The Last Thing She Ever Did(3)

Liz screamed, “We have to help her!”

The roar of the water outside the car obliterated her words.

Sleeping bags. A cooler. A child’s dinosaur-shaped flotation device roared past the Ford in a soupy mixture of water, mud, foam, and all of the things that lake goers would have enjoyed throughout a lazy day on the shore. The pod off the top of a car had dislodged and split open, sending suitcases, clothing, and backpacks into the torrent that carried away everything in the road that had become a spillway.

And then, finally, the station wagon stopped. It had come to rest listing on an outcropping that had been blasted into the basalt when the road to the lake had been forged.

Now that their progress had halted, the pace of the flood outside flew into a much higher gear. Every few seconds, the water surged against one side of the car or the other, sometimes with enough force to rock the vehicle on its perch.

“Everyone okay?” Dan yelled out.

Liz, who had somehow ended up in the backseat with the boys, was the first to respond. “Something’s wrong with Seth,” she said, shaking as water began to pour inside.

“I’m okay,” said her brother. “Seth? Wake up.”

The boy, who looked so much like his mother—and often had a quip ready—opened his eyes. “I’m not dead yet,” he said.

Even in the chaos of the car, Dan’s gasp of relief was audible. Water had begun to pool at their feet. Despite the summer day, it was ice-cold. He rolled up the window.

“We need to remain calm,” he said.

“We’re going to drown, Dad,” said Seth.

“No. No, we’re not,” Dan said. He undid his seat belt and peered through the condensation and muddy stain of the driver’s-side window. The windshield itself had been transformed into a spiderweb of broken glass. “We’re going to get out of here. We’re going to be just fine.”

Liz wiped her eyes. “Promise?” she asked.

Dan studied the boys and managed a calming smile. “We’re going to have a hell of a story to tell. I’m going to get out of the car now,” he said. “I’ll get out and up onto that ledge. Then I’m going to get you out. All of you. One at a time. We need to do this very carefully. All right? One at a time.”

None of the three in the backseat said a word.

“Is that understood?” he asked, his voice finally betraying the fear that was eating at the edges of his normally calm resolve. The crack in the veneer of his can-do persona had begun to widen: slowly at first, then quickly to a chasm. Liz could see it. The boys too.

Yet they all nodded.

The water pooled from the floorboards and now reached knee level. Every moment or so the noise and jolt of something hitting the car rattled them.

“This will need to be fast,” he said. He rolled down the driver’s-side window. More water poured inside, and the sound of the roar of the river that had been the road filled their ears. It was a roar punctuated with the din of rocks hitting metal.

Later, Liz would wince at the noise of a friend’s rock-polishing tumbler as the girl turned agates into smooth stones, which would be fashioned into key chains for her parents, a bolo tie for her granddad. The relentless noise reminded her of that terrible Saturday excursion to the lake.

Dan hoisted himself out of the car by grabbing the top edge of the doorframe and pulling himself up and backward through the opening. The water grabbed at him, but he made it onto the ledge of rock he’d been aiming for and turned back their way.

The car started to move and the kids screamed.

A second later Dan was outside the back window on the driver’s side, fighting the torrents, his eyes full of terror. Kids don’t often see grown-ups looking that way. Never had Liz seen a grown man appear as though he was going to fall apart. He pounded on the glass and motioned for Jimmy, who was sitting next to it, to roll down the window.

“Now!” Dan yelled. “Goddamn it, do it!”

“We’ll drown,” Jimmy said.

“Open it,” Seth said. He was sitting between Jimmy and Liz.

“Open the window, Jimmy,” Dan said, “or you will drown. When I get you out, you’re going to go on the roof of the car and from there . . . from there, over to that ledge and then up above the road. The water’s not going to get higher. It’s going to recede. We’ll be fine there until help comes. Okay?”

The car moved again.

Jimmy, shaking, did as he’d been ordered and rolled down the window.

Their laps were now covered with the murk of the unexpected tide that had filled the car.

“Take my hand,” Dan said. “Right now!”

Jimmy did, and in a second he was out the window. Liz could hear him crawling on the roof, then silence.

“Where’s my brother?” she called out past Seth.

Dan’s face appeared again. The flood had battered him. A cut above his eyebrow and on his cheek had turned some of his light-colored blue shirt to a violet hue. “He’s good,” he said. “Your brother’s fine.”

The car moved a little more.

Liz heard Jimmy scream her name. “You got to get my sister! Get Lizzie out!”

“She’s coming, Jimmy!” Seth yelled back.

“We need to get you out of this car right now,” Dan said, his voice now more urgent than it had been a moment before, when Liz had been all but certain she was going to die. But when he thrust his hand in blindly for his son, Seth lurched away from him, grabbed Liz by her shirt, and dragged her over him. It was Liz Dan took hold of and yanked through the window. He winced when he saw her emerge into the chaos outside, and then both of them looked back into the station wagon. The last things she saw were Seth’s terrified eyes and his Have a Nice Day T-shirt with its image of a smiley face.