Everything happened as if in slow motion.
The main suspension cable to my right lashed through the air and snapped under the tension. The bridge didn’t collapse immediately, but it jerked violently, tilting about forty-five degrees to the left.
“Mom!” Emma screamed.
The sudden tilt threw us against the remaining railing. The rotten wood beneath Mark’s feet crumbled. His leg fell into the hole where the plank had once been. He grabbed the wire, his face contorted in pain.
“Don’t move!” Mark roared, his voice cracking. “Nobody move!”
In that instant, the bridge ceased to be a bridge. It became a tilted, trembling, suspended structure, clinging to us as if by skeleton.
The remaining cable groaned deeply, the friction of metal on metal making a sound I felt in my bones. The whole thing swayed in the wind, forcing us to grip the icy iron even tighter.
“Mom… look at the anchor.”
“The anchor…” Caleb whispered, his voice trembling. “Mom, look at the anchor.”
I turned my head toward the shore from which we had come. The concrete block that held the remaining rope was shifting in the mud. The rain had softened the ground. The roots of the tree around which the structure was wrapped were beginning to break.
We were shifting.
