Chapter Thirty-Three
My tears were sorrow, but they were also relief. My back was to Luke, whose back was to me, and I knew the roaring wind would easily cover my sniffles, so I didn’t bother trying to stop.
There was nothing left for me anywhere on earth. No home. No future. There was no one in my court, on my team. This was my truth. And it would be okay. It would somehow, sometime become okay.
Something hard and heavy nudged my hip. It was one of Luke’s water bottles. I picked it up and drank gratefully but was careful to take only just enough to quench my immediate thirst.
“Talk to me, Emily,” he said.
He was saying this only because he felt sorry for me because of my crying. Out of pride, I was tempted to thank him for the water and crawl into my sleeping bag. To remain alone rather than risk further heartache.
But I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted him. And even though it was from pity right now, I had his attention.
Fight for it.
This was my chance, possibly my only chance, to make things right. I pivoted on my sleeping bag and lifted my soggy face to him. If he wanted true and unprotected, this was what it looked like.
“My very first reaction when you showed up in Tengboche was that I had a big problem on my hands,” I said. “Because my feelings for you were every bit as strong as they were two years ago. Stronger, even. They overpowered me, and I didn’t know how I was going to function around you and keep that fact hidden.”
Luke’s water bottle was still sitting on my sleeping bag. I twisted the lid back and forth. “No matter what I’ve ever said or didn’t say, I hope you understand that none of it was intentional, and none of it was an indicator of my true feelings.”
I stilled my fingers on the bottle, closed my eyes briefly, then lifted them to Luke. His face was emotionless, but at least he was holding my gaze.
I reminded myself of the tears on his face at the Y in the trail. I loved him. Keep going. Fight for him.
“You knew you’d be seeing me for months before you got here, but I had no idea I’d ever see you again. When you came back, you were so accomplished, and I felt like a straight-up failure-to-launch, a troll living in my dad’s basement. You were out experiencing the real world—a world I’m intimidated of going back to—and leading expeditions of your own. And even if I thought there was the remotest hope of my feelings for you being mutual, until recently, I thought you had a girlfriend.”
I paused to take a breath. “You are the biggest happiness I’ve ever had. The biggest heartbreak, too. I just want to see that somewhere in your eyes there is still hope. That you don’t hate me. That there’s at least still a friend in there somewhere.”
When I stopped to search his eyes, instead of hope, his face was even more statue-like than before. I looked down, ashamed.
I almost didn’t catch it when he started to speak, because his voice was so quiet. I had to scoot closer to hear him over the wind. The familiar, woodsy smell of his deodorant overwhelmed me.
“I’m sorry I’m angry and that I’ve been awful. You mean the world to me, but I feel like it’s all been an illusion. I’m going to lose you again in a few weeks, and I don’t know what to do.”
The finality and raw emotion in his voice renewed my tears. This time, he put his arms around me gently. It was too loose, but I’d take it.
“Tell me about your mom,” he said.
I took a few breaths.
“Dad and I didn’t set out to deceive people about her. It’s what people assumed, and we let them. It was just easier that way.”
“No, tell me about her. As in, what she was like.”
My chest clenched. “She was a lot different than me. She hated being outside. She liked perfume and makeup and dressing up.” And methamphetamine, I thought silently. “I was always getting in trouble. I was a hassle for her.”
“You? Getting in trouble?”
“Yeah, all the time. I was kind of sassy, and I would always get bored with the normal stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know. Dolls and cartoons. Tea sets. Dress-up. So I wandered off a lot and would get messy and muddy and ruin my clothes and lose my jacket and mittens. I was always climbing things I shouldn’t, and then I’d get hurt. There were lots of trips to urgent care.”
“I can’t picture it.”
“I changed.” My voice cracked.
Luke tightened his grip around me.
“There was a child protective services investigation against Amy once because I kept getting hurt. And because of that investigation, she almost got caught. See, she did meth. And she sold it. To minors, too.”
“And that’s when you changed.”
“No. It was only later, after she did get caught.”
“Emily…” He lifted his arms so that they were surrounding my shoulders protectively. “It blows my mind that we’ve been friends for ten years and I didn’t know any of this.”
“I’ve never talked about it to anyone. Not even to Dad.”
Even now, I didn’t like thinking about it, let alone talking about it or rehashing any of the details. It contained such ugly truths.
“You never talk about your dad, either,” I said.
“None of us talk about the dead.”
“But still.”
“Mom told me not to. Before you even got to Tengboche the first time.”
“Because you thought my mom was dead?”
“No. Because it was Greg’s expedition he died on.”
Oh, Luke. Internally, I wept for him.
“Mom didn’t want you to feel bad about it.”
I slid my hand beneath his, and we threaded our fingers together.
“It’s okay. I was only five. Pasang wasn’t even born yet. I have very few memories of him.”
“But you have your name, and you hear that a hundred times a day.”
He nodded slowly. “My dad loved working in the mountains, or so Mom tells me. There were a few years when he had the international record for most Everest summits. Because of his paid work with the Western expeditions. From what Mom has said, I’m sure he would have loved to have been a sponsored climber like your dad, but this was almost twenty years ago. The possibility probably never even crossed his mind.”
An extra strong gust of wind pushed the tent low enough to tap Luke’s head before it sprang back. I was still not back in my sleeping bag after gathering snow, and I hadn’t realized that I was shivering. I slid out of his embrace to crawl in for warmth.
We sat side by side, sleeping bags up to our shoulders. Was it okay to scoot closer to him? I did, and he didn’t move away. This was an improvement. I put my head on his shoulder, and he still didn’t move away. Instead he rested his yellow-hatted head on top of mine.
“How did your mom get caught?” he asked.
I exhaled. I’d never, ever told the story. I didn’t need to; the people directly affected by what happened already knew what had gone down.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, sensing my tension. I exhaled again, my heart racing like when I was on the edge of the collapsed snowbridge.
He unzipped the sides of our sleeping bags so we could hold hands.
“We were at my grandparents’ house,” I said. “Amy’s parents. In Port Townsend. They have a nice place, and we used to house-sit when they traveled. I loved it there because they lived out of town, in the woods. Amy always went on benders when we were there. She didn’t know what I was doing, and she didn’t care. I was free to roam.
“One day, I wandered too far, and it started to drizzle. And it was foggy, too. I had a rain jacket on but not rain boots. My pants and shoes were soaked almost immediately.
“And then it started to get dark. I was lost. And cold. Just when I was getting really scared, I somehow stumbled through the trees and onto a road.”
Tashi for me, but not for Amy.
“A driver stopped. I tried to figure out where I was so I could tell them how to get back to my grandparents’ house, but they took me to a fire station instead. Then the police came and drove me to my grandparents’ house. All the lights were off. They knocked, and no one answered. I told them the house was dark because my mom was sleeping and that I’d be fine, but their suspicion was already raised, and in America you don’t leave ten-year-olds home alone like that. I was scared because I thought I’d have to go back to the station with them, so I kept insisting Amy was home.”
Luke’s eyebrows bent inward with concern. He rubbed the back of my hand with his thumb.
“The door was unlocked, so they went in with me so I could show them my school picture on the wall to prove that I belonged there. But once they were inside, they searched the house. They found her in the guest bedroom. And her boyfriend. Or maybe he was one of her suppliers. She was passed out. He was, too. They woke them up. There were handcuffs. And they took both of them away.”
“Oh, Emily,” Luke said. He hugged me tightly.
“They took me to stay at a strange place. It was like an office building but with bunk beds. They gave me some other girl’s old pajamas to wear. They got ahold of my grandparents the next day, and I went back to their house. Then Dad got called off his K2 expedition to come get me, and you know the rest of the story.”
Luke didn’t say anything, and I was afraid to look at him. It was unnaturally dark in the tent for it being only three p.m., which made everything seem ominous.
“I’m a jerk,” he said. “I never even gave you a chance to explain.”
“I wouldn’t have told you back on Milam Peak. Not everything. I was too stunned.”
I thought about the day after Amy was arrested, how I stood in the shadows of the hallway, listening to my grandparents argue about what to do with me. They had been so angry. It was Amy they were mad at, but it felt like it was me who was in trouble.
“She was a terrible mother, and she was in the wrong that day and a thousand other days, but it will always be because of my wildness that she was caught and went to prison. I’m as much dead to her as she is to me.”
Luke cupped my jaw and turned me to look at him. His eyes were pleading. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could take back so many things I said earlier.”
With his hand still cupping my face, he leaned in, brushing my lips with the most tender of kisses.
It was just one kiss, but it was a kiss that meant the world to me. There was still so much between us that was complicated and tangled, but even more than his words, this kiss showed me that things between us could be repaired. There was hope.
Our radios crackled with Thom’s voice, then squealed with interference. I clicked mine off.
“…all guides report to the cook tent,” Thom finished on Luke’s radio.
We bundled up, and then helped the Sherpas check on the clients, put more stakes in the tents, and deliver hot tea, water, and dinner before the storm got worse. The temperature had dropped even more by the time Luke and I returned to our tent. We lay in our sleeping bags, pressed together for the illusion of warmth and to steady each other’s shivering as we attempted to sleep.
It was hard to tell when morning arrived because it took dawn a long time to make a dent in the thick clouds. Just as Luke and I were getting ready to check on clients again, Jim came on the radio, telling us the strongest part of the storm was about to hit and forbidding any of us from leaving our tents.
Luke and I ate granola bars and packages of dried fruit for breakfast as the wind battered the tent like football players in a game of tug-of-war. I don’t think anyone except Dad expected the storm to be this strong. Dad, who was surely biting his nails as he watched the grim progression of this storm.
We were in the best expedition tents money could buy, but in winds like this, there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t simply be snatched up and blown off the mountain.
There was nothing to do but lie and wait. It was so, so cold, and each gust of wind was stronger and louder. It was possibly the highest winds that I’d ever been in, and if I was nervous, I could only imagine how terrified the clients were. Of them all, Doc would be the most aware of the potential for devastation this storm had. From her many years at Everest ER, she knew intimately that climbing with a guided company was no guarantee of getting off this mountain alive.
At some point, Luke unzipped the top part of our sleeping bags so we could lie with our arms around each other.
I tucked tightly in to him, forcing myself to stop anticipating the lift and slide of the tent being torn loose. Luke wrapped himself farther around me, his head dipping down to press a firm, deliberate kiss on my cheek.
Our foreheads were touching now, my eyes closed to the warmth of his contact. Just for that moment, it was like the storm went silent and the tent was still and solid.
“I love you, Emily,” he said.
My heart surged. “I love you, too.”
We clung to each other as the winds picked up even more, punching the tent so flat that it bounced off our bodies. We lay and waited, praying that the clients would be okay.
The force of the wind yanked out one of the stakes. The corner of our tent came alive in the wind, lashing out against the storm like a half-rigid bullwhip. Then all we could do was pray that we’d be okay.