after ten years she felt a blush warm her cheeks. He’d been way out of her league. She’d known it from the start, but the humiliating whispers among her classmates about her foolish crush had been even more painful. Her cousin Vincent had been the worst—no surprise there. His relentless taunts had felt like jabs of a knife to her heart, and she was still sure that he’d been the one to start the cruel gossip in the first place.
Cade had just been a little guy when Mei and Jack were in high school, and she hadn’t seen him since. Now built like a football player, only his tawny hair and warm brown eyes were familiar.
He gave a low, self-conscious laugh. “I guess the last time you saw me I was starting grade school.”
Mei laughed. “If that.”
“Weren’t you in high school with my brother?” “Um … yes.”
When a few drops of sleet hit Jasmine’s cheek, she batted them away with her fluffy white mittens. “Maybe we’d all better get moving. Cade and I want to make it up to the first waterfall, and then we’re heading back to town.”
Mei eyed the slate-gray clouds crawling over the mountain peaks. “Are you sure? Maybe you’d better start down with me.”
“Nah—just a few minutes more.” Jasmine patted the pocket of her light jacket. “I want to take some pictures up there. I hear it’s like a wintry fairyland, with those shimmering icicles covering the trees from the spray of the falls. It might be good as a background for the cover of our wedding programs.”
“W-wedding programs?” Mei felt her jaw drop. So the girl was really serious about this.
Jasmine’s smile turned radiant. “Won’t it be pretty?”
Mei belatedly remembered to snap her mouth shut. “It … it certainly will.”
What were these two thinking? And why hadn’t the adults in their lives tried to steer them away from such a huge commitment right out of high school?
Cade grinned, obviously reading her expression. “We got the same reaction from everyone else at first, too. But we’re certain, and we’re ready. And we’re already planning to go on to college, believe me.”
“We have to hurry off right now,” Jasmine added apologetically. “But maybe you can come over to Arabella’s sometime to hear all the details.”
“I’ll do that, I promise.” Mei managed a weak wave as the two of them started back on the path.
What they decided to do was hardly her business, after all. Neither of them were a relative of hers. And it’s not like my own choices brought me happiness, either, she thought as she took a deep breath and surveyed her surroundings.
Even with the darkening clouds, it was a perfect day. And how could it not be when she was surrounded by God’s perfect glory in every towering mountain peak, in every call of a Pine Grosbeak and its mate from the top of the Engelmann spruce towering overhead?
Quiet joy started to bubble up inside her as she made her way down the path. Adopted from China as a baby, she’d always felt like an outsider in both her extended family and this small ranching community where no one else looked like her. With a stern father and a cool, distant mother, there hadn’t been much warmth and connection with her immediate family, either, except with her younger brother, Lucas.
But she’d been gone a long time. She was grown up now; stronger and more mature. And she now realized that she was as much at fault as anyone if she hadn’t been well accepted as a child. Painfully shy and withdrawn, maybe she’d seemed standoffish.
Perhaps this move back home wouldn’t be so bad, after all. Maybe it would even bring an opportunity for her to truly connect with her mother and extended family, and finally feel accepted as one of the Claytons—something she’d longed for all her life.
Mei was startled out of her daydream by a bloodcurdling scream that tore through the air, followed by the deafening sound of boulders crashing down a slope. The crack of trees splintering. And then a deathly silence fell.
Jasmine? Mei spun on her heel, terror grabbing her by the throat as she raced in the direction of the scream and pulled to a stunned halt.
A few dozen yards up the trail, a raw, gaping crater at least ten feet across had been gouged out of the edge of a cliff where there’d been a trail just minutes before. Cade and Jasmine were nowhere to be seen. Had they dashed past the crumbling ground in time?
She grabbed a sturdy pine branch and looked over the edge. Please, Lord, let them both be safe. “Jasmine! Cade!”
No one answered.
There was barely a haze of snow on the floor of the ravine below, and a cloud of dust still boiled upward, obliterating the view of the bottom.
Wherever it was.
“Wow,” a woman exclaimed. “If we’d come down the trail a few seconds earlier we would’ve been caught in that landslide.”
Her heart hammering against her ribs, Mei tore her gaze from the bottom of the ravine and stared at the two women who had materialized on the other side of the trail.
Mei closed her eyes for a brief moment and said another silent prayer. “There were two hikers here a minute ago—a teenage girl and her boyfriend. Did they pass you?”
The women exchanged glances, then shook their heads, their eyes widening with horror as they moved closer to the edge.
Mei waved them back. “The rest of this area could be unstable. Stay over by those trees.”
The taller woman paled. “It sounded like thunder when the cliff gave way.”
A wave of dread curled through Mei as she scanned the bottom of the ravine.
Falling boulders had carved deep, raw gouges in the steep walls of the ravine. Even now, smaller rocks were shifting and falling. From somewhere far below came the sound of pebbles skittering down the cliff.
A massive boulder big as a car broke free, vibrating the ground beneath her feet as it bounced down the rocky wall and catapulted in slow motion out into the dust-filled emptiness. The distant explosion of shattering rock at the bottom shook the earth.
“Cade! Jasmine!” Mei shouted their names over and over, straining to hear a response. Please, God, let them be safe. They’re just so young. They could well have been in the path of that last boulder, though if they’d survived their fall, it would be amazing.
Jerking off her backpack, Mei checked the reception bars on her cell phone. No Service flashed on the screen, dashing her hopes. There was no time to run for help. She needed to get to the bottom of that ravine without delay.
She looked up at the ghost-white faces of the other two women. “There’s an emergency phone in the shelter at the base of the trail. Tell the ranger to call for help. We need a rescue team with climbing gear—be sure to tell them that. And we’ll need an ambulance, too.”
The two hikers stood frozen for a split second, staring at the place where there’d once been a trail.
“Go!”
Jarred into action, they gave the rockslide wide berth and raced away down the trail.
Mei dumped the contents of her backpack on the ground. First aid kit. High-energy bars. Several water bottles. Leather gloves. The bright orange coils of her favorite old Mammut climbing rope and a handful of carabiners in a Ziploc bag.
She’d done a lot of climbing up here as a teenager, and she’d continued the sport in the mountain ranges in the Southwest. Her climbing gear had been the first thing she’d packed for her move back to Colorado.
Now, she looked heavenward and murmured a quiet “thanks” for the impulse to stop and hike this particular trail on her way home.
But was her rope even long enough?
She