Brooke woke up with a crick in her neck. It took her a minute to get her bearings and realize she was still on the floor in Hope's room. Thank goodness, she had turned on the heater last night before going to bed or she and Hope would have froze. She wondered if Ric and Bridget were warm enough and then it quickly dawned on her that they weren't cold anymore. They felt no pain, anymore. Laying the still sleeping Hope in her crib, Brooke ran downstairs and outside.
The cool winds hit her quickly and fiercely making her wish she had put on her robe. She walked over to the pool and dipped her toe into the waters. The coldness of the water made her shriek and jump away from the pool. If her pool was this cold, how much colder was the Pacific. How long could you possibly live in weather like this and with water this cold? She searched her heart, mind, and soul to see if she felt their heartbeats. Didn't they say there was a connection between mother and child that knew no bounds, and if so why couldn't she feel if they were alive or not? She continued the search, but came up empty, she couldn't feel them.
The chemist in her reared its head and laid out the facts. Sitting down, she wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked back and forth.
One, the accident occurred at 11:30 at night making the visibility five miles out in the ocean very poor.
But her mother's heart cried, they had the light of the moon and the stars to guide them. If it was good enough for the wise men, why not her babies?
Two, the scientist said, the escalade sunk, so they would have had to fight their way to the surface, if they didn't get off the boat in time and depending on what level they were on determined their fight.
In her heart, she knew that Bridget and Ric were sitting in the SUV listening to music. Ric would be playing Dr. Dre, Eminem, 50 Cents trying to convince Budge that hip-hop was the music to listen to. Bridget, of course, would be trying to slip Coldplay or John Mayer into the player, while Ric's "macho" self would tell her that he couldn't play such girly, sissy music in his SUV. Her chemist mind quickly moved away from this tangent.
Third, the extremely cold, choppy water combined with their exertion and possible disorientation, would have made it difficult to swim, probably impossible to even dog paddle until help came. The quickest a rescue squad could have made it was ten minutes and the latest forty-five minutes.
The mother in Brooke remembered: Ridge teaching them to swim; Ridge slowing his stroke so Ric could swim along side him during his evening laps; and Bridget's high school swimming trophies.
Four, if they were bleeding and if sharks were in the vicinity- - She immediately closed her mind to that line of thinking. Her brain was telling her, the facts concluded Bridget and Ric were gone.
They were in heaven. Although she wasn't deeply religious, she had taken Bridget and Ric to the local Presbyterian church regularly. She made sure they went to Sunday School so they could learn about God, Jesus, the angels, and all the prophets. She was now extremely glad that she had done that. She wouldn't allow herself to think about how they wouldn't be there to take Little Eric and Hope to the same church.
No, she couldn't think that way or she would lose it. She had to go inside and call the officers that had came by last night, see if they had found their bodies. Getting up, she wiped the dirt from her gown and went inside. She found their cards on the coffee table, where they left them last night. Grabbing the portable phone, she dialed the number. "Hello, this is Brooke Logan." She needed her babies' bodies. "Did you find them?"