Sitting there in the dark, listening to him talk, Abigail felt shards of cold begin to prick her face, wondered if it might be the first sign of frostbite or hypothermia.
“Why do you think Quinn did this to us?” she said. “Any idea?”
“Beyond plain old greed? No. We should probably drink some water.”
Lawrence turned on his lamp, reached for the bottle. At first, Abigail mistook them for dust motes in the light beam, then realized these white things were actually snowflakes.
“Lawrence?” she said. “It’s snowing in here.”
He looked up. “Oh my God, I saw the chimney when we first came in, but it was already dark outside. I assumed it was just another blind shaft.” His headlamp spotlighted the hole in the ceiling, snow floating down through it, melting on the cave floor.
Abigail got up. “Lawrence, can you lift me up there?”
She straddled his shoulders and he stood slowly, his legs shuddering under the strain. “Scoot to the right. You’re crushing me into the ceiling.” Abigail peered up the narrow chimney, wondered how far to the surface, if it even stayed wide enough for her to get there. “Okay, let me down.” Lawrence bent his knees, eased back onto the floor. Abigail said, “I think I can climb up there if you lift me a little farther up the hole.”
“Well, I know I couldn’t do it even if my ankle wasn’t wrecked. And with no rope, only one of us can get out. How would you feel about going alone, trying to find help? I can draw a map on your note pad, get you back to the trailhead. You’d have to find the keys to Scott’s Suburban. I’m not sure if they’re with him or in his pack at the campsite.”
“And I’ll get my cell, try to call for help from the pass.”
Lawrence sighed, relief enveloping his face like the loosening of taut cables.
“You should get some sleep before you go, Abby. A few hours at least.”
The alarm on Abigail’s watch seemed to beep five seconds after she’d closed her eyes. She’d slept for four hours on the cold rock, dreamless and deep. She turned onto her side and faced Lawrence. His breath warmed her face, and in that virgin dark, she caught his scent—a repressed relic from those precious years when he was Daddy, and not the remnants of aftershave, no superficial mosaic of man-made chemicals, but his core, lifeblood odor, and it carried her back even further than the smell of cut grass and school-bus seats and sno cones.
“You awake?” he whispered.
“My alarm just went off. Guess it’s time. You weren’t asleep?”
“Been thinking.”
“What about?”
“Those gold bricks, the greedy people they’ve killed through the centuries, people they’re still killing. But you and the Tozers didn’t come into these mountains for greed. Emmett and June are dead because of me. You’re in this cave ’cause of me. And I’m sorry. Beyond words, I’m sorry. It won’t change a damn thing now, but I need to say it, need you to hear it. I know what a selfish no-good f**k I am. And what you said in the boardinghouse? You were right, Abby. It’s all about me. Always has been.” He cupped her face in his gloved hands. “Take this with you,” he whispered. “If you make it back to me. If you don’t. My leaving . . . wasn’t your fault. Or your mother’s. I left because something inside of me was broken. Still is. I hurt people I love, who love me, and I don’t know why. But my little girl, my beautiful, perfect little girl, I’m so sorry I hurt you, so sorry you got me for a daddy.”
Abigail fought like hell against it—a realignment, the unraveling of an old stubborn knot.
With Abigail astride her father’s shoulders, she was still a foot shy of any usable handhold.
“I’m just not far enough up the chimney,” she said. “Push me higher.” As she lifted off Lawrence’s shoulders, her headlamp illuminated the closest jug, a few inches from her fingertips. “Almost there,” she said, reaching out and grabbing the jug with both hands. “Got it.”
Lawrence said, “Find a foothold.”
Abigail’s fingers had already begun to cramp, and her feet were scrambling for purchase.
“I can’t find anything. Oh God, I’m slipping! I can’t—”
“Feel that?” Lawrence yelled as he jammed the toe of her right boot into a crevice. “Let your weight rest on your feet now!” Abigail settled onto her legs. “Just take your time. Get your strength back up.” As she caught her breath, Abigail shone her headlamp up the chimney. It appeared to narrow farther up, but the handholds were plentiful. She cinched down the straps of her day pack, then reached over her head for the next handhold—a crack in the wall wide enough to slide her fist into.
She pulled herself up and moaned, the pain in her tailbone excruciating.
“Remember to climb with your feet,” Lawrence yelled up to her. “Otherwise, you’ll tire out.” She tested her weight on a big chockstone wedged in the chimney, decided to trust it, and made the next move, rested for thirty seconds, then made another. As long as she allowed her legs to bear the weight, her arms didn’t cramp. She climbed through a ten-foot section filled with bombproof buckets. Then the rock became wet, then icy, then snow-dusted. The handholds dwindling. Suddenly, she had nothing to grab.
“I’m stuck!” she yelled. “No handholds!”
“Chimney the rest of the way up!” His voice sounded distant, like he’d shouted up to her from the bottom of a well. “Push your feet against opposite walls. Hold yourself up with the pressure!”
She stood perched on a thin lip, half an inch wide, legs trembling with the onset of a paralyzing weakness. “I’m gonna fall!” she screamed.
“Listen to me! Take your right leg, dig it into the wall at your back, and keep the ball of your left foot pressed hard into the wall facing you!”
She tried it, the soles of her boots slipping on the rock. Pushed harder, pain radiating out from her tailbone so intensely, she felt it in her fillings and nearly fainted. She finally regained purchase and inched her way up again, her boots jammed into the rock, taking handholds and footholds where she could find them, chimneying where she couldn’t.
Snow poured down on her, and she heard the shriek of wind just above. Abigail glanced down the chimney, Lawrence’s headlamp just a pinpoint of light seventy feet below, thought of the night he left, all those years ago, her first concrete memory. And she wondered if, as her father watched her climb to the surface, leaving him stranded in the dark, it felt anything to him like it had to her the night she’d watched him walk out her bedroom door.