Callie had no idea how strong her mama was until that night. She kept Callie safe and secure, pressed super tight between her body and the wall of the cliff while she held on to the rock above her head. Hidden now by the rock face, Callie heard the bad men start yelling at each other that they’d lost them. After a while, Mama said she thought the bad men were gone and she was going to try to lift Callie up so she could climb back inside the tunnel.

Callie nodded, but before Mama could get a grip on her, lightning struck so close that Callie startled and slipped from the ledge. Her mama cried out and grabbed her with one hand, just in the nick of time. Her wrist hurt badly where Mama was gripping it, and her shins were scraped from her fall, but as Callie peeked down at the swirling water and sharp rocks below, she knew this was better. That was when Callie heard her papa roar from above. She couldn’t see his face, but Callie had never heard him roar like that before. She twisted around to see his hand clutched around her mama’s wrist and her hand clutched around his. Over the whipping wind, Callie heard him tell Mama he was going to lift them out. Callie could hear Uncle Stephen, too, and when she craned her neck, she saw he was lying on top of her papa’s legs so Papa wouldn’t fall.

Callie panicked and cried out when her wrist started to slip through Mama’s hand because of the rain. Her mama told her papa and Callie heard something in her mama’s voice she’d never heard before—fear. Papa yelled at Uncle Stephen to let him go so he could jump down and get them. But Uncle Stephen wouldn’t get off Papa’s legs and her papa roared at her mama, “Don’t let go!”

But Mama said, “She’s going to fall, Alexander!”

That was the first time Callie ever heard her papa beg. She would never forget it. More than how it felt to be dangling there, soaking wet and afraid, she’d remember her papa’s voice.

“Don’t let go, Amanda! Promise me! Don’t! Let! Go!”

Then her mama made the saddest sound she’d ever heard. Callie remembered thinking that the last roar she’d heard from her papa sounded like he was being eaten by a pack of wild animals as her mama wrapped her body around her, and they fell.