They Left Me to Drown: A Family's Regret

3: 3

"Letitia, what's taking you so long? Mom's stomach is acting up again. Which bag did you put her regular meds in before we left? Bring them over here, now!"

The voice crackled out of the megaphone, laced with a harsh burst of static, echoing through the dark.

Nothing but trouble, that girl. Now of all times, still throwing her little princess fit. She's sulking because we took June out first, hiding up on some high ground and refusing to come down. If she makes Mom miss her medicine, I'll deal with her.

That was my brother's voice inside his head.

The last faint thread of hope scattered into nothing.

I stopped fighting.

I let the freezing floodwater pour into my lungs, let the crushing weight of it tear at my eardrums.

The second my heart stopped, the world finally went quiet.

When I opened my eyes again, I couldn't feel the cold anymore.

My body lay still in a pile of rubble downstream, my face bruised blue, all life gone from it.

But my soul drifted, weightless, in the air.

I followed that thin thread of lingering will and floated back to the disaster relief shelter at the foot of the hill.

Inside the tent, the lights blazed.

Mom lay on a folding cot, clutching her stomach and moaning.

June had changed into clean, warm clothes and sat by the bed, her eyes rimmed red.

"Dad, Elmer, it's all my fault." June wiped at her tears, her voice catching.

"Nia must be angry that I got the seat on the rescue boat. Before we went into the water, I saw it with my own eyes—she tucked Mom's stomach medicine into her own coat. The way she looked at me then was so frightening. Is she doing this to punish me?"

Mom heard it and shot upright, slamming her hand down on the cot.

"That wicked girl! She wants me to die in agony, doesn't she! Over some petty jealousy, she'd throw away her own mother's life!"

Dad's face went as dark as the sky before a storm, and he lurched to his feet.

"I'm going downstream to look. And I'll drag that ungrateful girl back while I'm at it!"

I hovered in the air, watching Dad storm out.

When he reached the riverbank in front of the shelter, he was actually less than two hundred meters from the pile of rubble where I'd died.

A few more steps forward, one glance in the direction of the current, and he would have seen the torn hem of my clothes.

But then June's scream rang out from inside the tent: "Ah! My foot hurts so much—I think I just twisted it!"

Dad's steps stopped dead.

He didn't even turn his head. He spun around at once and hurried back to the tent, cradling June's ankle carefully to check it, his eyes full of worry for her.