinting on serrated granite, on broken stone, deeper into the quarry. Nothing mattered in that moment except getting as far away from Meredith as possible before the computers lit it off.
The charge swelled in his palm. In the instant before he let go of it, before an explosion hotter than a hundred suns razed the very spot where he stood, Ross had one moment where everything was crystal clear. He had saved Meredith, he had saved everyone. Maybe now, he had even made up for the rest of his life. The force of the blast knocked him head over heels and his skull struck hard against a ragged rock. And just as he considered that he might finally have found something worth living for, Ross discovered that he was not invincible after all.
By the time Eli and Shelby arrived, the first ambulances had already left. The quarry was crawling with uniformed policemen borrowed from other towns, who were roping off the site. Another detective was interviewing the owners of Angel Quarry, who had arrived hastily, in the company of their corporate lawyer. No one knew where Az Thompson—the night watchman—had gone; his absence made him the easiest scapegoat for blame.
Eli hurried over to a paramedic. “The kids. Where are the kids?”
“They’re all right. Cuts, bruises. The ambulance already went off to the hospital.”
He felt Shelby sag beside him, and he put his arm around her to keep her upright. Leaning close, he murmured words into her ear, comments that made no sense at all but were meant to give her a lifeline to hold onto.
“Can we go?” Shelby said. “Now? To the hospital?”
But before he could answer, a commotion at the guardrail drew his attention. Three rescue workers gently lifted a stretcher over the edge. Strapped onto it, battered and bloody, was Meredith.
“Oh my God,” Shelby breathed, as she watched an unconscious Meredith being loaded into a waiting ambulance. Shelby seemed to notice, for the first time, Ross’s car. Shelby grabbed a paramedic by the jacket. “Where’s my brother. Where is my brother?” When the man didn’t answer, she refused to let go. “Ross Wakeman,” she demanded. “He’s here somewhere.”
A silence fell. No one would answer her, and that was response enough. “No,” Shelby cried, falling to her knees, as Eli’s arms came around her. “No!”
“He’s at the hospital,” Eli said firmly. Then he turned to one of the EMTs. “Right?”
“Yeah, he’s at the hospital.”
“See?” Eli helped Shelby stand, and carefully walked her to the truck. “We’ll go and find Ethan. And Ross.”
“Okay.” Shelby nodded through her tears. “Okay.”
Eli closed the door. The paramedic touched his shoulder as he walked around to the driver’s side. “Uh, Detective. About that guy . . .”
“He’s at the hospital,” Eli repeated.
“Yeah, but that was only a formality,” the paramedic said. “He was dead before we even got to him.”
Ross was driving, and Aimee was in the passenger seat. “Denmark,” he said.
She thought for a moment. “Kyrgyzstan.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her, as if he had not seen her in ages, although he knew this could not possibly be true . . . they never spent more than seventy-two hours apart, and that only when Aimee was pulling the graveyard shift at the hospital. Ross found himself cutting glances away from the road to look at the curve of her jaw, the color of her eyes, the spot where her French braid fell against her back. “New York,” he murmured.
Aimee rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on, Ross, another K?”
“You have fifteen years of education; you can play a
round of Geography.”
“Kalamazoo, then.”
He grinned and looked out the windshield. The car was moving quickly, and it was pouring outside, but he could swear that he’d seen someone he recognized walking along the edge of the highway—his old kindergarten teacher. She was wearing a yellow jumper Ross still recalled and her hair was in tight white pincurls. He looked again in the rearview mirror, but she was gone. “Oshkosh,” Ross replied.
Aimee crossed her legs on the seat. She had taken off her shoes—she never liked to travel with shoes on. “Heaven.”
“Heaven isn’t a place.”
“Of course it is,” Aimee argued.
Ross raised a brow. “And you know this for a fact.” He looked into his side mirror and nearly swerved: behind him on the opposite side of the road was his mother. She was wearing a sweater with little pearls around the top, one he remembered because as a child he’d sit in her lap and roll them between his fingers. She smiled at him, and waved.
His mother had been dead since 1996. His kindergarten teacher had been dead even longer than that. And Kyrgyzstan had still been in the U.S.S.R. when Aimee had died.
Heaven isn’t a place.
Suddenly they curved around a bend and saw a tractor-trailer coming at them, in their lane. “Ross!” Aimee cried out, and he jerked the steering wheel to the left, into the oncoming lane, noticing too late that a tiny car that had been hidden by the bulk of the truck was speeding toward them.
There was glass exploding inward, and the horrible screech of tires on a wet road, and the sudden, shocking impact of steel striking steel. Ross found himself sprawled outside the overturned car. The tractor-trailer had wobbled off to the side of the road with its driver thrown onto the horn so that the wail would not let up. Ross ratcheted open the passenger door, reached inside, and unbuckled Aimee.