Second Glance: A Novel Read online

  Ethan couldn't find words, but he nodded. Ross looked up. "Lucy!" he cried. "Where are you?"

  A tiny white face appeared at the edge of the cliff overhead. Tears striped through the dust on her cheeks. Ross looked at the precipitous wall of rock--there were some spots where he could find holds to climb up, but he would never make it carrying Ethan. And Lucy wasn't strong enough to haul them up together.

  "Ethan, I'm going to need you to help me," Ross said.

  "I'm going to put you on my shoulders, and you're going to have to climb up to the top by yourself. Lucy!" he yelled. "I need you to grab hold of Ethan when he gets close, all right?"

  He waited for her to answer, but she didn't. From where he stood, he could no longer even see where Lucy was. But if they waited, another explosion might go off. Another opportunity to climb could be lost. "Come on," he said to Ethan, crouching down so that the boy could scramble onto his shoulders. "By the time you get to the top, she'll be there."

  Lucy was shaking so hard she could not catch her breath. She had seen the world turn inside out--the dawn go gray, the solid ground vanish, her mother trapped. Ross and Ethan were stuck in the bottom of that hole, and she was up here, and nothing was the way it should be. She covered her head with her arms, wishing she could make it all go away. It had worked before, after all--when you didn't want to see what was before your eyes, you simply had to keep them shut.

  "Lucy!" That was Ross's voice. He wanted her to help Ethan up. But that would mean moving to the edge of that cliff, the one whose last edge had collapsed. And Lucy could not bring herself to do it.

  "Hey!" Ethan's hand popped up over the lip of the chasm. "Hey, Lucy, where are you? Uncle Ross, she's not coming!"

  "Lucy!"

  Lucy held her hands up to her ears. They would go away, all this would go away, and when she woke up she would be in her bed at home and the sun would be streaming through the windows and she wouldn't have to worry about ghosts.

  She didn't have to worry about ghosts, though, not anymore. Lucy looked up, brought her hands to her side. Being brave didn't mean that you weren't scared out of your wits. You were--the whole time--but you just kept on doing what you had to.

  She started to crawl to the edge of the cliff again, stopping only once when a little chunk of pebbles slid from beneath her palm into the ravine. Swallowing hard, she peered over the rim and saw Ethan, just a few feet beneath her, clinging to the rock wall like a spider.

  Lucy lay down on her belly and pressed her cheek against the rock. Then she stretched out her right hand, the one that was closest to Ethan. She felt his fingers brush against hers, and then grab tight, a key to a lock.

  Because she couldn't lift his weight, she made herself an anchor. He inched his way up her arm, grasping onto her shoulder and then hitching himself over the edge.

  They stared at each other, panting, breathing in each other's air. "Lucy," Ethan said, his voice so husky that it was easy to imagine the man he might never become.

  She managed a tiny smile. "What took you so long?" she whispered.

  Ross carried Lucy on his back, and guided Ethan footstep by footstep, as he carefully picked a path through the wreckage to the ladder on the other side of the quarry. Several times, he had to change his course as another distant explosion led to a rearrangement of the rocky landscape. It never occurred to him that they would not make it, and that alone was enough to propel him forward.

  At the rusty ladder, he set Lucy on the rungs and told her to climb. Ethan went up behind her. "Call 911," Ross instructed. "Break into the office if you have to."

  Ethan nodded. "Aren't you coming?"

  Ross looked over his shoulder. "Not yet," he said, and he squeezed Ethan's calf. "Go."

  Then he crawled back the way he had come, frantically searching for the large tablet that had pinned Meredith. He hadn't heard her screaming for some time--either because she hadn't been, or because he'd been too busy to listen. By now there were many broad plates of granite scattered in the quarry; it was difficult to remember exactly where she had been. He crested a small rise of stone and saw Meredith's arm.

  "Meredith!" he called, and she shook herself awake.

  "Lucy?"

  "Is fine. She's out."

  She could not see it, but her leg was bent back at a grotesque angle from her body. The large slab that had her pinned at the thigh was twice as wide as Ross, and as thick as his arm. To free her, he would need a smaller rock to make a lever, lift the slab, and drag Meredith away before the makeshift jack collapsed. Then he would have to immobilize her leg enough to carry her on his back across the rubble, like he had done with Lucy. "Go get help, Ross," Meredith said, crying.

  "I am help." He searched for something--anything--that might help him budge the rock. "I'm going to try to lift this."

  She was shivering, a combination of pain and panic. "Go back."

  Ross tried to get his weight underneath the rock, but it wouldn't move. In the distance a sounding horn blared, the warning of another round of explosions. He looked around frantically, trying to locate the dynamite or blasting cap. His eyes landed on Meredith, and the truth that stretched between them.

  He couldn't help her.

  He leaned down and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Shh," he whispered, and a charge shuddered somewhere to the left.

  "Ross, go. Please." She began to cry harder. "I need to know that you got out of here safe."

  He forced a crooked smile onto his face. "How many times do I have to tell you? I can't die."

  She reached for his hand, and the small movement unsettled the rocks beneath them. Ross lost his footing, going down hard on one knee beside Meredith's head. At the same time, they both noticed the small red tube about three feet beyond them.

  Ross leaped over the rock that pinned Meredith and reached the stick of dynamite. He grabbed it in his fist and started running, sprinting on serrated granite, on broken stone, deeper into the quarry. Nothing mattered in that moment except getting as far away from Meredith as possible before the computers lit it off.

  The charge swelled in his palm. In the instant before he let go of it, before an explosion hotter than a hundred suns razed the very spot where he stood, Ross had one moment where everything was crystal clear. He had saved Meredith, he had saved everyone. Maybe now, he had even made up for the rest of his life. The force of the blast knocked him head over heels and his skull struck hard against a ragged rock. And just as he considered that he might finally have found something worth living for, Ross discovered that he was not invincible after all.

  By the time Eli and Shelby arrived, the first ambulances had already left. The quarry was crawling with uniformed policemen borrowed from other towns, who were roping off the site. Another detective was interviewing the owners of Angel Quarry, who had arrived hastily, in the company of their corporate lawyer. No one knew where Az Thompson--the night watchman--had gone; his absence made him the easiest scapegoat for blame.

  Eli hurried over to a paramedic. "The kids. Where are the kids?"

  "They're all right. Cuts, bruises. The ambulance already went off to the hospital."

  He felt Shelby sag beside him, and he put his arm around her to keep her upright. Leaning close, he murmured words into her ear, comments that made no sense at all but were meant to give her a lifeline to hold onto.

  "Can we go?" Shelby said. "Now? To the hospital?"

  But before he could answer, a commotion at the guardrail drew his attention. Three rescue workers gently lifted a stretcher over the edge. Strapped onto it, battered and bloody, was Meredith.

  "Oh my God," Shelby breathed, as she watched an unconscious Meredith being loaded into a waiting ambulance. Shelby seemed to notice, for the first time, Ross's car. Shelby grabbed a paramedic by the jacket. "Where's my brother. Where is my brother?" When the man didn't answer, she refused to let go. "Ross Wakeman," she demanded. "He's here somewhere."

  A silence fell. No one would answer her, and that was respon