I lost my flashlight somehow, but I didn’t feel afraid for my life, as you wrote in one of your press pieces. I was a swimmer in high school, I’ve always been a good swimmer, and I knew that I would be okay. I felt God with me and Donald, keeping us safe. It was a powerful feeling, as strong as I’ve ever had in church or prayer.

Somehow, even without a flashlight and with all the clouds and the rain, there was a reflection on the water, and that gave us enough light to see Marianne clinging to the side of the shed, her arms and legs wrapped around a post, her eyes shut tight, like that would help hold her where she was.

The story I listened to you tell me—even though you weren’t there—was that Donald swam across the washed-out gully to reach her, pulled her down, and swam her back to me. That is not what happened. The truth is that the current was way too swift, and full of fast-moving debris: tree limbs, trash, pieces of metal peeled off from roofs. Donald and I tried wading into it, but the water was still rising, and it just about pulled us under.

“Marianne,” I yelled to her. I yelled and I yelled, just her name, for about a minute, but she couldn’t hear. That’s when Donald started yelling—he is a performer, and he has a good strong voice. He sang her name across the water.

Finally she opened her eyes, and I saw something there, but not helplessness—something fiercer than that. The water was up to her waist. The wind was so strong, it had started taking down more trees. Donald yelled to ask if she was okay, but she didn’t answer.

I pointed up and she nodded, that look still in her eyes, and started to climb. She hauled herself up that post inch by inch, until she could reach the shed roof. The water helped her a little, rising as it was, floating her. She had to lean sideways to grip the side of the shed’s roof and pull herself over and on top. When she climbed on top, she just lay there flat for a minute. She must have been exhausted.

She couldn’t stay there—we knew that, and she must have known it too, because she sat up and looked back at us, as if we could tell her what to do. The shed was wobbling with the force of the water all around it. Tom’s motorcycle was clanking around, bashing at the walls.