The Jodi Picoult Collection #2 Read online

  A horn went off, three long blasts. “Get back,” Meredith yelled, urging them into the hollow of the cave they’d found. She covered her head, as if that might make a difference, just as the charge went off on the other side of the pit. The explosion was far enough away from where she huddled, but reverberations made the ground shake beneath her hands and feet. She felt the stone slide beneath her, her slick fingers scrabble for purchase, and then she was falling and landing all wrong, her bad leg brittle as a twig, as it snapped beneath the weight of the granite plate that pinned her.

  Not again.

  Ross saw the dynamite burst in slow motion; he heard the scrape and drag of rubble reshifting and it echoed in his ears with his own racing pulse. He could not speed up time; he could not make his arms and legs move fast enough. The entire world was being blown to bits around him and he was hypersensitive—the blasts louder, the explosions more brilliant—yet even in this cataclysm, Ethan’s cry for help rang clear above everything else.

  Ross was not aware of the unstable ground, the oncoming detonations, the sheer odds of getting across safely to the other side of the quarry pit. All he knew was that he would not let someone he loved die, again. That Ross was the only person who could save him. That this was what had to be done.

  That history was not going to repeat itself.

  By the time he reached Meredith, his calves were shredded to ribbons from the jagged granite. Blood ran down the side of his face where one flying shard had cut his temple. She was trapped beneath a shelf of rock as large as a grown man. “The kids,” she gasped, and he nodded at her.

  He jammed his boot into a fissure between two stones, stretched out with his hands, and then hauled himself forward. Again, and again. Sometimes the rocks would move beneath his feet or his hand would slip; from the bottom of the rubble Ross got up and kept inching forward. He kept his eyes on Ethan and Lucy, standing on that ledge behind a screen of dust, waiting for him.

  The two leaning blocks that had formed a shelter for Lucy and Ethan suddenly collapsed. Lucy screamed and stepped as far out onto the ledge as she could. “Hurry,” she cried. “Please!”

  After a thousand years, or maybe a heartbeat, Ross reached the base of the crumbling hill. He stretched for a handhold, and wedged his boot against the rubble, and started to climb. One hand over the other. One foot at a time. When he lifted his head, he could see the toes of Ethan’s black sneakers.

  A blast thundered behind his back, and then Ross was falling along with the wall he’d been trying to scale. He rolled to the left, a guess, and covered his head as rocks rained down in five-foot square cubes. Lucy’s sobbing was louder now, and he could hear both Ethan and Meredith yelling his name. He stood up, wildly looking around to see how much damage had been done.

  The ledge where Ethan and Lucy had been was still standing. But between it and the rock where he now stood was a chasm. A space six feet across and fifteen feet deep ran the length of the quarry, isolating the children on an island of stone.

  Ross looked in both directions, and then into the new, vaulted pit. Its steep walls had been cut along the grain of the granite, a sheer drop. The only other way around was to cross all the way along the fissure to the southern edge of the quarry, scale the walls to the guardrail, and climb back in on the far side of the gap. “Listen to me,” Ross yelled across. “You’re going to have to jump.”

  Meredith had seen the whole thing—Ross’s amazing progress across the devastated wreckage, his careful climb up toward Lucy and Ethan, the terrifying moment when the very mountain he was on deteriorated under his feet. When he disappeared out of her line of sight, she screamed for him, trying to turn so that she could locate him and setting off a wave of pain in her leg that nearly rendered her unconscious. Fighting to stay alert, she’d watched the ripple effect as a canyon split the bottom of the quarry in half, with the children on the other side.

  It would be impossible for Ross to get all the way to the quarry wall and climb out, not before another explosion hit. He was right—the only way to save Lucy and Ethan was to catch them, once they leaped. Ethan would do what his uncle had asked. But Lucy—well, Lucy wouldn’t jump. That required a depth of bravery that her daughter had never possessed.

  Tears came to Meredith’s eyes. “Lucy,” she yelled, “do it!”

  They would die here, she and Lucy, buried by the rubble. She wished for courage, something that she might wing to her daughter. And just as she was thinking about fearlessness and taking flight, Meredith saw Lucy take a step back, run for all she was worth, and soar into the air.

  She landed hard in Ross’s arms, knocking them both down; and on the side of safety now, she did not seem capable of letting go of him. Delighted, amazed—he hadn’t expected her to jump, not before seeing Ethan make it to the other side—Ross kissed her forehead. “I’ve got you,” he whispered into her hair as she sobbed against his shoulder. “You’re all right now.” He peeled the little girl away from him. “I need to get Ethan, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lucy sniffed. She wrapped her arms around her knees and ducked her head, still shaking.

  Ross stood up again, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Ethan, I won’t let you fall.” He watched his nephew nod, race as fast as he could to the edge, and jump.

  Ethan was Superman, and he was flying, and nothing—nothing—could stop him from saving the world, or at least himself. With his eyes closed he didn’t have to look at how far away it was where Uncle Ross was standing, or at the broken-toothed rocks that were just waiting at the bottom of the pit. He stretched the tips of his fingers as far forward as they could go, and he chanted silently in his mind: I am a bird; I am a plane; I am already there.

  When his fingers brushed something solid, he blinked right away and found himself hurtling into his uncle’s embrace. He grabbed on tight and that was when the tears came, so quick and thick he couldn’t even speak. His feet slid down Ross’s legs, planting themselves firmly on the ground.

  “You,” Uncle Ross gasped, “are punished.”

  And that was when the ground disappeared beneath them.

  Ross felt them skidding down the slope into the crevasse, and he turned his body at the bottom so that he would bear the brunt of the fall. Ethan landed hard on top of him, and rocks dug into his legs and back. “Get up,” Ross said, hauling his nephew to his feet. “Are you all right?”

  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 her