The Bridge

Halfway across, Clara's hat blew off.

She watched it turn once above the ravine and disappear among the trees.

The bridge moved beneath her feet.

She stopped.

There was nothing wrong with being afraid. There was something deeply inconvenient about discovering how afraid she was when retreat seemed just as difficult as going on.

She tightened her grip on the ropes.

"One step," she told herself.

The planks creaked.

She managed three more, then took out her phone.

Owen would come. He would complain gently, bring someone who understood bridges, and get her off this miserable thing.

Her thumb slipped to Damian's number instead.

She stared at his name.

The bridge lurched.

She grabbed the handrail and turned.

At the far anchorage, a man in a blue shirt crouched beside the main support. His arm moved backward and forward.

A saw.

For a second her mind refused the shape of it.

Then he looked up.

"What are you doing?"

Her shout vanished into the ravine.

He pulled the rope.

The deck twisted beneath her.

One foot slipped between the planks. She went down hard, catching herself by both elbows, her phone falling out of her hand.

She heard it strike something below.

No time to look.

She dragged her leg free and crawled forward while the rope shuddered against her palms.

The man was still cutting.

She got one knee beneath her, then the other.

Run, she thought.

There was no way to run properly. She threw herself forward a step at a time, hands sliding along the ropes, camera banging against her hip.

The last plank tilted.

She jumped.

Stone struck her knees. She rolled onto solid ground as the bridge fell away behind her.

The noise came late, a long, tearing collapse followed by the distant crash of timber against rock.

She lay with her cheek on the path and couldn't breathe.

When she finally looked back, the man stood on the opposite bank.

Watching.

***

Rain began before she reached the pavilion.

She kept moving because the person across the ravine might know another way up.

At the top, she crouched behind a stone column and searched her bag with shaking hands.

No phone.

A water bottle, half empty. A notebook. Keys that couldn't unlock anything within miles.

Her camera still worked.

She took photographs of the approaches first, trying to see farther through the lens. Then, absurdly, she photographed the restoration she'd come to inspect.

The repaired roof. The mortared joints. The edge where new timber met old.

A task held her together for three minutes.

Then she enlarged one of the photographs.

A gray shape stood between the trees below.

A person.

She enlarged it again.

The face was too small to identify. The posture seemed familiar in a way that made her stomach go cold.

The sleeve of the gray garment looked like something she'd seen hanging over a kitchen chair years before. It could have been any gray sleeve. Her mind kept trying to turn it into a person she knew.

She took another photograph, farther left, then another toward the descending path.

The figure had moved.

Not toward the pavilion, as far as she could tell. Not away either.

Waiting.

She lowered the camera and searched the trees without the lens. They became trees again, leaves and trunks and a hundred places a person could stand without being seen.

Her phone was gone. Dylan was across the broken bridge. Owen expected a call when she was finished.

If she stayed, someone would eventually come.

If the man reached her first, eventually might be too late.

She put the camera strap around her neck and tucked it beneath her coat, keeping both hands free for the path. Before she left, she pressed her notebook flat against the pavilion bench and wrote the time on a page she tore out.

Then she left it beneath a stone.

Something to show she had been here.

She shut off the screen.

The materials shed stood near the pavilion, but it was obvious. Anybody coming up the path would look there first.

She went into the trees instead.

There had been another route. The workers had carried supplies up it before the bridge was repaired. She remembered narrow steps, a bend near a split trunk, the smell of wet leaves.

She found the split trunk.

Then she found it again.

By late afternoon she understood she was walking in circles.

***

At the hotel, Damian asked where Clara was.

Dylan said he had taken her back to Westbridge.

"She changed her mind about staying."

Damian looked at him.

"She told you that?"

"Yes."

"Where did you drop her?"

"The apartment."

"Which apartment?"

The hesitation lasted less than a second.

It was enough.

Damian stood.

"Vince."

Dylan backed toward the door.

"I just drove where she told me—"

Vince caught him before he reached it.

Owen was already opening Clara's last message.

Leaving site now. Going to finish the pavilion.

He looked at Damian.

Neither man needed to say anything.

***

Night came without making the forest entirely dark.

There were pale leaves, the white flash of rain, the slick shine of rocks that looked like water until Clara stepped on them.

She had stopped calling for help.

Every noise now seemed like an answer she didn't want.

Her jeans were heavy. Her feet, barely healed from the tunnel, hurt again. Something small crawled inside her sleeve, and she shook it out with a sob she was too exhausted to be embarrassed by.

She found a hollow beneath a tree and sat down.

Just for a minute.

She put her bag over her knees and held it there as though it could keep the rest of her together.

Rain ran beneath her collar.

She couldn't make herself stop shaking.

For a while she hated everybody. Dylan. Shelby. Her aunt. Herself for climbing the hill alone when she had people she could have asked.

Then even anger became too much work.

She thought of warm hands around a bowl of soup.

She closed her eyes.

***

Damian reached the broken bridge before the search team had finished organizing the longer route.

The new rain had swollen the stream below. There was no safe crossing at the old anchorage.

Vince caught his sleeve.

"They've got another way."

"It takes hours."

"It's passable."

Damian looked at the opposite slope.

He had crossed worse ground in places he never wanted to think about again. That didn't make this safe. It only meant he knew what the risks looked like.

"Get the ropes. Bring the team around."

"Damian—"

He had already started down.

Later there would be pieces of the climb he couldn't remember. Cold water. A loose rock. His hands sliding and finding another hold. The relief of roots beneath his fingers.

Above the bank, he found a torn thread caught on a branch.

Pale cloth.

Farther on, a footprint that wasn't a hiking boot.

He followed.

***

Clara woke because somebody was lifting her.

She struck out before opening her eyes.

A familiar voice swore softly.

"It's me."

She heard it and still couldn't stop fighting.

He brought her closer, one arm around her back, his face pressed briefly against her wet hair.

"Clara. Look at me."

She did.

For a second she couldn't understand why he was as wet as she was. Why his shirt was torn. Why the hand cupping her cheek left a dark smear behind.

Then all the fear broke loose at once.

She hit his shoulder with her fist.

"Why did you take so long?"

He caught her hand and held it against his chest.

He had no answer she could use. No way to make the lost hours smaller.

"I found you," he said.

Her face crumpled.

He held her while she cried, his own eyes closed, his mouth trembling against her forehead.

The rain kept falling.

For the first time since the bridge, she wasn't listening for footsteps.