Page 92 of Little Bird
“Yes,” Gabe says, as if he can hear my thoughts.
I don’t answer him this time. I lay onto the gas, pressing the pedal all the way to the floor, and start praying. God, please don’t take her away. Please don’t take her away. I can’t stand it. It’ll kill me.
It’ll kill my son even deader, and I can’t stand that, either.
I tear down the road, fighting to control the ATV whenever we hit a spot of ice and thinking for the fifteenth time this year that I need to get new tires for the fleet. We go through them so quickly in the winter, with the freezing temps, and once they get bald, the ATVs get harder to drive. Way more prone to slipping. I slow up a bit but still hit the next curve too quickly, and we slip on the asphalt a little before I can regain control. By the time we hit the straightaway, Gabe’s hands are white-knuckled on the dashboard and my heart is about to pound through my ribs.
But I can see the truck ahead of us.
“There she is,” Gabe says unnecessarily.
“Thanks for the update,” I say, but there’s no heat in it. For the first time in years, I feel like Gabe and I are on the same team, fighting for the same thing instead of butting heads and standing against each other. Blaming each other for something that’s happened.
For the first time in far too long, we have the same goal, and we’re going to stand together to make sure we accomplish it.
As we watch, though, the brake lights on the truck suddenly light up and the back wheels start to skid, and a moment later the truck is going sideways, slipping across the asphalt in a way that can only mean one thing.
“Ice,” I hiss.
I immediately slow, but not enough to stop our momentum entirely, and when we hit the same ice patch, I want to kill myself. Taryn is already sliding and it’s not going to do her any good if we get into the same position. I need the ATV to be whole so that when she inevitably crashes the truck, I have a way to get her home and into the warmth of the house.
I need a way to get us all home.
I work the wheel until I have control of the ATV again, and then focus on the truck to see Taryn coming out of the turn erratically, barely in command of the truck.
“God, she’s a terrible driver,” I mutter.
Gabe barks out a laugh but quickly strangles it when the truck begins to skid the other way, and I realize she might not be a terrible driver after all.
She just doesn’t have control of the truck. It’s essentially driving itself at this point.
She jerks the wheel and sends it in the other direction, and for a moment I think she’s going to be okay. But then the truck starts spinning in circles, moving more and more quickly as it heads down the road and directly toward a cliff that I know has a drop hundreds of feet deep on the other side.
“Oh my God,” Gabe breathes. “The cliff.”
“I know, the cliff,” I reply.
Because I know that cliff.
It’s the same one my ex-wife went over.
And I can’t believe the horrible irony of this situation. We’re about to lose Taryn in the exact place where we lost Natalie.
Before that can happen, though, I hear a rumble and feel shaking through tires of the ATV, and my heart freezes. Because I thought things were bad before.
But they’re about to get a whole lot worse.
Taryn’s still sliding across the road and my brain is racing, trying to figure out what the fuck we’re going to do here. Everything is moving in slow motion, the actions delayed and the world around us holding its breath in horror. And while my eyes are fixed to her and my brain is trying to sort through the shaking below us, she comes to an abrupt stop.
My God, she’s hit a tree.
Of course she’s hit a tree.
And the moment she stops, I squeal to a stop as well and Gabe and I jump from the ATV and start racing for her. Because we both know what the rumbling in the ground means. It’s the shake that happens when an avalanche is about to come down on us. It’s not here yet but the snow is coming. The mountainside is about to slide down and bury all of us.
And if we don’t get Taryn the hell out of that truck, it’s going to take her with it, the same way it took Natalie nearly twenty years ago.
Taryn
