He Didn’t Reach for Me

My husband looked straight at me before he pushed me.

That is the part I remember most clearly.

Not the wind. Not the snow hitting my face. Not even the feeling of my boots sliding backward over the frozen ground.

His face.

Brandon was standing less than three feet away from me on a trail in Glacier National Park, his hood pulled tight around his head. There was snow caught in his eyebrows.

I had one hand under my stomach.

I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant.

“Brandon, stop.”

He didn’t answer.

He put both hands against my shoulders.

Then he shoved.

I remember reaching for his jacket.

My fingers caught nothing.

The ground disappeared beneath my boots, and for one strange second, I could still see him standing above me.

Then I fell.

I didn’t fall all the way to the bottom.

Maybe twenty feet down, maybe more, my body hit a narrow shelf of rock buried under snow. My right side struck first.

The pain knocked the air out of me.

I lay there with my cheek pressed into snow, unable to breathe.

My first thought wasn’t about Brandon.

It was the baby.

I put both hands around my stomach.

“Come on, Liam.”

We had already chosen his name.

“Move for me.”

Nothing.

I waited.

The wind moved through the trees below me.

Then I felt it.

One small push against the inside of my stomach.

I closed my eyes.

Above me, I heard Brandon call my name.

“Victoria!”

For half a second, I thought he was going to help me.

Then I heard something else.

A woman’s voice.

I couldn’t make out the words.

I tried to lift my head.

Snow had already begun collecting on the shoulders of my coat.

“Victoria!” Brandon shouted again.

His voice sounded different now.

Louder.

Performative.

Then quieter voices.

I recognized the woman.

Gretchen Vance.

Brandon’s executive assistant.

I had met her dozens of times.

She had brought a bottle of wine to our house at Christmas. She had sent flowers when my mother had surgery. Two months earlier, she’d stood in my kitchen with one hand on my stomach and asked when Liam was due.

I couldn’t understand why she was on the mountain.

Then the wind shifted.

And I heard Brandon clearly.

“She couldn’t survive that.”

Gretchen said something I missed.

“I checked,” he said. “There’s no way down from there.”

I stopped trying to move.

I listened.

“What about the baby?” Gretchen asked.

There was a pause.

“Gretchen.”

“I’m asking.”

“You know why we did this.”

My fingers tightened around the front of my coat.

The snow underneath my cheek had started melting from my skin.

Gretchen lowered her voice, but I still caught the next words.

“Fifty million is a lot of money, Brandon.”

He answered immediately.

“Exactly.”

I stared at the rock six inches from my face.

Fifty million.

Three years earlier, Brandon had convinced me to increase my life insurance after his company took on several large loans.

He had called it financial planning.

I hadn’t thought much about it.

My family had money. I had inherited investment assets after my father died, and Brandon handled most of our long-term financial paperwork.

He had told me the policy protected Liam and him if anything happened to me.

I signed it.

Fifty million dollars.

Above me, Gretchen said, “We need to go.”

Their footsteps moved away.

Neither of them called 911.

Neither of them looked for a way to reach me.

My husband had just walked away from me in a snowstorm.

And he expected the mountain to finish what he had started.

The Red Strap

There was a red strap hanging from my backpack.

I could see it beside my left hand.

Brandon had bought that backpack for me because my regular one no longer fit comfortably around my stomach. He’d adjusted the straps himself in our hotel room that morning.

Now the red nylon was the brightest thing around me.

Everything else was white, gray, or black.

I pulled on it until the backpack came closer.

My phone was inside.

The screen was cracked.

No signal.

I tried 911 anyway.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

My right leg hurt when I moved it, so I stopped.

I checked the time.

1:17 p.m.

I didn’t know how long I had already been lying there.

Liam moved again.

“Okay.”

My voice sounded weak.

“We’re still here.”

I don’t remember every minute after that.

I remember putting my phone inside my coat because the battery was dropping quickly in the cold.

I remember forcing myself to flex my fingers.

I remember snow collecting on the red strap until I kept brushing it clean because I was afraid a rescue team might pass above me and miss it.

Mostly, I remember listening.

Every few minutes I expected to hear Brandon coming back.

He never did.

At 2:06, I heard something mechanical in the distance.

At first I thought it was wind.

Then it became louder.

A helicopter.

I grabbed the red strap and pulled the backpack across the snow.

I waved it.

The helicopter disappeared behind the ridge.

I kept waving anyway.

“Here!”

My throat hurt.

“I’m here!”

It came back.

This time it slowed.

I saw it turn.

Someone had seen me.

I started crying then, but quietly. I didn’t have enough energy for anything else.

The rescue itself happened in pieces.

A man in a helmet came down on a line. He knelt beside me and asked my name.

“Victoria Prescott.”

“Victoria, I’m Aaron. Don’t try to stand.”

“My baby.”

“We’re going to take care of both of you.”

He checked my stomach and asked me questions.

Had I fallen?

Did I know how far?

Had I lost consciousness?

I grabbed the front of his jacket.

“I didn’t fall.”

He leaned closer.

“What?”

“My husband pushed me.”

His expression changed.

“Your husband?”

“Brandon Prescott. He pushed me.”

Aaron looked toward the ridge.

Then back at me.

“Okay. I heard you.”

I held onto him.

“He thinks I’m dead.”

That was the first time I said it out loud.

Aaron didn’t ask me to explain.

He only nodded.

“Let’s get you off this mountain.”

When they lifted me, I looked down once.

I shouldn’t have.

The drop below the ledge went farther than I could see through the snow.

I closed my eyes and held the red backpack strap in one hand until someone inside the helicopter took it from me.

Brandon Reported an Accident

At the hospital in Kalispell, everyone moved quickly.

They cut away part of my clothing. They checked Liam’s heartbeat. They examined my leg and ribs and kept asking whether I felt contractions.

A nurse placed a monitor across my stomach.

Then the room filled with the sound I had been waiting for.

Liam’s heartbeat.

Fast.

Steady.

I covered my face with both hands.

The nurse touched my wrist.

“He’s doing well.”

A deputy arrived before I was moved upstairs.

His name was Mark Ellison.

He pulled a chair beside the bed.

“Mrs. Prescott, your husband contacted park authorities.”

I looked at him.

“When?”

“About forty minutes ago.”