Page 58 of One Last Promise

She nodded, her lips tight, the expression of someone trying not to cry.Good girl.

“I’ll get up to you, I promise.”

Although, how?

Moose seemed to already be asking that question. Tillie had dropped her flashlight in the fall, and apparently, so had he, but enough daylight remained for her to make out their predicament.

“It’s a sink hole. The mudslide only made it bigger. I’ll bet that tunnel under the rock leads out to the main creek.” He hadn’t let her go, and heaven help her, she didn’t move away from him.

He was solid and strong and everything she needed to cling to as the dark water swirled around them. “It’s not big enough to get through. It got tighter the more the current pulled me down.”

“I think I can boost you up onto the ledge. Then you can climb the rest of the way.”

“I got this.” She pushed off from him, swimming hard to the ledge wall. Hazel leaned over from above. She appeared soggy, but not injured, but Tillie wouldn’t know until she scaled the ledge.

Moose came up behind her. “I’m going to plant myself here. You climb on my shoulders, see if you can grab the edge.”

She accidentally dunked him on her first go, her foot slamming him into the water before he had his hold. He came up sputtering.

“Sorry.”

“My bad.Give me a second.”

He wedged one fist into a fissure in the rock, the other hand on a lip, his feet finding holds below the waterline.

She found handholds and managed to get her knees on his shoulders, then used the rock to steady herself. He grunted, and his body shook a little.

“You got this?”

“Can you reach?”

She stretched up, but her fingertips landed six inches from the top.

“You gotta do something quick, Tillie. I’m slipping.”

Right. “Hold on tight, Moose. I need leverage.” Then she crouched and sprang up hard.

One hand caught the ledge, slippery and rough, just long enough to get her other hand on it.

Then she kicked her way up the cliff, Moose’s hand catching her foot to push a moment before he went back into the water.

It gave her enough to get one elbow up, then the other, and she leaned in and edged herself on, rolling onto the cliff.

Hazel launched herself forward. “Mom!Mom!”

Tillie closed her arms around her, clutching Hazel’s body to hers, shaking, trying not to weep, but, “Hazel. You scared me. You really scared me.”

Hazel leaned up, wiped her face—which really meant adding another layer of mud—her tears thick. “I’m sorry—Kip ran off, and I kept chasing him, and I think he thought we were still playing. And then I fell and he fell too and—I landed on this ledge. I hurt my leg. . . .” She showed off a tear in her pants. “I called and called for you.”

“I’m here now, baby. I’m here now.” She sat up.

Moose. She scrambled over to the edge. “Moose!”

She couldn’t find him in the darkness. “Moose!”

“Over here.”

She wished she could make him out more, but he seemed a hulk, clinging to the edge of the rock.

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