This is the fourth chapter in a series. Here you can read chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3.
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Two Years Later
It ended with a whimper, not a bang.
David never had the affair he imagined with Beth. He never stopped being a faithful father to Abigail. He simply shut down, like a stomach that’s gone too long without food and forgets what hunger is. He withered and didn’t feel it. Feeling had been gone for a while.
Then Abigail died.
He stood at the airport as her body was lowered from the plane. The world swam. After the funeral he sat for hours at his desk staring at the empty chair where she used to sprawl and tell him stories. He would reach for the light, forget why, then sit in the dark. The ministries he had used to escape—talks, meetings, folding chairs—suddenly weighed like lead. He could keep doing them dutifully, if duty still had a point. But Abigail was gone. If there was any verdict on his years of effort, that was it.
He told Hannah he wanted a divorce. It was the worst time to say it—she was shattered. But she wasn’t surprised. He had been retreating for years—long nights at the computer, longer walks after dinner, fewer words. Even without the signs, she would have seen it coming. She had always seen him more clearly than he saw himself.
A friend offered them a weekend at his cabin on Donner Lake. They accepted, pretending it was “time away,” not a soft goodbye. Neither was ready to explain anything to anyone at church.
It was the coldest winter in forty years. The thought of getting snowed in should have stopped them. David went because cold sounded better than familiar rooms full of Abigail.
They ate dinner at the small wooden table. Knives touched plates. Nothing else moved.
Hannah set her fork down. “David, please talk to me.”
“About what?” He kept cutting the chicken that clearly didn’t need more cutting.
“How are you doing with all of this? You haven’t said a word since—”
“What is there to say?”
“This has to be—”
“Has to be what?” He looked up and his eyes quivered. The words came out jagged. “Has to be sad because my daughter died and I wasn’t there? Angry because I filled her head with saints and martyrdom and she believed me?” He swallowed hard. “There. That’s how it feels.”
She reached for him across the table and stopped halfway. “Then say that. Don’t go silent. Don’t go alone.”
He stared at her hand resting on the table. “There’s nothing talking will fix. She’s gone. I won’t see her again. That’s it.”
He threw the utensils down, stood, grabbed his coat.
“David—”
“I’m going for a walk.”
He stepped into the night. A flurry drifted down, the kind that looks harmless until it blinds you. He moved downhill toward the frozen edge of the lake, snow squeaking under his boots.
Hannah pulled on her coat and followed. “David! Don’t do this!”
He stepped onto the ice. It held. He took two more steps. It creaked—an old house settling.
Hannah reached the shore and called, breath white in the air. “Please. Come back.”
He turned, his face pale blue in the moonlight. “What?”
She stopped a few yards away on the ice. “I know you don’t want to hear this. I just… I need you. You’re the only one who knows how she laughed. How she prayed. You’re the only one who knows her like I do.” She blinked tears from her lashes. “You’re my best friend.”
The lake was quiet enough to hear the snow fall. Her hair, gone white too soon, glowed against the dark. For a second, something in him softened.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m done.”
She absorbed it without flinching. She had seen him pulling away for years—the slow closing of doors, each one gentle, final. She turned to go back.
Three paces. The ice cracked.
The sound was a rifle-shot under her feet and then the world gave way. The water seized her, a fist around her ribs. She screamed and clawed at the jagged edge, gulping air as it burned her throat. Her arms banged the ice. The shock stole her breath; her fingers wouldn’t close.
David slipped and stumbled toward the opening, then dropped to his stomach, spreading his weight, reaching down. “I’ve got you! Take my arm!”
She latched on, nails digging into his sleeve. He pulled, and the ice under his chest groaned. A fracture zigzagged toward him.
“Hold—hold—” He stopped and flattened himself, panting.
She kicked, boots heavy, soaked clothes dragging her down. The cold was more than cold now; it was a command. After a minute—maybe less—her legs began to numb. Her hands turned to blocks.
“Help!” David yelled toward the dark shore. Wind whispered back. No one.
He tried lifting again, harder. The lip of ice crumbled, and she slipped lower. Her eyes widened—not panic now, but something like acceptance. Another thirty seconds and she would be too weak to hold on.
David’s chest pressed against the ice. He could feel the cold coming through the bone. The part of him that made decisions went fuzzy. He yelled again. Nothing answered.
“I’m not letting you go,” he said, frantic. “Do you hear me?”
She couldn’t answer. Her lips were turning gray. Her grip loosened in tiny increments.
Memories flickered: their first date outside Starbucks, her face when he proposed, her hand in his at Abigail’s recital, a thousand small looks they only ever gave each other. You fool, he thought. You had the best of friends and you didn’t know it.
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On the shore, two figures stood in the snow. God, hands in his coat pockets. Abigail, brilliant and young, watching the black mouth in the ice.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“I wanted you to see,” God said.
“Are they going to die?”
“All die,” He said simply. “Some die once. Others die forever.”
“Is there anyone to help them?”
“Yes,” He said. “But they are far.”
“She’s going to drown! Someone has to—”
“She?” God shook his head gently. “My dear, she is not the one in danger. He is.”
Abigail looked again, not with the eyes that saw moonlight and snow, but with the eyes that had opened after death. She peered past their bodies. Her father was on the brink of something worse than water. A darkness coiled close to his ear, murmuring. The words were slick and efficient:
Let go. You’re free now. She’ll pull you in. You deserve this. You did this. This is the ending you’ve earned. There is no help.
“Do you see?” God asked. “How precarious his heart is?”
“Yes, Lord. But my mother—”
“Your mother’s life was hidden with me,” He said. “No one saw the cost it took her to rise each morning, to care for you, to keep going when joy was thin. I did. She persevered. What she is now is a woman calling her husband back from the edge. Your mother will die in peace.”
Abigail kept her eyes on David. His mind tumbled; the whispers filled every crack where prayer used to live. The ice groaned again. Hannah’s grip slipped another finger’s width.
David squeezed his eyes shut. This is the right end, the voice said. This is fitting. Your life was a waste. He saw scenes—his sharp tones with Hannah, his needless demands, all the times he chose ministry over her. He saw Abigail—piggyback up the stairs, wobbly bicycle, the airport when she left, the coffin when she returned.
It was too much. He felt himself letting go.
Something small and desperate broke through his numbness. Almost without meaning to, he whispered, “Oh, Abby… Abby—pray for me.”
The words were barely sound on his lips, but they struck like lightning to where Abigail stood. She lifted her face to God.
He nodded, once.
Abigail stepped onto the ice, her rosary tight around her hand. The beads cut into her palm, but it only made her grip stronger. She strode toward the shadow crouched by her father’s ear.
The demon hissed and sprang at her, teeth bared. Abigail caught him mid-charge, gripped his arm, and with a surge of strength hurled him across the ice. He skidded hard, screeching, claws scraping sparks against the frozen surface.
She walked after him without hurry, deliberate, unstoppable. He scrambled to rise, but she planted her boot down on his head, pinning him flat.
Leaning close, her voice cut like steel. “Leave.”
The darkness thinned to a thread, then to breath, then to nothing. Only the night remained.
Abigail knelt by her father. “Dad.”
He looked up and saw her, and for a wild second he thought he must be dying or dreaming. But she was as solid as the ice—eyes bright, smile soft.
“Kick,” she said, hand on his shoulder. “Flatten out. Pull her elbows onto the ice. Kick and slide.”
He did as she said. He spread his weight, braced his elbows, angled Hannah’s arms onto the edge.
Hannah kicked, weakly at first, then with whatever remained. Her elbows caught, belly sliding to the surface. The ice creaked but held. David pulled, inch by inch, keeping his chest flat, not standing, not thinking beyond the next inch.
They rolled away from the hole, both of them sprawled on the hard sheet, gasping. Hannah’s body shook violently as shock hit her; her teeth chattered uncontrollably. David gathered her, pulled her coat around her, put his hands under her armpits to warm, kept talking even when she couldn’t hear.
“Stay with me. Hannah? Stay. Stay.”
They lay there a moment longer. Snow fell light as breath. Off somewhere, a branch cracked.
When David looked again, the shore was empty. Only the wind.
He pressed his forehead to Hannah’s and started to cry. “I’m here,” he whispered to her. “I’m here.”
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You should know I wrote this with the help of ChatGPT. I explain how I use and don’t use it here.
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