Falling for Hope (8 page)

And now Hope was alone on the
mountain, lost in a terrifying storm.
 
Perhaps hurt.
 
Perhaps worse...

Amy hated that her mind went to
such a dark place.
 
Hope knew the
mountain like the back of her hand; she knew trail safety protocol, and she
must have seen the storm advancing toward the mountain range.
 
But all morning, Amy’s stomach had been tied
up in knots, a feeling of dread building within her.
 
Amy was mostly logical, yes, but her intuition was essential for
her line of work, too: she trusted it completely.

And her gut was now telling her
that time was running out.
 
They needed
to find Hope soon.

Lightning struck close by,
illuminating their surroundings perfectly for half a heartbeat in a haze of
white light.
 
The trees stood out
starkly in the lightning blast, like skeletal hands reaching toward the
sky.
 
Amy shuddered as the thunder
boomed around them.

“That was really close,” shouted
Irene over the pounding rain.
 

“If you feel the hairs on the back
of your neck stand up, drop to the ground, roll up into a ball and cover the
back of your neck,” shouted Chris back.

“Very comforting!” said Irene,
brandishing the flashlight.
 

The trail surface was now a slick
mixture of mud and the previous autumn’s fallen leaves, and as the path began
to slope upward at a steeper and steeper angle, Amy’s footing began to
suffer.
 
She kept tripping, her feet
sliding out from under her, the rainwater streaming over her face as she
blinked blearily, trying to make out the outline of the two women ahead of her,
trying to follow the beam of the flashlight.
 
The knees of Amy’s jeans were now wet and filthy, and she was completely
drenched from head to toe when she tripped again and sat for a long moment, her
hands wrist deep in the mud, her head bowed.

Chris paused next to her, offering
her a hand.

“Thanks,” she muttered, as the
woman helped her up, glancing down at her through the curtains of rain with an
apologetic expression.

“It’ll be okay, Amy,” said Chris,
then, and she stepped forward and hugged her, holding her close as the storm
raged around them.

It was so unexpected, and so
needed, that Amy felt tears well up in her eyes.
 
She swallowed her sobs and embraced Chris tightly.
 

She knew, now, that they were all
definitely in this together.

Irene was grinning a little as she
turned the flashlight beam on them.
 
“Good.
 
Finally,” she said,
relief in her voice.
 
“All right,
ladies,” she said loudly, clearing her throat as she glanced back toward the
pathway.
 
“Let’s keep going.”

“Hope!” bellowed Chris, her loud
voice traveling even through the downpour and the crackle of thunder.
 
Chris turned, and—together—the three women
continued up the mountain.

Summer rain should be warm, thought
Amy miserably, as they slogged onward.
 
It shouldn’t be freezing.
 
And
Hope was lost in this miserable weather, had been exposed to it for hours.
 
Amy, Chris and Irene had only been walking
the trail for about twenty minutes.
 
Amy
couldn’t imagine how cold Hope must be.
 
And what if she was caught in a dangerous situation?
 
There were a million dangerous situations
Amy could imagine: images of bears and cliff faces and falling trees filled her
head.
 

They struggled up the path for what
felt like forever.
 
Eventually, Irene,
ever the optimist, her voice hoarse from calling out for Hope hundreds of
times, coughed and stopped, taking off her soggy baseball cap and running her
fingers through her short brunette hair.
 
“What if we picked the wrong trail?” she asked Chris and Amy.
 
Amy’s heart rose into her throat, and she
swallowed, trying to calm the drill of her pulse.

“We might have.
 
There’s no way of knowing,” said Chris,
wiping the rain out of her eyes.
 
“I
don’t know.”

They were following the Ambrose
Trail, which was the trail that intersected most of the other trails and
crisscrossed the mountain, leading up to the summit.
 
Under more pleasant circumstances, the women would have been able
to see that they were near a very pretty section of the trail now.
 
There was a tall waterfall that cascaded
down into a steep ravine, and the trail continued along the edge of the ravine
until it was no longer a ravine but an actual cliff face overlooking the
waterfall itself.
 
Amy imagined that she
could hear the roar of the waterfall, but it was probably just the roar of the
rain, since the waterfall was still a little further off.
 

“Harmony Falls is Hope’s favorite
part of the trails here,” Chris called over the downpour.
 
“That’s why I chose this trail, because it’s
the one she walks most often.”
 
Again,
Chris wiped at her face, spluttering.
 

They continued along the path, Amy
still sliding on the mud, her heart hammering as the trail began to get
steeper, one side of the trail morphing into a sharp drop-off.
 
The roar grew louder, then, and Amy knew
that around the bend ahead would be the waterfall.

“Hope!” Chris called, and Amy inhaled
deeply, forming her hands into a megaphone shape around her mouth.

“Hope, where are you?” she called
out into the rain.

Another bolt of lightning tore open
the sky, and the wind screamed in Amy’s ears.

And then…Amy paused.

Over the roar of the waterfall, the
rush of the rain and wind and the booming thunder, had she heard…

She stood very still, trying to
calm her heartbeat, listening with all of her might.

Chris stopped, too, placing her
hand on Amy’s arm.
 
“Did you hear that?”
she bellowed over the storm.

“Hear what?” called Irene from
farther up the trail.

“Shh—just listen!” Chris called to
her.

Amy held her breath.

Yes.
 
There it was again.
 
It
was so faint, so low, but she’d
heard
it—definitely
heard
it—as
Chris stared back at her with wide eyes.

A voice.
 
It was a voice.

“Hope!” Amy screamed, her voice
cracking as her heartbeat surged.
 
She
dashed a little farther up the trail, slipping on the mud as Irene grabbed hold
of her arm to stop her from sliding a little too close to the edge.
 
“Hope!” Amy yelled again, pressing her hands
to her heart as she listened.

Again, a voice—
Hope’s
voice.
 
Amy swallowed a sob and glanced up at Irene,
whose head was cocked.

“Hope, keep calling to us!” Chris
shouted.
 
“Are you on the trail?
 
Sing or something, girlfriend!”
 
Despite the joke, Chris’s words were choked
out, too, and all three women stood perfectly still, listening.

“…ome, home on the ra…” came Hope’s
voice again, bellowing out the song with all her might, though—to Amy’s
heartache—the words sounded weak, pained.

Chris, Irene and Amy turned, as
one, toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the deep ravine.
 

“It was coming from down
there.”
 
Chris moved over to the edge.

“Be careful,” Irene barked.
 
“It’s unstable because of the mud.”

Chris squatted down and peered
over.
 
“Shit,” she muttered, running her
hand through her hair.

Amy scrabbled to the edge as Irene
held onto her jacket’s hood.
 
Peering
down over the edge of the cliff, the rain pouring all around them, Amy’s heart
rose into her throat again.

“Hello, ladies,” said Hope,
grinning up at them through the rain with her easy smile, though it looked a
bit more forced than usual.
 
She was
sitting on a rocky outcropping, a ledge some thirty feet down from the actual
cliff face.

Around the small ledge loomed a
dark, vast nothingness, and hundreds of feet below was the bottom of the
ravine.

“Hope!” Amy called, voice shaking.
“Are you all right?”

“Except for the bitty
accommodations, I’m right as rain,” Hope joked, still grinning as she shielded
her eyes from the falling water.
 
Overhead, a bolt of lightning sparked, and the immediate thunder made
the earth rumble beneath their feet.
 
“And the view’s quite spectacular!” Hope quipped.

Chris shrugged out of her backpack
and began digging around inside of it.
 
“I figure you’re probably done sightseeing now, though,” she
shouted down to Hope, who laughed back.

“I’m done drowning,” she
spluttered, sitting back and looking up at the three of them.
 
“I’m awfully glad to see you guys,” she
said, her voice softer, and Amy leaned forward, sobbing.

“How did you even get down there?”
she asked, immediately regretting the question as Hope shook her head.
 

“It was muddy, and I slid and
fell—and the ledge saved me.”

“Oh, God.”
 
Irene rubbed at her eyes, taking the
baseball cap off of her head and running her hand nervously through her hair
again.
 

“Found it!” called Chris, yanking
out a carefully tied coil of rope.

“Do I
want
to know why you
have rope in your backpack?” said Hope, laughing a little.

“You never know when you’re going
to have to rope a steer,
obviously
,” said Chris, who lived in the city
and had probably never come face to face with a cow in her life.
 
The four women smiled, even as another bolt
of lightning struck nearby.

“Here…” called Chris, untying the
rope from its coil and beginning to lower it.
 
“You’re not hurt, are you, Hope?”

“Just my pride,” Hope snorted as
she grasped the end of the rope.
 
“But
you guys have to be incredibly careful.
 
The edge of the cliff face is super slippery.
 
That’s what made me fall.”

“It’s also what probably saved
you,” said Irene, looking at the steep slope of the cliff.
 

“Yeah, I dug my hands in trying to
catch myself.
 
Didn’t work, though,”
Hope said remorsefully, knotting the rope around her stomach.
 

“All three of us will pull you
up.”
 
Irene indicated to Chris and Amy
that they should move back from the ledge.
 
“Holler when you’re ready for us to pull!” called Irene.
 

Chris, Amy and Irene went to the
far edge of the trail, leaning against the sheer rock wall, tightening the rope
around their wrists.
 
Amy’s heart raced,
and the rain was so cold, she was shaking.
 
If they slipped—and they could; the mud under their feet offered no
traction—Hope could plunge to her death.

“I’m ready!” called Hope, her voice
sharp with forced cheerfulness.
 
Irene,
white as a sheet, glanced to Chris and Amy and nodded once.

“All right.
 
We’re going to pull you up now!” she called,
and the three women dug in their feet and
pulled
.
 
Slowly—excruciatingly slowly—they began to
drag the rope up, its rough surface burning their fingers.
 
Amy’s breath came in short little bursts as
she and Chris and Irene leaned toward Hope’s weight, scraping their heels
against the rock and pulling backwards as hard as they could.
 
There was no tree nearby to loop the rope
around, and there was no possibility of rest until Hope was safe and
sound.
 
They heard Hope scrabbling
against the mud as the rain continued to pour down all around them.

That’s when Amy realized that they
were beginning to slide.

“Hold on!” she called out
desperately, and Irene leaned toward the rock wall, but Chris was beginning to
slide quickly now, aiming for the edge of the cliff, her hiking boots unable to
gain any purchase against the mud that slicked the trail.
 

“Guys, are you all right?” called
Hope from somewhere beyond sight.
 
Was
it Amy’s imagination, or did she sound much closer than Amy had figured Hope
would be at this point?

“Never been better!” Chris grunted,
almost sitting down on her behind as she hauled back on the rope with all of
her might.
 
“But you can get your ass up
here anytime you like!” she called, and they heard laughter from over the edge.

Chris managed to shove herself
backward a little, digging her feet into the mud, and Irene and Amy pulled
harder, gaining a little more rope.

Amy saw a movement, then, over the
edge of the cliff, and she swallowed a sob as Hope’s arm came up and over,
trying to find something to grab onto.
 

“Amy, go help her—but be careful!”
shouted Irene, and Amy, slowly and carefully, let go of the rope.
 
Chris grunted, the weight falling heavier to
her as she was out front, but Amy sprinted past her, falling to her knees.

“Hey, beautiful,” said Hope
tiredly, grinning up at Amy and holding on with both arms to the ledge.