He glanced over at her, then looked out his side window at the darkened woods passing by. “We’d had an ice storm two days before, and Kate and Maxine were light enough that they could walk on the crust, whereas André and I kept breaking through. We eventually moved far enough away from each other that I could no longer hear him calling for Kate. But I could hear the distant roar of the river.” He hesitated, then said softly, “That’s when I stepped under a giant spruce tree that had sheltered the snow from the rain, and found the tracks of a small child and dog.”
He looked out the windshield, but Cam knew he wasn’t seeing the road. “I started running in the direction the tracks went, which was straight toward the river.”
Camry tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I know Kate survived, because you said she’s Fiona’s age. So I don’t want to hear any more of this story, Luke.”
“Yes, you do.” He reached over and patted her thigh. “Because this is when I learned exactly what I had put my mother through when I’d run away six years earlier.” He took a deep breath, but left his hand on her leg. “I had never before and have never since been so scared. I broke into a cold sweat, having horrific images of Kate being swept away by the river. I hated that damn dog for luring her into the woods, and swore that when I found them I would wring his ugly black neck.”
His hand on her thigh tightened, then was suddenly gone. “I still have nightmares about what I saw when I reached the river. Kate was dangling on the edge of the ice only a few feet above the rushing water. She was utterly motionless, and that dog—that beautiful, mangy pound mutt—had his teeth clamped on her coat, holding her back from falling in.” Luke looked over at her. “I have no idea how long Maxine had been holding her like that, but I swear that if Kate fell, he had every intention of going with her.”
Camry checked her mirror and guided her truck to the side of the interstate, braking to a stop all the way over on the grass before shutting off the engine. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands on the steering wheel.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, cupping her head in his broad palm. “I stripped off my snowshoes and carefully made my way to them. Maxine was quivering uncontrollably, and his mouth was bloody from the strain on his teeth. His feet were bloody, too, and I could see where he’d been gouging the crust, trying to pull Kate up over the lip of ice.”
Picturing the scene all too vividly in her mind, and fearing what was coming, Camry scrambled over the console and into his arms.
Luke cradled her against his chest and quietly continued. “As I approached them, I felt the ice shelf start to buckle. Just then I heard several shouts, and realized that André and some other men had spotted us. But it was too late. I grabbed Kate’s coat and pulled her up, yanking her out of Maxine’s mouth, then flung her as far as I could back across the crust just as the shelf gave way. The dog and I fell into the river.”
“Oh, God,” Camry whispered. “The water must have been freezing.”
“It literally took my breath away. The force of the rapids slammed me into boulders and held me under until I thought my lungs were going to burst.”
“And y-you died.”
His arms around her tightened. “I suddenly wasn’t cold anymore, and everything went . . . peaceful.”
“But then you came back.”
“The current must have slammed me into another rock, and I broke the surface and sucked air back into my lungs. But I was completely disoriented. Then something snagged the shoulder of my jacket, and I felt clawing on my legs.”
“Maxine.”
“Just like with Kate, that damn dog latched on to me and started swimming across the current. There was enough light left that I could see the river was frozen solid where it turned to flat water up ahead, and I knew that if we didn’t make it to shore, we were going to be swept under the ice.”
“You both made it.”
“I did.”
“A-and Maxine?”
“I spent the next three weeks searching for his body, but I never found him.”
“He died!” Cam wailed, burying her face in his shirt. She punched his arm. “I said I didn’t want to hear this story!”
“I’ve never told anyone what happened after I fell in the river; not about my drowning, nor what Maxine had done,” Luke murmured into her hair.
That surprised her. “But why? Wouldn’t you at least want Kate to know that Maxine died saving your life?”
“It seemed too personal to share with anyone. Or maybe . . . sacred is a better word. So I just let everyone be thankful that Maxine had saved Kate’s life.” He sighed heavily. “The dog hadn’t lured her into the woods; he had followed her.”
Cam relaxed against him. She was still upset that Maxine hadn’t survived, but damned glad that Luke had. “Did you find out why Kate had left the dooryard?”
“She told us she was looking for a special rock in the pool of pretty pebbles she remembered seeing that summer, when she and André had been fishing in the river.”
“What made her think she could find it with snow on the ground?”
“Five-year-olds don’t think about silly details like that; they just go after what they want.” His lips touched her hair again. “All Kate was focused on was finding a special rock so she could give it to me for Christmas. Because, she told me that night when she came to my room after we got back from the hospital, she didn’t want me returning to college without something to remind me of home . . . and of her.”
He took a ragged breath. “I came unglued. She’d nearly died trying to find some stupid rock for me, and I started yelling at her. But instead of bursting into tears like a normal kid, you know what she did?”
Camry said nothing, because she couldn’t.
“She wrapped her tiny arms around my legs and told me that she loved me so much, her heart hurt when she thought of my missing her the way she missed me.” He took another shuddering breath. “And then she explained that she could sit in my room whenever she missed me, but that I didn’t have anything to remind me of her when I was away at college.”
“My knees buckled,” he continued, his voice raspy, “and I knelt down to hug her. But before I could, Kate held up her tiny fist and opened her fingers to reveal a black-and-white speckled pebble in her palm. She told me it was a lot smaller than the rock she’d wanted to find for me, but that she’d been forced to grab the beautifulest one she could reach in the pool of open water, because Maxine had kept pulling on her coat.”
Luke ducked his head to press his cheek against hers. “You know what love really is, Camry? It’s uncompromising, unpretentious, and unconditional, and sometimes it makes your heart hurt. I apologized to Kate for yelling at her, and she patted my cheek and said that she knew I was angry because I loved her—just like Maxine had growled at her when she’d climbed down to the water. Kate said, and I quote, ‘Maxine didn’t let me fall in the river because he knew I was going to love him forever.’ ”
Luke rested his chin on her head with a sigh. “I had never paid much attention to Kate for the first five years of her life. I didn’t have a clue what to do with an infant, and by the time she was a toddler, I was away at college most of the year or working in town and hanging out with my friends all summer. But that didn’t stop her from loving me so much that her heart hurt when I was gone.”
He lifted Cam’s chin to make her look at him, his smile tender in the glow of the dash lights. “I tucked Kate in bed, then went downstairs to the living room, got down on my knees, and apologized to my mother for running away when I was fourteen. Then I apologized to André for being such a self-centered bastard, and thanked him for not giving up on me.”
He shifted beneath her without breaking his embrace, then pressed something into the palm of her hand. “Here. If you try real hard, I bet you can feel the love, too,” he whispered, folding her fingers over the tiny, smooth object. “The next summer, just before I headed off to college again, I took Kate down to the river and we built a huge rock cairn in honor of Maxine. Then I searched until I found a very special rock, and gave it to Kate. She hugged it to her heart and said it was the beautifulest rock she’d ever seen.” He squeezed Cam’s fist. “I’ve carried this pebble since that Christmas. No matter where I am in the world, or what I’m doing, I just have to reach in my pocket to know that I am uncompromisingly, unpretentiously, and unconditionally loved.”