There'd been some speculation around the dinner table at the time about what might be inside the yawning grotto high on the side of the tree trunk.

"Baby racc.o.o.ns, maybe."

"Or squirrels."

"No, a honeycomb! Like in Winnie-the-Pooh."

"If there's honey, there'd be a million bees too."

The branch just below the open cavity was as broad as a park bench and didn't feel precarious at all. It just felt wonderfully skysc.r.a.per high like being on the third-floor balcony at Nonny's condo, but with your own gra.s.sy pasture below and your own house just on the other side of the cattle gate. The girls weren't afraid of falling; they fully expected to go down the same way they went up. So they sat for a long while, taking in the last of the sunshine, discussing all sorts of things. I didn't push them to confide in me about the particulars of their private conversation, but I would have loved to be a little squirrel up there in the branches, eavesdropping on these two sweet sisters swinging their feet and talking about life.

When the dry branch groaned beneath them, they froze for a moment, looking at each other with wide eyes and slightly open mouths, neither one of them daring to take a breath. They looked down at the soft brown gra.s.s thirty feet below. Suddenly it looked p.r.i.c.kly and pocked with jagged rocks, littered with sharp sticks and jutting deadfall.

"It's okay," said Abbie. "When I was up here with-"

The branch shifted with an abrupt crack, and the girls screamed.

"Abbie!"

"Annabel. Don't. Move."

"We need to get down. Abbie, I want to get down."

Far below their feet, Cypress paced and whined. Adelynn looked up at them and called out, "What's the matter with you? When are y'all coming down?"

Abbie swallowed and called down to her, "Don't be scared, Adelynn. We're coming down. Right now. We're coming down. We're okay. Anna, can you..."

"I think so."

They carefully got to their feet. The branch seemed to exhale an agonized sigh. A moment before, they were sitting on a castle bridge. Now it felt brittle and tilted, and that far end of the bridge seemed very, very far away.

"Anna, you have to go back that way." Abbie pointed to the slender tree behind her. "Let me get around you and get my weight off the branch. I'll go down over there." She nodded in the direction of the craggy tree trunk. "Just scooch over so I can get around you. Go, Anna. Move over by the trunk where it's safer. I'm right behind you."

They inched toward the gaping wound left by the fallen branch.

"Okay," said Abbie, "step into the cave for a sec so I can get around you."

"No." Annabel shook her head. "I don't want to."

"Annabel, just do it. It's only for a second. I need to get on that side, and then I'll help you get down."

"Abbie, no! I don't want to!"

Another sharp crack. Another arthritic sigh.

"Annabel! Just go! Go now!"

"I don't want to. Abbie... I don't like this," Anna whimpered, genuinely afraid now, but she set one foot on the jagged edge of the opening. Bits of bark and rotted wood broke away when she put weight on it. She grasped the side of the opening, peering inside. The sun was close to the horizon now. She could see nothing but deep shadows in the musty grotto.

"Anna, move. Hurry," Abbie said, inching toward the tree trunk.

"How deep is it?"

"I don't know, maybe a foot? How deep does it look?"

"A foot... I guess..."

"Anna, come on! Just go."

Anna gingerly stepped her other foot onto the edge, and it instantly gave way. She grasped at the other side with her hands. Leaning across the gaping hole, fighting to hold herself up, she felt the ledge crumbling beneath her feet, felt the strength sifting from her arms.

Annabel managed to hold herself there for a moment. But in that moment, she realized there was nothing but darkness below her. And the next moment, she was gone.

Chapter Three.

Because of the tender mercy of our G.o.d, With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, To shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death To guide our feet in the way of peace.

Luke 1:7879 THIS IS WHAT I know now about the cottonwood tree: It is related to the aspen and poplar, with quaking leaves that turn brilliant gold in autumn. It is one of the largest trees native to North America, but its seeds are only half as wide as the head of a pin. The female cottonwood has blossoms with fluffy white tufts that give the tree its name. It is armored with thick, corklike bark, able to withstand prairie fires, brutal drought, and bitter cold. So the cottonwood stands strong, green and growing, even as age and disease decay the heartwood deep inside the limbs and trunk. The fallen branch and the open wound we later learned were the signs.

As Annabel dropped away into the darkness, the tree revealed its secret at last: From the jagged grotto to the gnarled roots thirty feet below, it was hollow.

She says she hit her head three times on the way down, and this is consistent with the findings of a CT scan. With the facts in front of me now, I see it all with sickening clarity. Sometimes at night, it replays in my head, a dark twist on Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Annabel plummeted headfirst down the long vertical corridor, flailing for any kind of handhold. The first of the blunt blows to her head might have happened as she pitched forward or at some point as her body hurtled past misshapen walls and jutting knots. The second may have been her skull glancing off a burled ledge that protruded eight inches or so inside the tree roughly five feet from the bottom. The third-oh, G.o.d, it's hard to think about-happened when she hit the ground.

Her little body folded on impact. Fragments of bark, rotting wood, and dry moss rained down in her wake. Heaped in a distorted fetal position, Annabel lay at the bottom of the black, airless shaft.

"ANNA? ANNA, ARE YOU okay?"

High on the unstable cottonwood branch, Abbie inched forward until she was able to clutch the side of the opening where Annabel had disappeared.

"What's wrong?" Adelynn called from below. "What happened?"

"Annabel, are you stuck?"

Leaning forward as far as she dared, Abbie peeped over the crumbled edge into the cavity. She could see that it was more than a few feet deep, but the sun was low on the horizon now; she could see only shadows inside the tree.

"Anna? Anna, are you okay?" Abbie called. "Annabel? Anna. You better not be messing with me."

The only answer was the soft murmur of the cottonwood leaves.

Abbie squeezed her eyes shut. Think. Think. Think.

Scrambling across the bridge branch, she swung down through the branches, dropped to the gra.s.s, and lit out running. She pounded across the pasture toward the house, leaped the cattle gate, and rounded the drive. I don't think she even paused at the back door. Instead of coming in to get me, she ducked into the garage, s.n.a.t.c.hed a headlamp flashlight from Kevin's work area, and ran back to the cottonwood grove.

I don't believe it was her intention to hide anything from me; it was her intention to fix it. She would fix it, she was thinking, because this was fixable, and it would be okay after she fixed it, and it would just be this big ol' story: This one time, my sister fell inside a tree! How insanely weird is that? And I was all, say what? OMG! And I ran all the way to the garage and got a flashlight and climbed up there again, and I pulled her out, and she was okay, and we were all like, OMG, like... that happened...

"Annabel? Anna, I'm back! Hang on! It's okay. I'm coming."

Abbie scaled the tree and held her breath as she scrambled across the bridge. She clicked the headlamp on and held it over the abyss. The shadows gave way to deeper shadows. The whorled innards of the tree seemed to disappear into nothingness.

"Anna? Annabel!" Abbie kept calling, her heart pounding in her throat now. The cavity echoed back at her like a dry well. "Anna, please... please, answer me."

When there was no answer, Abbie swallowed hard and dropped the headlamp into the abyss, terrified of what she would see but needing to know. She watched it fall, down and down and down, clattering against the rotted wood, offering a few frightening glimpses of the endless chute far below, getting smaller and smaller, like a train disappearing down a long train track, until it struck something solid and flickered out. Abbie stared into the emptiness, stunned disbelief blossoming to panic.

"No... how can that... No, no, no... Annabel!"

"Abbie?" Adelynn was getting scared. "What happened? Is Anna okay?"

"She fell. She fell down in there. She's in there."

Cold horror. Consequences. It was all crashing down on Abbie. But now she knew what she had to do.

"Annabel, hold on," she called down into the dark. "Hold on, Anna. I will be right back. Do you hear me? I'm going to get Mommy. I'm coming right back, Anna, and I won't leave you."

Abbie clawed across the wide bridge and swung down through the branches again, but this time she missed the last one and dropped several feet to the uneven ground. Pain knifed upward from a hard twist of her ankle, but Abbie was already running, screaming, "Mommy! Mommy, come quick!"

SOMETHING TALKY WAS ON the television in the bedroom. I had my back to it but was half listening to the background chatter while I sorted and folded the mountain of clean laundry into neat stacks on the bed. I had my system set up: Kevin's jeans and shirts, my jeans and shirts, Abbie's jeans and shirts, Anna's jeans and shirts, Adelynn's jeans and shirts, girl socks, mom socks, dad socks, pj's, bedding, bath towels, dish towels. I'd been moving it along like a machine since early afternoon, and I was almost done.

Supper was the next box on the flowchart, so that was probably on my mind. I don't specifically remember, but it was that time of day. Kevin would be home in ninety minutes or so. The girls had been outside for about an hour, but there was no need to call them in if they were having fun. The sun was setting, so they'd drift in soon enough.

I didn't hear Abbie screaming as she bolted over the gate and up the driveway, but to be totally honest, I wouldn't have flipped out even if I did. As the mother of three farm-raised tomboys, one of whom was afflicted with a chronic, life-threatening health issue, it's only prudent for me to ration my panic. When I hear someone screaming, it could mean anything from a dislocated finger to "the dog licked my pizza crust." I've learned to a.s.sess the situation calmly before I click into crisis mode.

"Mommy!" Abbie burst through the door. "Mommy, you gotta... gotta come with me-right now. You gotta come outside."

"Just a sec," I said absently. "Let me finish this, and I'll be right out."

"No, Mommy, now. Anna's stuck in the tree. She's in the tree."

Something in her voice made me look up. Abbie gripped her side, breathing hard from running, her face streaked with dirt and sweat. A flutter of unease went through my chest. Abbie was frantic, but what she was saying-stuck in the tree-I was thinking stuck in a tree, like you would a.s.sume a kid or a kitten or a kite would be stuck in a tree.

"Abbie, calm down," I said firmly. "Tell me what's wrong. Is she hurt? Is she bleeding?"

"No! I mean... I... I don't know. She's trapped."

"Well, I can't climb up there. She just needs help working her way down. Can you help her figure it out?"

"Mommy, you don't understand!" Abbie seized my arm. "You have to come out right now. Come on."

"All right, calm down, sister. I mean it. Let me get my shoes on."

"No! Now! You have to hurry!"

With Abbie dragging at my arm, I managed to step into shoes on my way out the door. I was still operating on the a.s.sumption that Anna had climbed a little too high and was unable-or maybe just unwilling-to climb down. The sun dipped into the haze on the meadow as we hustled across the yard toward the cottonwood grove where Cypress barked and danced in nervous circles. I scanned the high branches, calling, "Annabel? Annabel, where are you? Abbie, I don't see her. Where is she?"

At the base of the tall cottonwood, Adelynn was on her hands and knees. She'd found a piece of metal pipe and was gouging desperately at the ground, clawing the loose dirt with her little hands.

"I'm digging her out, Mommy! I'm digging her out!"

It would have made more sense if she'd told me she was digging a hole to China. I swallowed hard and kept my voice as calm as possible.

"Girls... where is Annabel?"

"There!" In sheer frustration, they shrieked at me with one voice, stabbing grimy fingers toward the bottom of the trunk. "She is in-the-tree!"

Abbie still had a tight grip on my arm. She pulled me to the far side of the cottonwood and pointed to the gaping mouth thirty feet up.

"There!" She was beside herself now, pleading with me. "Mommy, do you see? She fell in there and went to the bottom."

It was incomprehensible. I didn't want to comprehend it. No part of me-not my brain, not my heart, not the laundry-folding Robo Mommy-no part of me wanted to accept this. But I recognized that pleading in Abbie's voice, that aching frustration, that pound-your-head-against-the-wall infuriating feeling of trying to make someone accept that all their a.s.sumptions are wrong, that the least dependable thing in the world is everything you thought you knew five minutes ago.

During our long journey to get a solid diagnosis for Anna, doctors told me again and again, "When you hear hoofbeats, you think horses, not zebras." Which is really just a catchall excuse for lazy, inside-the-box thinking. I grew to hate that old saying with a pa.s.sion, but that moment in the cottonwood grove, I was thinking exactly the same way.

Maybe it's because we see these choices-consciously or subconsciously-and it's human nature to choose the one that's less frightening.

Choice A: This giant tree, which I had a.s.sumed was a solid object, is actually a giant throat that just swallowed my child.

Choice B: Someone is playing a horrible prank on me.

My brain simply refused to let go of choice B.

When Anna first presented with acute symptoms of pseudo-obstruction motility disorder-a terrible distention of her belly along with intense pain-we made numerous trips to the pediatrician and then a GI specialist, and they always sent her on her way with the basic workup and go-away over-the-counter symptom treatments like Motrin and MiraLAX. Ordinary tummy trouble stuff. But I had begun to understand that this was no ordinary tummy trouble. I wasn't willing to accept that label and watch her suffer. I kept pushing for a real diagnosis, so when no obvious diagnosis readily presented itself, the real trouble, they decided, was me. Given the choice between (1) mommies can be kinda crazy or (2) doctors don't know everything, many doctors in my experience go for option 1.

After one particularly grueling round of tests, a GI specialist happily summed up the non-results with a broad, "Good news, Mom! Everything's fine."

Six-year-old Anna huddled on my lap, exhausted and in pain. I stared blankly at the doctor's smiling face and echoed, "Everything's... fine?"

"That's good news, Mom." His smile faded to a stern scold. "That's something to be happy about."

"Look at her," I said. "She is not fine. Please. You have to help her."

"I've palpated her and felt no sign of obstruction. We've done blood work, upper and lower GI testing-look, sometimes moms just worry too much. They get nervous and..." He studied me for a moment, then said carefully, "Sometimes, a mom can have a disorder called Munchausen's..."

For a moment, it seemed like he was about to go on and explain to me what that means, but I'm pretty sure he could tell from the expression on my face that I knew dang well that Munchausen by proxy meant I was somehow making my child sick to gratify my own need for attention. He wisely came down off his high horse. At the time, I was stricken with frustration-rage, to be honest-that he would even imagine I could hurt my child that way. I lay in bed that night, praying for a way to forgive, a way to move on and continue the fight for Anna's well-being. She was in misery, weak and vomiting. I made repeated calls to the doctor's office, telling them, "She's getting worse." They kept telling me the bowel prep for those tests always makes children feel sick. She's fine, they kept telling me, she's fine, she's fine, she's fine. That bowel prep, yeah, that sure can make a kid sick, but she's fine.

Late that night, Kevin and I mobilized care for Adelynn and Abbie (our great friends Nina and Paul Cash, who met us in the front yard like tag-team wrestlers), and we rushed Annabel to the hospital. Triage theories boiled down to the usual: "Think horses, not zebras."

Long story short, I lost it. I finally found inside me that roar G.o.d gave the mama bear. I don't know what all I said, but I said it plain and in his face, and I made the point that a normal test result doesn't equal a healthy child, and a doctor not understanding something is not the same as that thing not existing.

"Fine," the ER doc huffed. "We'll do a few tests. If that's what it takes to make you happy, Mom."