“We always could,” she said. “We forget until the river reminds us.”
The captain’s radio crackled. A heavy wrecker was en route. The worst of the rain was projected to pass in an hour. Words like relieve and stabilize took the foreground where collapse and slide had been.
For the first time since the road fell into the river, I let my shoulders drop from my ears. The children were accounted for; the bus was less angry; Luke was sitting on the bank with his palms up, as if finally ready to receive the warmth we kept pressing into everyone else.
Then the earth made a new sound—deeper than a crack, older than a groan. A chunk of curb the size of a dining table sheared away not at the edge but back under the feet of three volunteers holding umbrellas over a cluster of kids. The ground didn’t warn them by sinking; it moved out from under them in a single shrug.
