I kicked out the shattered glass of the passenger window—luckily the van was at an angle, and the passenger’s side was slightly above the water.
Even though the SUV driver had just shoved me off the road, I somehow expected him to be yelling down to us right now, to have realized what he’d done, pulled over, and formulated a plan for getting help down here to us.
But I’d seen enough cop shows that I realized what had happened up on the road wasn’t accidental. It was called the PIT maneuver.
And he’d run us off intentionally.
Chapter 3
When I got out I looked up and saw that the rock face was much steeper than I anticipated. A vintage Grand Canyon-y type of cliff face. The whole region looked like a slice of Mars with an extra sprinkling of jagged cliffs. I wasn’t really sure how Sierra was going to get up there, let alone my injured husband. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure how I was going to get up.
It would be a grueling climb—maybe better described as a scramble, though the more I considered the angle, it looked like a downright free climb. This wasn’t totally daunting: I was once a strong climber, even competitive; but that was years ago. My exercise regimen these days was mainly chasing a toddler around the house.
Nowhere to go but up, though, if I were going to flag down help on the road. I hoped for muscle memory when the time came. Is climbing a rock face like riding a bike?
I was snapped out of my assessment of the rock face when I heard a groan. The minivan was moving. The river was moving the minivan!
It should have been safe in the shallows. It wasn’t.
“Aaron, the van’s moving!” I shouted.
I ducked back into the passenger window I had kicked out to find Aaron stuck in the back seat, pinned by the vehicle’s journey into the silt. The passenger seat had broken and had buckled onto his thigh.
He tried to hand me Sierra, but she refused to leave him. She was huddled behind the driver’s seat, now halfway deep in river water.
Despite her panic and his head wound, he remained calm and managed to pick her up and tried to hand her to me.
But there was nowhere to go. The path I’d waded through the current was a one-way street too turbulent to retreat against. We coaxed her out through the front passenger window, but there was nowhere to set her down—I wasn’t going to put my four-year-old in running river water.
I managed to open the sliding rear door enough for him to fit through, and began to pull on him, one arm holding Sierra, one arm pulling Aaron. He was using one free hand to push himself and the other to push on the broken seat pinning him. The car was tilting toward the river now. I didn’t realize how precariously we were balanced but we didn’t have much time. Aaron was frantically trying to extricate his leg.
“On the count of three,” I said. “One…two…”
“Three,” we both grunted. And pried him free.
We were waist-deep when the van flipped into the water, submerging the top half. We stared for a moment at what would have been our family coffin. We’d gotten out on the far side of the river, on the wrong side to go back to the road. Aaron started moving across it, his head bleeding. I didn’t know how he was functioning. I followed, clutching our daughter. The current quickly became brutal, but the three of us kept trudging along. We were now chest-deep in the rapids, water gushing past us at a relentless velocity. But we could see the direct route to the nearest bank, and it didn’t seem to be getting any deeper. The hard part was over.
And then I lost my grip on Sierra.
“Aaron!” I screamed. She was already six feet away from my outstretched hand. “Aaron!” I needed him to turn around and outstretch his.
He looked back and instantly lunged to grab her—thank God—by the arm. And held tight. But he’d lunged downstream and lost his balance. And they were now being carried away. Fast. All I could see was the top of her purple Kangaroo Commander hat bobbing downstream.
I got to the bank of dirt and rocks and ran helplessly alongside the buoyant duo. Everything in the world I cared about was floating twenty feet away from me amid raging rapids, soon to be squirted between the jagged rock-teeth of the river.
If I could get ahead, I could start thinking about sliding down the bank to water level and extending myself across the rocks to grab them. But the current was increasing—where is it taking them? I ran along the bank and began to see and hear what had seemed faraway before: there was a waterfall ahead. Of course.
Chapter 4
I’d been running blind. I hadn’t paid attention to the horizon. Sierra and Aaron were about to go over the edge. Haven’t we had enough edges today? I lost my footing for a step as I opened up my stride, but managed to stay on pace, sprinting along with them.
“The branches!” yelled my husband.
“What?” I yelled back.
It took me a moment to realize he meant the lone tree growing out of the rocky bank, way up on the left side, imprisoned by the relentless current. My mind raced. Okay, all I have to do is race ahead, hop down along the wet, slippery stones, grab at the trunk, break off a branch, hope it was the right length, hope it was the right sturdiness, then dangle it out across Aaron’s path.
Sierra looked too shocked to be scared. She was clamping onto his neck while he was trying to hold her up and protect her from the hidden rocks. He was
