When We Met (Fool's Gold #13)(77)
“Something like that.”
The girls dove into their tents and collected what they needed and then all trooped off to the bathroom. The other campers were there, so there was a line for the toilets and the sinks, but eventually they were all done with their evening ablutions.
Taryn went into her tent and zipped it closed. Angel had insisted they take the time to tuck the edges of their tarps under so that any rain would roll down to the ground rather than under the tent. At the time his concern had seemed silly, but now she appreciated his thoroughness. She wasn’t all that interested in getting soaked in her sleep.
She hadn’t brought a lot of clothes. Clean underwear and socks, a shirt for each day and a spare pair of jeans. For pajamas, she’d chosen yoga pants and a soft T-shirt. At home she favored sleep shirts but figured in a group camping situation she should make sure she was a little more covered up.
Undressing in the tent was harder than she would have thought. There wasn’t a lot of headroom, so she was forced to sit on her sleeping bag, which was set on top of an air mattress. Concerned about providing some kind of shadow show on the side of the tent, she flicked off her flashlight and changed in the dark. Only it was really dark and she couldn’t see what she was doing.
“Someone needs to explain to me what about this is fun,” she muttered as she pulled on her yoga pants.
She decided that the T-shirt she was wearing would be fine for the night and that she would take off her bra later. She turned on her flashlight and unzipped her tent, then crawled out.
The rain had turned steadier and the temperature had dropped a few degrees. She shivered as she ran to Angel’s tent.
The other girls were all there, except for Olivia, who came in a few seconds later. They huddled together, holding flashlights and looking expectantly at Angel. Taryn tried not to do the same, but it was difficult. He was the only one with camping experience.
“We’re going to tell stories,” he said when they were settled.
“Scary ones?” Taryn asked. She wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with eight little girls who were too frightened to sleep.
“Can they be scary?” Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Really scary?”
Some of the girls murmured in agreement, but a few of the others didn’t look as excited at the prospect.
“Not scary,” he told them. “I’ll start. Once upon a time there was a lonely bunny.”
“I know this one,” Regan told him. “My mom read me all the Lonely Bunny books when I was little. Lonely Bunny Finds a Friend, Lonely Bunny Takes a Trip. Lonely Bunny and the Severed Hand.”
Taryn tensed. “What? There’s a children’s book about a severed hand?”
Regan giggled. “No, I was kidding about that.”
“Good to know,” Taryn murmured, even as she wondered how Angel knew about the Lonely Bunny books at all. Had he read them to his son, years ago? A question she would wait to ask, she thought, then realized the rain had gotten a lot harder. It pounded on the tent like a drum. So far it wasn’t seeping through the fabric, but wasn’t that going to happen eventually?
Before she could ask Angel, one of the other Grove Keepers unzipped the front of the tent.
“We just checked the weather,” the woman said. “It’s going to be raining all night. The front that was supposed to go north of us has dropped south and parked overhead. Apparently it’s been pouring up in the mountains for hours.”
* * *
“WHERE IN THE MOUNTAINS?” Angel asked, careful to keep his voice calm. Because the stream in the campsite was fed from mountain runoff. Depending on where the rain was falling, the stream would start to rise. The question was how fast that would happen.
The other Grove Keeper shrugged. “I’m not sure. East of us. We’re thinking we should pack up the girls and get them home.”
Angel hesitated. Weather was a part of camping, and learning to deal with the elements would be good practice. On the other hand, his girls were young and for most of them, this was their first experience camping. He didn’t want the rain to be the only thing they remembered.
He looked at Taryn, who shrugged. “I can argue both sides,” she told him. “Yes, it would be nice if the weather were better, but that will never be a guarantee.”
The girls listened but didn’t offer an opinion.
The other Grove Keeper said, “I’ll talk to the rest of the groves and see what they have to say. Then we’ll make a group decision.”
“Works for me,” Angel said.
The woman stood and started to pull the zipper closed. As she did, there was a scream from another part of the camp.
Angel was through the opening and shifting the other Grove Keeper aside before the sound had finished echoing off the trees. He’d left on his boots, so he moved easily over the wet terrain. The rain soaked through his shirt and stung his eyes as he searched through the darkness to find the source of the problem.
“It’s rising! It’s rising fast.”
He headed toward the woman yelling. Other Grove Keepers and a few of the older girls joined him. He found two women standing by the benches were they’d eaten dinner a few hours before. Only what had been an open area and a gentle slope down to a stream was now a rapidly flowing and quickly rising river.
“I don’t understand,” one of the women said.