Chapter 1 - The Fall That Didn't Kill Me
The last thing I saw before my husband pushed me was the reflection of the mountains in his sunglasses.
Daniel had been smiling less than a minute earlier.
He had one hand resting on my shoulder and the other pointing toward the valley below us.
He told me the view was worth the drive.
He told me our daughter would one day see the same mountains.
Then his voice went flat.
His gloved hands pressed hard between my shoulder blades.
For half a second, my brain refused to understand what my body already knew.
He was not steadying me.
He was pushing me.
I stumbled forward and felt the ice move under my right boot.
My arms flew out instinctively.
I tried to turn toward him.
I caught one glimpse of his face.
There was no panic in it.
There was no regret.
There was only concentration.
Then the mountain disappeared beneath my feet.
I fell over the edge.
The first drop was not as deep as it looked from the road.
I struck a shelf of snow-covered rock perhaps twelve feet below the cliff.
Pain exploded through my left side.
My body rolled toward the second drop.
I dug my fingers into the snow and found nothing solid.
My boots slid over the edge.
My stomach hit the rock.
I screamed and clutched at a frozen root sticking from the wall.
The root bent but did not break.
My lower body hung over open air.
Far below me, dark pine trees rose through the snow like needles.
I could not see the bottom.
I could barely breathe.
One thought drowned out everything else.
My baby.
I pressed one arm around my stomach while my other hand held the root.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Please stay with me.”
Snow slid past my cheek and vanished into the white emptiness below.
My left wrist burned every time I tried to move it.
My ribs felt as if they had been split apart.
But I was alive.
And then I heard Daniel above me.
His boots crunched slowly through the snow.
He walked to the edge.
For one terrifying moment, I thought he would look down and see me.
I flattened myself against the rock shelf and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound.
The wind carried his breathing toward me.
He stood there for almost thirty seconds.
Then his phone clicked.
“It’s done,” he said.
I stopped breathing.
A woman answered through the speaker, faint but clear enough for me to hear.
“And the baby?”
Daniel did not hesitate.
“Both gone.”
The words cut through me more deeply than the fall.
I knew that voice.
At least I thought I did.
I had heard it at dinners, birthday parties, and family holidays.
I had heard it tell me to rest when my morning sickness was bad.
I had heard it laugh while touching my pregnant stomach.
But the wind distorted the sound before I could place it.
Daniel ended the call.
He waited another moment.
Then his footsteps moved away from the edge.
A car door slammed.
The engine of our SUV started.
I listened as the tires rolled over packed snow.
The sound grew smaller until there was nothing but wind.
My husband had left me to die.
I do not know how long I stayed on that shelf.
It could have been ten minutes.
It could have been an hour.
Cold erased time.
My fingers became stiff around the root.
Every few seconds, I whispered to the baby.
“You stay with me.”
“I’m staying with you.”
It was ridiculous because I was not sure either statement was true.
My strength was leaving me.
I knew that if I lost consciousness, I would slide.
Then I heard a different sound.
Not an engine.
A dog barking.
I lifted my head.
The barking came from somewhere above and to my left.
I tried to scream, but my throat produced only a cracked sound.
The dog barked again.
I forced air into my lungs.
“Help!”
The word vanished into the wind.
I tried again.
“Help me!”
A woman’s voice answered from above.
“Hello?”
I almost cried from relief.
“I’m down here!”
The dog appeared first.
A black-and-white shepherd leaned over the edge, barking so violently that snow fell from its paws.
Then a woman in a red mountain-rescue jacket crawled forward on her stomach.
Her eyes widened when she saw me.
“Don’t move,” she called.
“I wasn’t planning to,” I managed.
She disappeared.
Seconds later, I heard her speaking rapidly into a radio.
“My name is Nora Bennett,” she shouted.
“I’m with county search and rescue.”
“I’m going to get a line down to you.”
I closed my eyes.
A sob escaped before I could stop it.
“Please hurry.”
“I’m pregnant.”
The silence above lasted only a second, but it felt enormous.
“How far along?”
“Thirty-two weeks.”
“All right, Emily.”
I froze.
I had not told her my name.
My heart began to pound again.
“How do you know my name?”
Nora leaned over the edge once more.
Her expression changed.
“I saw your picture at the ranger station this morning.”
My stomach tightened.
“What picture?”
She hesitated.
Then she said the sentence that told me Daniel had started planning long before he pushed me.
“Your husband reported you missing before noon.”
I stared up at her through blowing snow.
Daniel had pushed me at eleven forty-seven.
May you like
That meant he had reported me missing before I was even gone.
And suddenly the mountain was not the most dangerous thing around me.
