Page 117 of 15 Summers Later

“Let her stay,” she had rasped out.

So now Mabel was snuggled against Ava, sleeping soundly.

Satisfied the dog would watch over her sister, Madi made her way to the living room, where she found Nicki reading, of all things, a copy ofGhost Lake.

Instead of the baffled fury that usually came over her whenever she spotted someone reading the book, Madi only felt a twinge of annoyance.

Nicki set aside the book and moved to make room on the sofa so that Madi could sit down next to her.

“How is she doing?” she asked.

“Asleep,” Madi answered. “Finally. Poor thing.”

“Miscarriages can be so rough. She’s going to need a lot of love and support. Pregnancy loss is tough at any stage. Breaks my heart every single time we have someone come into the ER.”

“I feel like I should be doing something else to help her.”

“There isn’t much you can do, except to let her know she’s loved. And also to reinforce that a miscarriage does not indicate any failure on her part. There was probably nothing she could have done. An estimated fifteen to twenty percent of pregnancies end in a miscarriage, usually because the fetus has some chromosomal anomaly making survival unlikely.”

Madi made a small sound in her throat and Nicole reached out and squeezed her fingers. “I know. Statistics don’t mean anything when a woman finds herself among that number. All that matters to Ava is that she will never have the chance to hold the child she was coming to love.”

“I need to call my grandma. She needs to at least know Ava will be staying here tonight, so she doesn’t worry.”

Though afraid she would cry through the whole call, she still somehow managed to find Leona, the first name in her favorite phone contacts, and initiate a call. Her grandmother answered on the second ring.

Madi took a deep breath and relayed the information with as much calmness as she could muster.

She heard one low, sighing sob before her grandmother fell silent. “I would offer to come get her,” Leona finally said, “but I think she might be better off there with you. She needs you.”

“She needs her husband,” Madi countered.

“Yes. But since he’s up in the mountains for now, you are the next best thing. Give her my love and tell her I’m so sorry.”

After she hung up from her grandmother, Madi stared down at her phone for several moments, then stood up.

“I have to go up to Ghost Lake so I can tell Cullen. He needs to know. He needs to be here with his wife. He wouldn’t want her to go through this on her own.”

Nicki stared. “Are you serious? It’s dark. You can’t go up there by yourself!”

“I have the side-by-side. It has headlights. I can be there and back in a few hours. He should be here when she wakes up.”

“You can’t, Madi. It’s not safe.”

She was really tired of people telling her what she could and couldn’t do. “I’ll be fine. It’s a well-maintained fire road, until the last few miles.”

“You can’t do this on your own. I’ll go with you.”

Madi shook her head. “I don’t want Ava to wake up alone. That’s the last thing she needs.”

“Then, you stay here. I’ll go up to Ghost Lake.”

“You’ve never been to the dinosaur camp. You don’t know where to go.”

“I can follow a map. You can give me directions.”

Madi shook her head. “I should be the one to tell him. He’s my brother-in-law. This kind of news is better coming from family than from someone he hardly knows, no matter how wonderful you are.”

With her mind already spinning with what she might need to take with her, Madi started heading for the door.

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