Page 64 of Second Chances
Chapter 27
Megan’s belly was cold, even through her down coat. Her teeth were chattering so hard that her chin was bouncing off the cold ice beneath it. All she wanted to do was curl up into a ball, but every time she moved, she heard the haunting groaning and creaking of the ice. Her jeans were frozen solid, and her legs felt like she had pins and needles in them.
Stay calm, Megan. Don’t try to run for shore. She kept repeating this to herself when all she wanted to do was stand up and make a run for it. She wasn’t that far, but after barely being able to drag herself back onto the ice after crashing through, she knew she didn’t have it in her to heave herself out if the lake fractured and tried to swallow her whole again.
After Charlotte had left the house, she felt like she needed to get out and clear her head. With Timber, she always walked the same trails that meandered through Sugar Peaks, but for some reason today she turned away from the subdivision and followed the trail through the woods. She had never been one for the outdoors until she met Josh and Timber. Now she took her time to appreciate the colors, smells, and sounds around her. She hadn’t realized that there were so many different types of snow, and today she felt like she was walking on snow cones, the snow squishy and sloppy beneath her feet as she walked. The trail ended at a big open field with cute little huts or shacks in the middle. The snow had blown across the clearing, making it a harder packed surface, something easier to walk on.
She breathed deeply, feeling the cool air fill her lungs and making her cheeks flush. For the first time in years, she realized that no matter what happened to her, she was going to be okay. She was working through different scenarios in her mind, trying to figure out a way to win Josh back. She knew that he might not take her back but had decided that what they had was worth fighting for. If she lost him, at least she would have tried to save the best thing that had ever happened to her. She was imagining his lips trailing down her chest, his beard tickling her sensitive skin as he nipped at her breasts. She was remembering how good and how full he felt inside her. The rest of her daydream was interrupted when she heard a groan. It was nothing like she had ever heard before. She whipped her head around to try and figure out where it was coming from, it sounded near and far at the same time. She shrugged and then kept walking through the field until she noticed that her boots were starting to slip. She kicked away at the surface snow and revealed ice, clear ice that had bubbles underneath it. She whipped her head to the left and the right and it dawned on her, she wasn’t in a field, she was on Chance Lake. How could she be so stupid?
A few years earlier Megan had watched a crack in her windshield spawn from a rock chip and snake its way across her line of vision as she drove. Cracks were forming beneath the soles of her boots, just like the one in her windshield. She heard the eerie groaning sound again somewhere in the distance, but this time it was accompanied by cracking sounds, and those were close, they were coming from the ice under her feet.
Megan screamed and started to sprint back toward the shore, the ice creaking and cracking with every step that she took.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Megan repeated to herself as she ran. When she felt her boots break through the ice she screamed, a guttural scream of terror. She caught the edge of the ice surface with her elbows as the lower half of her body plunged into the icy water.
It only took second for her boots to fill up with water and she clawed at the ice with her gloves attempting to pull herself out of the cold water. Her hands kept slipping as she clawed grooves into the snow-covered ice, trying to hoist herself free.
She stopped and took a deep breath. That’s when it hit her. If she kept panicking, she would die. “Okay, Meg,” she said to herself. “You can’t get these boots off, and you can’t pull yourself out. You’ve gotta try something different.”
She leaned forward onto the ice and straightened her legs out behind her and flutter kicked. She started to feel herself moving forward and wriggled and rocked, kicking her legs until she was able to roll away from the hole in the ice.
She was gasping for air, but she didn’t feel cold. She put her hands on one knee to help herself to her feet. She stumbled forward another couple of steps, but then heard the groaning and creaking again. She dropped to the ice, figuring that it was better for her to spread her weight out, but this time the cracking didn’t stop. She felt the ice shifting beneath her and knew that she wasn’t going to be able to crawl, roll, or shimmy her way anywhere without going through again.
She pulled her glove off her hand with her teeth and was able to reach her hand into her jacket pocket. Thankfully her phone hadn’t done the unintentional polar bear plunge with her. She tried to dial 911, but her fingers were so cold the phone wasn’t registering her touch. She did everything she could to warm them up but couldn’t get the phone to work. She punched the button on the side to activate the voice prompt, but the damn phone kept telling her that it didn’t have anyone named Nina Oneone in her contact lists.
Megan screamed and then yelled into her phone, “Dial Charlotte.”
When the phone replied, “Dialing Charlotte,” Megan’s breath heaved, and she choked out a relieved cry.
Charlotte reassured Megan in the way a salesperson assures a nervous buyer, her voice all calm and caramel smooth. If there was anyone who knew how to take care of a situation, it was Charlotte.
Now all Megan had to do was wait and hope that Charlotte would know what to do.
To Megan’s surprise, instead of getting colder, she started to get warmer, the ice started to feel more comfortable than the Posturepedic bed she’d been sleeping on at Charlotte’s house. Megan smiled and laid her face down on the snow and marveled at the way the snow sparkled even at such a close angle.
Then she closed her eyes.
