Chapter Twenty-Eight
Luke was waiting for me at the Everest Base Camp signs with a pair of skis already strapped to his pack and the skis for me leaning against a rock next to him. He must have grabbed them from the Swedish camp on his way back from Kala Pattar yesterday.
“See, one day to wait wasn’t so bad,” I teased when I got to him.
I longed for his familiar voice and accent to wrap around me like the embrace he couldn’t give me out here in the open, but he hardly reacted, which was weird.
I shrugged it off as I bent down to lash my skis to my backpack. “So, I found out something interesting yesterday.”
“What?”
“Doc and Dad were a thing.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean, yeah? This is a big deal!”
“They aren’t anymore,” he said.
“Yes, as I found out yesterday. You knew they were a couple?”
“Well, not for sure, but I’d always assumed.”
“And you never said anything to me?”
“I assumed you knew.”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s not that big of a deal.”
My internal alarm went off, and I bit my nails anxiously. It was unlike Luke not to play along with me, but he started coughing, so I didn’t push it. Once we began walking, I handed him one of the toasted bagels with cream cheese I’d made at the big top. As soon as we finished them, he picked up the pace. Quite a lot actually. Which was good because we had a long distance to cover today, and it would be best if we could get back before nightfall.
At Gorak Shep, we turned north, uphill and deeper into the Himalayas. Milam Peak was four miles ahead in the distance, barely a molehill compared to the jagged goddesses around it. It was a good five-thousand feet of vertical, though, a rival for any ski resort in terms of longest run. As we continued, Luke’s pace didn’t relent. I was feeling it today, especially in my injured shoulder, because the skis added an extra fifteen pounds to my pack.
After three miles, we veered off the trail, crossed a small stream, and ventured into unbroken snow. I was sweaty and winded, and we hadn’t even started on the steep part yet. Luke and I put on gaiters and screwed the plastic baskets onto the ends of our trekking poles to turn them into ski poles. Then, we unrolled skins along the bottoms of our skis that would enable us to walk up the slope on top of the snow.
Luke was still on turbocharge as we skinned up the slope, and I struggled to keep pace. When we paused for water about halfway up, he still wasn’t joking around or teasing or anything like that. The hairs on my arms pricked up nervously. Something was wrong.
We continued upward, step after step, with the typical uphill view of white, white, and more white, with the vastness of the panorama open to our backs. We reached the top of Milam Peak, which was windblown and had exposed rock in places. Mount Everest loomed in the distance, its jet stream plume flying in full force today. I briefly wondered if I would make it to the top this year and actually get that seventh summit.
Silently, we unclipped from our skis and switched our layers around for the descent. Luke broke a granola bar in two and tossed half to me. He smiled, but it came out more like a wince. Adrenaline shot through me, not in a good way. There was definitely something wrong.
“It’s beautiful today,” I started, testing him out.
He surveyed Milam’s south slope. “Yeah. It’s perfect. But it’s a long way back, so we should be probably start down soon.”
The volume on my internal alarm doubled.
My comment to Doc yesterday came echoing back at me: maybe he’s going to be the one to break my heart.
I told myself not to jump to conclusions. Just because he was acting oddly did not mean it had anything to do with me. Maybe there had been a confrontation with one of the Sherpas.
Sometimes, it was normal for us not to talk, I reminded myself as I choked down the granola bar. But it was not normal for us to be two feet apart like this with him barely managing to make eye contact with me.
We peeled the skins off our skis and walked over to the lip of the bowl on the south side to switch the rest of our gear for skiing down. I snuck a glance at him. His face was somber as he used one of his poles to knock the caked snow off his boot. Say something, Emily!
“So, uh, is something wrong?” I asked.
“You could say that.”
My stomach hit the floor. I knew instantly: the problem was related to me.
“What is it?”
He shook his head, saying nothing. He stepped over his skis and got ready to click in.
What in the heck? He wasn’t going to answer?
Before I could figure out a different way to come about this, he jammed a pole into the snow and looked right at me. “Doc was joking with me last night—about us.”
Oh.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tell her,” I said. “She was right there yesterday when you Circ-ed me from Kala Pattar—”
“I don’t care that Doc knows. She likes to gossip, but she wouldn’t about us. The thing that’s bothering me is something else she said. She mentioned your mom. And the way she said it, it was like…she wasn’t dead.”
My body froze while my mind went into a tailspin. Form some words, Emily, form some words.
“I’ve never told you that she’s dead.”
“So it’s true? Your mom is alive?”
I didn’t move for a minute, then I nodded my head.
He turned away from me faster than I could blink. “I almost called off skiing today, but I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt. Because surely there is no way you’ve been lying to me about this for ten years.”
“She was in prison! That’s why I came here to be with Dad. She might as well have been dead. It’s a technicality, really. I haven’t spoken to her since the day she was arrested.”
“A technicality? No. It’s a big deal. A really big deal.” I couldn’t see his eyes because he had on glacier glasses, but I didn’t need to, not with that icy tear in his voice.
He jammed his boots in the bindings and grabbed his ski poles.
“Hold on!” I begged.
“Nope, sorry, I can’t.” He wiggled his heels to test the bindings and then pushed over the slope without me.