The ground was still a good way down, but Izzy didn’t dare risk waiting any longer. What if the roof collapsed next?
But when they positioned him in front of the glass, a new problem presented itself.
“I don’t fit,” her father gruffed.
The buzz of alarm inside Isobel spun into panic. “You have to!”
The grass split open, torn by the roots as the front of the house lifted.
He gripped a primary branch from his sapling and snapped. His howl of pain chilled her to the bone.
“Dad!”
Her father caught his breath, and then, through gritted teeth, he chose another and snapped that one too.
“Jack, that’s enough.” Dane caught her father’s hands. He looked pale. “Let’s get you down.”
Even with the tree pruned down nearly to its base, it would be a tight fit to get her father through the window. “I’ll go down first and help catch you both,” Dane said. They didn’t have time to argue the point. The house groaned as the once-stable foundation sank a little lower into the too-soft dirt beneath it. Isobel’s stomach swooped as she caught her father by the elbow. He braced against the wall with a nod and a grimace.
Dane hopped down, the mound of ruptured loam and topsoil catching his fall. “Jack, you next.”
They puzzle-pieced him through the window in the world’s worst game of Tetris. Dad’s breaths came in short, hard bursts of barely concealed agony.
Isobel’s throat tightened as she steadied him, then let him drop below. Dad landed with a solid thud.
“All right, love. Your turn.”
She had one shaky leg up on the windowsill when her eyes, having adjusted somewhat to the darkness of the room, snagged on a small wooden box on Eva’s bedside table.
The ashes.
How had they gotten there? She hesitated, then swung her leg back over just as the house gave its mightiest groan yet.
“Isobel!”
The cottage’s whole frame shook, knocking Eva’s bookshelfonto the bed. Izzy gasped when a heavy stack of books struck her shoulder, knocking her down. The floorboards splintered with the impact of her body.
She pushed herself to her knees, moving as carefully as she would on thinning ice as she dug through the toppled pile of books, looking for the box. Moments later, Dane reappeared in the window. He took in the scene, then, without a word, scooped her up and bolted back to the window.
“No, wait!” Isobel protested.
“No time,” Dane grunted.
A horrible popping sound came from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house as the two of them clambered over the sill. The ground was only a few feet below now, but Isobel landed wrong on her bruised shoulder and let out a groan.
Dane was over her in an instant, his eyes panicked. “Are you hurt?!”
“Just a bruise,” she gasped.
The sight of his fear melting away was a physical thing. Dane gathered her against him and placed a desperate kiss to her cheek, then her temple. “Don’t do that again.” His voice was ragged.
Isobel’s bottom lip trembled. “I’m sorry.” She hadn’t even gotten the ashes. They were still in there somewhere, trapped beneath the rubble. A sob bubbled up her throat. Dane cupped her cheek and kissed her again, his relief palpable.
Her father had moved closer to the fence that shouldered the Walkers’ land. He was on his hands and knees, his spine curved in a question mark. As Isobel approached, she caught the acrid scent of stomach bile. Dad, breathing heavily, wiped a bit of sick off his chin. His branches wept a bloody sap into the soil below.
She fell to her knees beside him and took his trembling hand in both of her own.
Behind him, the earth gave an almost animal groan as it swallowed down another foot of her home. Then it stopped. The settling silence echoed like a bell in the space between Isobel’s ears. Not even the birds sang, the yard rendered in total silence, as though the land itself was shocked by what it had done. Isobel’s eyes drifted up to the lonesome chimney and the weathervane rooster sitting crooked on its arrow.
