The Way Back from Broken (21 page)

He should've known better.

He pounded his fist into the ground beside him.

Over and over, he hit the ground. Blind to the way Leah feebly struggled to stop him. Deaf to Jacey's hysterical sobs.

Raging, guttural sounds burst from his throat.

What was supposed to happen was this—

The adult in the room knows what to do. Babies don't die. Boys don't bash their fists bloody against the ground.

Finally, Jacey's wails pierced the hot, enveloping rage.

Leah's eyelids fluttered, and her hand fell away from where it clutched the side of his shirt. Panic filled his lungs until it felt like the dream, like drowning.

Out on the lake, a loon wailed. A warning.

A command.

Rakmen pressed his palms flat against the dirt.

He ignored the churning in his stomach and breathed deeply, catching the scent of pine and wet earth. Rain was coming, they were four days from anywhere, and he was the only one capable of doing anything.

CHAPTER 27

Rakmen helped Jacey to her feet. She was trembling. Rakmen's insides were jelly, but he smudged her tears away with his thumb. “It's gonna rain.”

She nodded.

“We can't camp here. It's too rocky.”

Jacey nodded again.

“I need you to hold the canoe while I load it and help your mom in, okay?”

Her eyes filled with tears again, but she bit her lip and dipped her chin one more time.

“That's my girl.”

Rakmen slid the canoe into the water, and Jacey crouched beside the bow. He returned to Leah and felt her pulse like he'd seen his dad do when someone got injured. It tapped a steady rhythm against his fingertips. That was good. It reassured him.

He nudged her shoulder gently, and Leah's eyes opened. “Are you in a lot of pain?” he asked. Her eyes darted to where Jacey waited by the canoe. She nodded almost invisibly then said aloud, “I'm okay.”

He nodded back. Message received loud and clear. His own pulse dropped to a low, steady thrum. There was no room for emotion. Only to do what needed to be done. “We're going back to the campsite until you feel better. I'm going to load the packs and then help you into the canoe.”

As he picked his way up the rockfall to retrieve the packs, Rakmen ran through everything he could remember from the first-aid and CPR classes his dad had insisted that he take. Leah could be wrong about her ankle. If they rested a few days and then taped it up, she might be able to walk. He could make her a crutch and double back to carry her load as well as his own.

All those options evaporated as he finished loading the canoe and turned back to Leah. Her foot hung completely the wrong way, and the swelling had pushed the skin of her ankle outward until it looked like it might burst. It was an angry, reddish-purple, like an overripe plum. His stomach turned over as he sat beside Leah and pulled off his own boots.

“I'm going to help you into the canoe,” he said. “I'll lift you and then wade in alongside it and set you in the middle.”

He prayed he could do it without flipping them.

Leah exhaled in a long, controlled breath. “I'm ready,” she said, looping her arms around his neck. She trembled like a child, and the slick smell of fear rose from her. Rakmen slid one arm around her back and the other under her knees, ignoring the discomfort of being so close.

He stood as gently as he could. Even so, her head wobbled against his shoulder, and he thought she might pass out again. Each step toward the water squeezed a gasp out of her, and she clutched his neck more tightly. He felt his way with bare toes along the slick rocks at the lake's edge until he stood beside the canoe. Water lapped at his thighs, cold and insistent.

“Brace as hard as you can,” he told Jacey as he eased Leah onto the pack in the center of the canoe. The canoe tilted toward him, the gunnel dangerously close to the water, but he pressed one thigh against the underside of the canoe and steadied it. Leah kept a white-knuckle grip on the gunnels, panting hard. Rakmen scanned her face. If she passed out in the canoe, they would go over in a flash. Scenes of what could happen then in deep water, with her unconscious, flickered through Rakmen.

Not that.

Not in the water.

“Can you stay awake?”

She gritted her teeth and nodded.

As quickly as he could, Rakmen helped Jacey into the bow and regained his place at the stern seat. The smell of wet was stronger now. It was already drizzling at the trapper's meadow, and Rakmen could see a hazy, gray line of rain pushing toward them. “Okay, Power. Back to camp. Full speed. We gotta get that tarp up.”

Jacey hunched into the wind and dug in with her paddle. Rakmen set a course back to the campsite they'd left an hour ago. He'd thought they would be well away from Allard Lake by now. Away from the ghosts that haunted it. Turns out the past was way too hard to shake.

Gravel crunched under the bow of the canoe when they landed. The impact sent a tremor through Leah, but she didn't cry out. She waited, breathing hard, while he and Jacey got out. Once more, she wrapped her arms around Rakmen's neck and let him carry her up to the fire pit, where he set her down in front of the cold ashes.

Rakmen waited for her to tell him what to do, but she only stared at the fire pit, hands limp in her lap. Jacey stood on the flattened grass where her tent had been the night before, shifting her weight from one foot to the other and chewing on her hair.

He pulled his match case out of his pocket and tossed it to Jacey. “Start a fire.”

She scraped a match on a rock and teased the flame into a pile of birch bark, dry pine needles, and twigs. A red glow illuminated her face. He carried the packs to the fire pit, pulled the canoe out of the water, and began setting up camp. Each task familiar after so many days on the trail, a reassurance that he would know what to do next.

He pitched the tarp first, draping it over a centerline strung between two trees and then pulling the corners taut. The tarp's leading edge was outside the fire pit. The bulk of it covered the log where Leah was sitting and then angled down to break the wind coming off the lake. As he tied the last knot, the rain reached them, pattering on the tarp.

The fire was roaring now, fueled by the huge pile of wood he'd cut the previous day. Leah and Jacey sat beneath the tarp, their bodies inclined toward one another, Jacey's head on her mother's shoulder.

Rakmen pulled one of their sleeping pads out of the pack and made a place for Leah to lie down. He slid Jacey's small pack under Leah's leg to elevate her ankle. He put a pot of water on the fire to boil. “Find the cocoa,” he told Jacey. “It's in my pack.”

One by one, Jacey unloaded the various containers of food, lining them up on the log. Rakmen unpacked their cook kit and spooned cocoa into cups. When the water was hot, he used a bandana to protect his hand and filled each one to the rim.

Raindrops tapped out a steady rhythm on the tarp and sizzled when they hit the flames. The lake's surface was dimpled gray. The trapper's meadow was a hazy line of green in the distance.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

It took Leah forever to meet his eyes. When she did, it was like the first night at Promise House when he saw her through the ancient, wavy glass in the door. She was vague around the edges, lost all over again. “I don't know.”

“We wait,” he suggested. “Someone might find us.”

Leah stared at him like he'd flunked one of her biology tests. “We haven't seen anyone on the trail for days.”

“We'll rest your ankle until the swelling goes down. If I take your pack, we can make it out.”

All of them looked at the ankle. Leah's toes were tiny protrusions on the bloated lump. It hardly resembled a foot at all. Rakmen tore his eyes from the injury.

He took stock as if seeing for the first time what was right in front of him. Their pile of gear was small enough to fit in the trunk of a car. The canoe, thin-skinned and delicate, could be destroyed with one hard kick. He and Jacey and Leah were fragile bodies, dragonflies buzzing the surface of the world.

Risk was everywhere.

The truth of it slapped him across the face.

Cell phones and ambulances and good intentions—even love—hadn't been enough to save Dora or Jordan or any of the kids in the Promise House memory book. Locking Molly in her house all summer wouldn't keep her safe. All the headlines he'd jotted down, which were supposed to remind him to expect one suck-ass thing after another, did not prepare him for anything. He couldn't hunker down and avoid more tragedy.

It would come.

Or it wouldn't.

Every second of every day, he was
au large
, hurtling into the unknown.

“I'm going for help.”

Leah met his eyes, calculating his chances. “I can't let you do that.”

“It's the only way.”

Au large
was carrying him forward like a tidal wave, and he knew he would try to ride it as surely as he knew it would knock him flat.

Finally, Leah spoke. “You're right. It is the only way.”

Rakmen began dividing their equipment. Talking about it any more would immobilize him. He clung to the reassurance of their gear, each piece designed to keep them alive. He'd need the tent, slick under his fingertips, and a sleeping bag and pad because they were four days from anywhere. Ninety-six hours. Three nights alone. He couldn't think about that. He took the small aluminum pot. One plate. One spoon. His knife. He found his clothes bag and pulled out dry pants and boxers.

“You'll need this,” said Jacey, handing him the folding saw. She gazed up at him, chewing on a piece of hair.

He took the saw and flicked the lock of hair with his finger. “Don't let Edna see you like that.”

Jacey spit it out. “I don't want you to go.”

Rakmen knew that look. She was about to cry. “I know.”

“We're supposed to stick together like a team.”

His throat tightened. If he cried, she would, and they'd be stuck. Really stuck. He had to turn the canoe. “We're still a team. You're still the power. Always telling me what to do.”

Her chest heaved. The sobs were coming.

Leah shifted up on one elbow. “Hey Jacey, it would be good if we had more birch bark for the fire. Can you go find some?”

Jacey fumbled with her jacket pockets, staring at him with wet eyes.

“Go on,” he urged. “Help your mom out. Team job. You're it.” He pulled up her hood against the rain and sent her off.

Once she was out of earshot, Leah called to him, low-toned and urgent. “You need to take her with you.”

His hands froze on the edge of the pack. If Jacey came, he wouldn't be alone. But that was just another failure. He was thinking of himself. Again. Rakmen bit the inside of his cheek. If Jacey were with him, Leah would be the one alone. And besides, a person like him couldn't be trusted to keep Jacey safe. Not for four days in the wilderness.

He sat beside Leah, head in hands. “You'll need her to keep the fire going, to cook for you.”

“You'll go faster with a bow paddler.”

“Not on the portages.”

Leah grabbed his arm and squeezed with inhuman intensity. “Listen to me. You can and you will. What if I get worse? Go into shock? Get an infection?”

“I can't.” Rakmen was the trapped beaver, unable to swim with a half-severed paw. No one was safe with him. He tried to tug out of her grasp.

Leah held on more tightly. “What if I die and she's here alone with a . . . Oh, God,” she moaned. “Take her.”

Rakmen stopped trying to pull away.

In death, Dora's tiny body had been heavy in his arms. The person he loved most in the world was gone. It broke his heart open to remember. He never wanted Jacey to look into empty eyes, to touch slack cheeks, to feel warmth dissipate. He swallowed back tears again. He couldn't take her, but he couldn't leave her either.

“Please,” Leah pleaded.

He dropped his chin to his chest and felt the damp drizzle slip down the back of his neck. He nodded and kept nodding, convincing himself that this was right.

“Thank you.” Leah squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”

This might be the most wrong thing he'd done yet. But—

He looked once more at Leah's mangled ankle. It was the only way.

Rakmen added Jacey's sleeping bag and pad. Another plate. Another spoon. Leah was going through Jacey's clothes when she returned, raincoat dripping and hands full of white, papery birch bark.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm pulling out some clothes for you,” said Leah.

Jacey dropped the bark by the fire. “Why?”

Leah's voice was flat and a little too loud. “We've decided that you are going to go with Rakmen. You'll travel faster that way. Get back sooner.”

Jacey shifted uneasily, looking between them, reading between the lines. “You need my help.” The words came out jagged and choked.

“I'm going to be just fine.”

The lie lodged between Rakmen's ribs.

A mask fell over Jacey's face. She acquiesced like a wooden doll, jerky limbed, the kind you press on the bottom and they collapse. Rakmen placed his hand over Leah's, covering her thin fingers. “We'll be back as soon as we can.”

CHAPTER 28

Twenty minutes later, the canoe was packed for traveling light and fast. They were leaving almost everything with Leah. She was in the tent, lying on her sleeping bag. Her broken ankle was propped on a clothes bag. Pots of water were lined up at the door. Rakmen had dug a latrine for her at the edge of the campsite. She'd padded the blade end of her paddle with a rolled-up T-shirt held in place with duct tape to use as a crutch.

“You've got the map?” she asked for the third time.

Rakmen patted the cargo pocket of his pants. Instead of feeling the lumpy jumble of Jacey's collection, he heard the crinkle of the ziplock bag holding the map. He missed the weight of her things, which he had stowed inside a sock along with his notebook to leave behind.