He Gave Our Helicopter Away, So I Stopped Waiting to Be Rescued novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Causeway

Lena carries her daughter out of the house she designed, across a flooding causeway on Fraser's rope, as the south lawn goes under.

The resort cart was parked in the lee of the pad shed with its key in it.

I strapped Tilda's carrier into the front seat and clipped the bag between my knees.

The rain cover snapped like a sail, and my daughter stared up at it with her mouth open.

"I know," I told her. "It's loud."

The road from the pad runs past our house and then north along the spine of the island to the station.

I had walked it a hundred times with a coffee and a clipboard.

Tonight the palms were bent flat on one side, and the cart's headlights lit only rain.

At the turn for the house I slowed down.

It stood on its rise with every shutter closed, exactly the way I drew it.

The reinforced room on the upper floor had a light on, the one I left burning for us.

I knew what the plans said. The plans said that room would stand through anything the old storm could throw.

Fraser had said the water was running west, and the south lawn was the lowest ground on the rise.

I did not stop at the house.

I drove past my front door and my own front steps and the bassinet I had assembled myself in March.

It was the first time in my career I had walked away from a building I designed, and the cart's motor whined at me the whole way.

The road dipped before the causeway, and the dip was already full.

The water was brown and moving, and it came up over the cart's wheel wells in a smooth, fast sheet.

I stopped with the front tires at its edge.

Past it, a hundred yards of low causeway ran toward the north tip, and a yellow light was swinging at the far end.

The light came toward me through the water, and a man came with it.

He was in a foul-weather jacket and chest waders, and he moved against the current with a coil of line over one shoulder.

A hood hid most of his face.

I saw a sandy beard, and when he shouted, a chipped front tooth.

"Lena! Leave the cart!"

"Where's your boat?"

"On the other side, strapped down. Can you walk in this water?"

"I can walk in anything."

"Good." He reached the cart and ran his light over Tilda in the carrier. "Then you're carrying her, and I'm carrying you."

"That isn't how it works."

"It's how it works tonight."

He looped a harness strap around my waist before I could argue, pulled it tight, and clipped it to the line.

Then he lifted the bag off my knees and slung it across his chest.

His hands were quick and calm. They moved over the buckles and never touched anything they didn't need to.

"Hold the rope, not me," he said. "If you go down, keep your head up and let the rope do the work."

"I'm not going down."

"Everyone says that."

I stepped off the cart into water that went to my thighs.

It was cold enough to make my teeth hurt, and it pulled steadily at my legs.

I tucked Tilda's head under my chin and put my hand over her rain cover.

Fraser walked a step ahead of me, one hand on the line, calling the footing.

"Left. Hole there. Now straight."

We were halfway across when the surge came.

It wasn't a wave. It was the whole strait deciding to move at once, and it lifted the water around my hips and shoved me sideways.

My feet went out from under me.

The line went tight, the harness bit into my ribs, and Fraser was suddenly behind me with an arm across my chest.

"Up," he said into my ear. "Chin up. I've got you. Keep walking."

I kept walking, one numb step after another, with my daughter's heartbeat going against my collarbone.

Something dropped past my elbow, a small grey shape on the black water.

I felt the bag twitch and knew the zipper had given.

"The rabbit," I said.

"What?"

"Her rabbit. It fell."

"Lena, keep going."

"She won't sleep without it."

I do not know why that was the thing I said, with the sea trying to take us both.

Fraser said a word I won't repeat, let go of the line for one second, and plunged his arm into the water beside me.

He came up with the rabbit by its one upright ear and pushed it into my free hand.

"Hold on to that," he said. "Now walk."

We reached the north end of the causeway with the water falling off our legs, and the concrete steps of the station rose in front of us.

I turned around on the top step to look back at the island.

I could see the pad lamps small and white down the spine of the island, and past them the dark where the house stood.

My phone said 3:10.

That was the time Corinna had told me a contractor would lift off.

I listened for rotors and heard the wind, and under it the sea coming over the low road we had just left.

The pad shelter roof lifted off its four posts, turned over once in the lamplight, and was gone.

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