Chapter 15 - Morning Across the Water
The rain finally stopped as the first gray light of dawn broke over the Appalachian ridge. The floodwaters had peaked an hour before sunrise, leaving behind a slick expanse of yellow silt, splintered tree trunks, and the hollow shell of Sarah’s farmhouse smoking in the distance.
They sat together on the porch of the old hunter's cabin, wrapped in dry canvas tarps. Clara sat with her knees pulled to her chest, the newborn baby cradled safely against her heart, nursing quietly beneath the thick folds of her sweater. Ruth sat beside her, her head resting against Clara’s shoulder, her small, mud-stained fingers loosely intertwined with the baby’s tiny feet. For the first time in three days, the girl was fast asleep, her breathing deep and even.
Thomas sat on the bottom step, his arm crudely bound with clean strips torn from a flour sack, staring out at the pale pink horizon filtering through the pine needles. The county lines were only eight miles to the west, past the ridge where the state police post sat. With Vance gone and the town’s secrets laid bare, the road ahead was no longer about hiding in the dark.
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Sarah walked to the edge of the porch, looking down at the quiet water receding from the limestone bank. In her hand, she held the small, clear plastic hospital bracelet she had slipped off the infant's wrist an hour earlier.
She turned the plastic over in her palm. The morning light caught the letters printed on the inside of the band, where the mother’s thumbprint had been pressed in blue hospital ink. Sarah reached out and dropped the plastic loop into the slow current at the foot of the steps, watching it float away, vanishing into the wide, clean river that was carrying them toward the world beyond the hollow.
