in my throat as I turn to see him come around the curve. Time slows down. My ears ring and my skin prickles as he yanks his handlebars hard to the right to keep from ramming into me. His four-wheeler tilts onto the two right tires, teeters toward the sharp incline that drops into the ravine at the side of the road, then slams into a boulder. Dad hurtles off the seat toward the trees. Behind him, Cookie flies from the crate and lands in a mound of snow as Dad smashes into an aspen tree at the edge of the slope. The four-wheeler rolls on top of him.
“Dad!” I scream, my boots pounding the ground as I run to him, passing Cookie whose yelps prick me like needle-sharp icicles. I round the overturned four-wheeler and find Dad facedown on the ground, the six-hundred-pound vehicle crushing him. As I drop to my knees beside him, he lifts his head enough for me to see a red gash above his temple where he hit the aspen’s trunk. Blood oozes from the wound, soaking a patch of snow beneath his head.
“Lily,” he rasps.
“I’m here, Dad.”
His face twitches as he lowers his cheek to the cold, hard ground.
“Hold on. I’ll get you out,” I say, my body shaking.
“No! Don’t move anything,” he gasps. “My back . . .”
He doesn’t have to say more. If I try to move the four-wheeler off him, I could hurt him worse. Panicked, I ask, “What should I do?”
“Get Mom. Call for help.”
Cookie’s frantic wails shred the last thin thread of my self-control. Sobbing, I say, “I didn’t bring my phone.”
“My front pocket,” Dad says weakly.
I scoot closer and look for a space to slip my hand beneath him. “I’ll find it. Don’t worry, I—”
“Don’t!” Pain and panic flash across his face when I touch him. “It’s— Can’t reach it,” he says, each word a struggle. “Go . . . get Mom.”
I swipe at the tears on my face. “I can’t leave you and Cookie here.”
“Don’t cry. Cookie and I—we’ll be fine. Please, sweetheart . . . hurry.”
Desperate for another way to help him, I squeeze my eyes shut. The scents of the forest fill my senses—moss and pine and rich, damp earth. I hear the tense hiss of Iris’s essence. The rattle of tree limbs. Then in the distance, the crunch of snow beneath hooves . . . or boots.
Opening my eyes, I scan the forest in every direction, praying it’s a person I hear, not an animal. “Help!” I scream. “Over here! Help us!”
I wait a few seconds for a reply, but know if I stay any longer, I’ll risk Dad’s life. “I’ll be right back. Everything will be okay,” I promise him, desperately hoping that’s true.
A few feet away, Cookie wails and Dad gasps, “Can you . . . bring him . . . ?”
I run to Cookie and kneel down. He doesn’t appear to have any outer wounds, but I have no idea if that’s the case internally. I shouldn’t move him, but he and Dad need each other, and I can’t bring myself to leave him crying in the road. “I’m sorry, boy,” I say, lifting him despite his wails. He seems weightless as I carry him to Dad and place him on the ground.
“Lily . . . ,” Dad says when I start to turn away. His eyes are closed, the lids quivering like moth wings. “If I don’t—”
“No!” I drop to my knees and sweep locks of silver hair off his forehead with trembling fingers. “You’ll be okay,” I whisper.
“Your mother . . . loves you . . . try to understand. She can’t lose you, too.”
“She’s not going to lose either one of us, Dad. You’re going to be okay.”
“Trust Mom,” he says in a strained whisper. “No one else.”
“What?”
“Promise me,” he says.
“I promise, but—oh, Dad,” I sob, lowering my face close to his.
“We thought we did . . . the right thing.” He clutches my wrist. “It was right, wasn’t it? You’re happy? You’re all right?”
Confusion grips me, but before I can answer him or ask any questions, Dad loses consciousness and a voice calls out from the forest on the opposite side of the trail. Turning, I see a hiker emerge from the trees.
Pushing to my feet, I run toward him.
3
“Your mother is finally sleeping,” Wyatt’s grandmother says as she sits on the edge of the couch beside me. “Won’t you let me give you a sedative, too?”