Chapter Eighteen
Her feet stayed dry all the way to the top of the mountain.
She found herself paying attention to what was around her on the second half of the hike, instead of wallowing in the internal world of her own discomfort. She felt a thrill every time she spotted a cluster of white or yellow or purple or pink, and she put out a hand to feel the softness of fern fronds.
The trees, too, were beautiful. They seemed ancient and wise, weathered and patient, and the scent of moss and pine sap was sharp and invigorating.
It seemed to wake her up somehow—and to give her a second wind of strength and endurance that carried her to the summit. Or maybe it was Sam’s spirit, encouraging her and cajoling her and reminding her of the story she’d told so long about this very place.
It was my first solo hike, and when I got to the top . . . well, you’ll see when you go. It’s the reason I decided to become a trek guide. There might be more famous mountains and spectacular views out there, but Owl Mountain is my mountain.
She’d only ever understood this part of Sam from a distance. Intellectually rather than emotionally. But now . . .
She was glad Caleb had made her do this.
The quotes he’d showed her echoed in her mind. It was amazing that even after reading about Anne Shirley a hundred times, there were still facets of the character she hadn’t appreciated. If that could be true of a fictional character, how much more true was it about real human beings? What else hadn’t she understood about her own sister?
Or Caleb?
She thought about what he’d told her last night and what they were doing now. His mother had walked out and his father had killed himself, and this was what Caleb had decided to do with his life.
This was his way of choosing light over darkness. He devoted himself to the natural world, and he helped others appreciate it, too.
The rain stopped when they were close to the summit, but Caleb didn’t look happy about it.
“There’s fog rolling in,” he said. “We won’t have much of a view.”
He was right. When they finally reached the top, the mist was so thick it felt like they were walled in on the rocky plateau.
She looked around. For all she could see, they might not have been on a mountaintop at all. There was just the tableland where they stood, dotted with boulders and bushes and stunted trees, and the prison of fog around them. The wind was strong and bitter cold, which somehow made the rocks and straggling spruce trees seem lonelier and more desolate.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I was hoping you’d get something spectacular as a reward for all your hard work.”
He set his pack down beside a large boulder, but she kept hers on. He headed for the leeward side of the plateau, and she followed.
They stood there for a while, just looking out at the white wall of cloud, until finally Caleb turned to her.
“This is the best place,” he said. “You’ll want the wind at your back.”
She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
“The best place for what?”
He nodded toward her pack. “The best place to scatter Sam’s ashes.”
The shock that went through her was like stepping into icy water.
“Oh no,” she said, the words jerked out of her.
Caleb frowned. “I guess we can walk around a little, but—”
“No. No. This place is fine. It’s just . . .” She slid her hands into her pockets and clenched them into fists. “I’m not ready. Not yet.”
He looked at her for a moment and then nodded.
“Okay.” He glanced at his watch. “We only have an hour, though. We need to make it down to the car before it gets dark.”
“I understand.” She looked out at the fog. “I just need some time.”
“Do you want something to eat? Something to drink?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m fine.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you want company? Or do you want to be alone?”
She liked that he gave her that choice. She realized, suddenly, that Caleb would always give someone that choice. He understood the need for solitude.
“I think I want to be alone. With . . .” She hesitated. “With Sam.”
Would he think that was strange? Morbid?
“Okay,” he said. “If you need me, I won’t be far.”
She watched him walk away, thinking, You’ll be far when you go back to Australia.
It was a lonely thought, and she almost called out for him to come back. But then she set her pack on the ground, traded her rain jacket for her down jacket, and sat down on a flat rock with her sister’s ashes in her lap.
She wondered what Sam would say if she were here.
Just scatter the damn things already.
She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the bitter wind on her face.
I can’t. I can’t let you go.
What else are you going to do? Stay up here forever?
Maybe.
Don’t be ridiculous, little sis. Scatter my ashes and get on with your life.
She put the urn back in the pack and zipped it up.
I hate you for leaving me.
I know.
I miss you.
I know.
And all around her the wind blew, and the fog closed in, and the weight on her lap grew heavier and heavier until she thought it would pull her down through the mountain into the depths of the earth.
Caleb gave her forty-five minutes before going back to the edge of the plateau.
She looked small and lonely as he drew closer, sitting cross-legged with her arms wrapped around the pack in her lap.
He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently.
“It’s time.”
She looked up, and he saw the streaks of tears on her face.
“No.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, no?”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Sam asked me to go hiking with her all the time, and I always said no. I know it’s too late now, but I feel like I’m learning something about her up here. Something I never understood before.” She gestured around her. “I can’t let her go yet. I can’t.” She paused. “I want to stay here tonight.”
He stared at her. “Are you kidding? It’ll be below freezing up here. We have to start hiking down right now.”
She shook her head, her expression stubborn, and he’d never seen her look more like Samantha.
“Didn’t you bring a tent? You must have something in that huge pack besides coffee and Band-Aids.”
He squatted down beside her. “I brought camping equipment because we were going on a long hike in bad weather, but it’s only for emergencies.”
Jane’s face was pinched with cold, but her expression was resolute. “Well, consider this an emergency. Because I’m not leaving.”
His need to get her down the mountain and into a warm motel room grew more urgent.
“Jane—”
“I’m not leaving.”
He knew that look. He’d seen it on Sam’s face often enough.
He glared at her. “You’re going to have to scatter her ashes eventually, you know. Unless you’re planning to stay here forever?”
Her eyes lowered. “I don’t want to stay here forever,” she said softly. “I just want to stay here tonight.”
He sighed in frustration, his breath misting in the cold.
And it was only going to get colder.
He could sit here and argue with her, he could try to drag her down the mountain by force, or he could go back to his pack and start making some kind of camp.
He surged to his feet. “I can’t believe how pissed I am at you right now.”
She looked up at him again, her eyes grateful. “Thank you, Caleb.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m close to throwing you off this damn mountain.”
She smiled. “Thank you,” she said again.
He didn’t say anything else. He just trudged back the way he’d come, leaving Jane and Samantha to wrestle with eternity.
He found a relatively sheltered spot to pitch the tent. By the time Jane came back, he had the WhisperLite stove going behind its windshield. They had plenty of water, so he poured two cups into his battered cooking pot and waited for it to boil.
Jane watched him for a moment before she spoke. “What’s for dinner?”
She sounded conciliatory, like she was hoping all was forgiven.
He glowered at her. “If you’d bothered to listen to me, it could have been pizza or Chinese food or a Big Mac. As it is, we’re stuck with whatever freeze-dried crap I threw in the pack yesterday. I don’t even know what I brought.” He tossed the sack with the food over to her. “You pick.”
He was sitting on one of their sleeping bags, still rolled up, and she sat down on the other one as she looked through the sack.
“Oatmeal. Applesauce. Ramen noodles. This is kind of uninspiring.”
“So help me, if you complain about the menu choices—”
She smiled. “This one looks like some kind of pasta. That might be okay. Wait, no . . . this is the one.” She pulled out a bag. “Chili!”
He held out a hand. “Toss it over.”
The chili reconstituted in the boiling water and bubbled slowly over the blue flames. He gave it ten minutes and served it in two tin cups.
He handed Jane a spoon. “Bon appétit.”
It tasted delicious, the way food on the trail always did. Between hunger and exercise and the cold mountain air, anything would have seemed like a feast. But this was a high-end brand of freeze-dried food for backpackers, with enough spice to give it a kick and enough beans and protein to make it filling.
They both had a second helping.
“I can’t believe how good that was,” Jane said. She’d finished a few minutes ago, but her hands were wrapped around the still-warm tin cup.
“Yeah. Food always tastes better outside.”
He started to clean up.
“Can I help?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Just keep me company. Tell me something about Sam I don’t know. Something from your childhood.”
“Like what?”
“Tell me about a time you were jealous of her.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Why would you want to hear about that?”
“Because it’s part of the way you feel about her. Part of growing up with her.”
“I suppose that’s true.” She thought for a while. “Well. On my thirteenth birthday, we were supposed to have a party. Just the family, because we’d only moved from New York to LA that month. But the party never happened, because Sam had won this big track competition and the state finals were that day. So we went to that, and it was three hours away. We stopped for dinner on the way home instead of having a party at our house. My parents called it a joint celebration, because Sam had won a gold medal and I was turning thirteen.”
“Man.” The stove and cups and utensils were packed away, and afternoon was turning to evening. “That must have pissed you off but good.”
Jane wrapped her arms around her waist. “It sounds so petty to talk about it now.”
“No, it doesn’t. It sounds like you grew up with a really annoying older sister.”
“She wasn’t annoying. Not exactly.”
“She won things all the time, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“My older brother was the junior rodeo champion of Colorado three years in a row. He annoyed the hell out of me.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Okay, maybe you’re right.”
It was too cold to sit still much longer. He got to his feet and held out a hand to help Jane up.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, and they started across the plateau. “Tell me the nicest thing Sam ever did for you.”
Jane didn’t have to think about that one. “She took me to London to meet J. K. Rowling.”
He stared at her. “She did? I never knew that.”
“It was her junior year in college, before you guys met. She had to make a charity contribution to get into the event, and she bought the plane tickets and paid for a hotel room.” She paused. “It wasn’t just the money, though. She was supposed to be in this big swim meet the day we left. She was favored to win the hundred-meter butterfly.”
They walked in silence for another minute or two, and then suddenly Jane stopped.
“It’s getting darker. I wasn’t sure before, but now I am. It’s definitely getting darker.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s a thing that happens.”
She looked up at him, and her face was frightened. “It’s too late to go back down now. We’re stuck here.”
He took her hand and started walking again. “It was too late a while ago, darlin’. But don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
He wasn’t sure if his words reassured her or not. But as they made a loop around the mountaintop that led them back to their camp, they echoed in his mind.
I’ve got you.
It was a phrase he’d used often enough on treks, helping people over obstacles or up steep inclines or across swift-moving rivers. But this felt different somehow.
Bigger. More important.
Back at the camp, he unrolled their sleeping bags and laid them out in the tent. It was designed for three people, so there was plenty of room.
He came back outside and saw Jane standing with her back to him, looking out over the darkening plateau. Before long they wouldn’t be able to see anything at all.
He came up beside her and the two of them waited, watching, while gray turned to black. Except for the faint glow from his flashlight inside the tent, the darkness was complete.
He took her hand. “We may as well go to sleep,” he said. “That’ll be the best way to stay warm until morning.”
He sensed rather than saw the shake of her head. “I’m going to stay out here.”
His anger from earlier in the day returned. “No, you’re not. The wind’s picking up, and the temperature’s dropping. Come on, Jane. Get inside the tent.”
“I’m going to stay out here,” she said again.
He could feel his temper rising. “What the hell for? Some kind of vigil? Some kind of penance, like last December?”
“No!”
“Then what, damn it? What are you going to do out here?”
The light from the tent was very faint, but his eyes had adjusted enough that he could see the outline of her body, her face.
“I don’t know.”
“Jane—”
She took a step back. “Just leave me alone, okay? I’ll be all right. Just let me be.”
“If you go wandering around in the dark—”
“I won’t. And anyway, I have that little flashlight you gave me.”
“It’s still not safe to walk a summit at night. I swear to God, Jane, if you kill yourself up here—”
“You think I’d let that happen, after what your father did to you? After we both lost Sam?”
He swallowed. “I’m not saying you’d do it on purpose. But if you get too close to the edge—”
“I won’t. You have to trust me. Please, Caleb. I won’t wander off, and I won’t get hurt.”
A kind of rage rose in his heart. Jane wouldn’t come in where it was warm, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“I could make you,” he said. “I could drag you in that tent and stuff you inside your sleeping bag.”
“I know you could. But you won’t.”
They stood there for a moment, staring at each other in the dark. The tension between them crackled like static.
Finally he sighed. “In my entire life, I’ve never met a woman as stubborn as you—and that includes your sister.” He took off his down jacket and handed it to her. “At least take this.”
“I’m already wearing a jacket.”
“So wear two, damn it.”
She took it from him meekly. “All right.”
He turned his back on her and went inside the tent. He undressed down to his long underwear and slid inside his sleeping bag, his body heat beginning to warm the space almost immediately.
He left the flashlight on. Jane had one with her, but he wanted her to be able to find the tent immediately whenever she was ready to come in.
Then he rolled over on his side, away from the light and toward the wall of the tent, and tried to go to sleep.