Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

February 2018, Capitol Peak, Colorado

Evelyn replayed the wedding again and again in her mind as she climbed. Being home always brought her back to that cold February day three years ago. She often wondered what would have happened if she had met Miles first. Would their situation be reversed, in some cruel trick of fate? Would he have left her for Sophie? She would never know the answer, but that didn’t make ignoring the question any easier. She believed that she and Miles belonged together, but maybe she’d only gotten the luck of the draw.

Focus on climbing , she reminded herself. Snow was everywhere, but good conditions, a low chance of avalanches. Never zero, but safe enough that James wanted to make a summit attempt. They had punched in the snow coming up the east slopes of nearby Colorado K2 to check the avalanche risk—to be extra safe—and the snow beneath the top layer of powder was compact and solid. Once past K2 the risk would be even lower. So now she followed behind James, with Phil and Danielle behind her, and as much as she fought against it, her mind wandered with every step.

She hadn’t liked Miles at first. She liked him even less after the wedding. She sensed an impermanence to the relationship, mostly perpetrated by Miles. Both moving to Wyoming and getting married had been his idea, yet both turned out to be temporary, until something else came along. Something like her. She swallowed and adjusted her grip on the rough gray rock in front of her face. She had to be more careful, pay more attention, overcome the exhaustion. They had started the hike in the wee hours of the morning, trudging through several miles of ditch trail in the dark before reaching the saddle and ascending to K2. They were heading toward the exposed knife-edge ridge of Capitol Peak now. People had died on this mountain, slipped off or put a foot on unsteady rock. But the knife-edge was short, and she was able to walk across behind James, slow and careful, testing her footholds and avoiding the pockets of snow. Some of the rock was slick and her heart caught in her throat a few times, the familiar sensation of instability and live-wire nerves, but she made it. She stepped back with James and watched Phil and Danielle pick their way across.

Beyond the knife-edge they were still exposed. Bare rock mixed with snow and a steep drop on each side made Evelyn shiver. Nothing like the eight-thousanders she’d climbed, sure, but this mountain demanded both respect and her full awareness—of each foothold, each grip, the positioning of her body, and how her body felt—if she was dizzy or tired or sick from altitude. She had never experienced severe altitude sickness until Lhotse, her failed mountain. The difficult decision to turn around on summit day had partially been made by her, partially by James—she had been disoriented and stumbling, slurring her speech and struggling to clip on to the fixed lines. James had insisted she go back to Camp Four with a guide. Once at a lower altitude, her symptoms eased, but the lack of control over her own body still haunted her.

She looked up and realized that James’s leg was just a few inches from her face. She needed to rein in her wandering mind. “What is it?” she called up, her voice carrying above the slight wind.

“Looks like loose rock. Worse than usual. I’m not sure why.”

Not an encouraging thing to hear. Evelyn peered around him as best she could.

“Watch out,” James said, brushing above with his hand, sending a scattering of rock past Evelyn’s left side.

“Shit. That looks rotten.”

“It’d be fine if there was only one person climbing,” he replied. “But not in a group.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Phil and Danielle weren’t far behind; they’d come off the knife-edge and were working their way to James and Evelyn.

“Let’s try the ridge. We’re a little off the standard route, but I’m worried about that being rotten too. With the amount of snowmelt up here, I don’t want to take any chances.”

Evelyn nodded. A good choice. Loose, or rotten, rocks made for dangerous climbing conditions, where chunks of stone could flake off in a person’s hand. James’s intrinsic ability to feel out mountain conditions had helped him to successfully summit eight of the fourteen mountains that rose above eight thousand meters. Or fifteen, now that Yama Parvat was no longer off-limits. He had ambitions to summit the remaining six traditional mountains, but Yama Parvat might elude them all. She could trust James, though. As a guide, as a leader.

They reversed their order, taking the ridge the rest of the way to the summit. The rock was slick in places and sometimes loose, but they made it, one after the other, Evelyn second last to step onto the summit. She hadn’t climbed Capitol Peak before, although she’d been up a fair amount of the Colorado thirteen-and fourteen-thousand-foot mountains as a teenager and as an undergrad. It did not escape her that she had always planned to tackle this mountain, one of the hardest, with Sophie. But everything was that way now. An incomplete plan.

They stayed on the summit for twenty minutes, drinking in the view of the surrounding peaks and high-altitude lakes.

“I can’t stop thinking about the ridge on Yama Parvat,” Danielle said to Evelyn, taking a moment to flex her fingers before sliding them back into her gloves. “Every night I pull up the satellite photos and just stare. Matthew looks at me like I’m a crazy person.” She laughed. Matthew, Danielle’s husband, was not a climber himself. Evelyn had met him a few times before and he always stared in silence, eyes wide, as they described various climbing maneuvers. “That ridge is going to be ten times worse.”

“And we’ll get through it,” Evelyn said, glancing back at the knife-edge that they would have to descend in a few minutes. Capitol Peak offered only one route each way.

Danielle nodded. “I’m more concerned about the amount of people climbing. It’s going to be so hard to focus.” She lowered her voice and stepped closer to Evelyn. “I mean, I trust James with my life. But Wojciech Skalski? He’s always going off route. He climbs alpine style. How is he going to lead an expedition?” She shook her head. “And I have a friend who’s climbed in Russia. Says the two on that mixed team are impossible to work with. I don’t know why George picked them.”

Evelyn’s ears perked at that last bit of information. It didn’t sound like George to pick difficult personalities. Evelyn wondered how Sophie would react to that. She knew that Sophie’s experience as a climbing guide had prepared her well for working with all sorts of people, but it was different working together as peers and not as the voice of authority.

“It’s fun to speculate,” Evelyn replied, “but we’ll just have to see how things shake out when we get there.”

Danielle regarded her for a moment. “You seem out of it. Something on your mind?”

There was plenty on Evelyn’s mind, but she shook her head and told Danielle she was just tired. James signaled for them to descend and Evelyn fell into line. In the past two weeks the team had summited nine mountains together, a veritable list of some of Colorado’s meanest—Maroon Bells, Crestone Needle, Snowmass, Little Bear. Some were repeats for Evelyn, but she appreciated every second spent climbing. Even the late night, early starts that James insisted on—there was a purpose. If they made it to a summit push on Yama Parvat, they would likely need to start in the middle of the night. So much of mountaineering was done by headlamp and feel.

Her flight left in one week. Well, the first of several flights—from Denver to New York to Qatar to Nepal, and then on to a smaller airport, to the city of Pokhara. Yama Parvat was nestled in the heart of Nepal, near Annapurna I, Manaslu, and Dhaulagiri I—three of the six remaining eight-thousand-meter peaks that James had yet to climb. He had told her that he was considering staying on in Nepal to attempt them. Evelyn had felt envy surge through her body. She had no idea what would come after Yama Parvat for her.

Fresh off the plane from Denver, Evelyn turned the key in the lock and stepped into her apartment. She paused for a moment, letting the scent of her home wash over her. She kept a diffuser on the kitchen counter, sage and citrus oil, and the familiar smell released some of the tension from her shoulders. The airplane seat had not treated her body kindly.

Her eyes drifted to the stove clock. Tomorrow morning, her flight left JFK for Hamad International Airport—a twelve-hour, overnight flight. No matter how often she traveled internationally, time zones still made her head spin. She reminded herself again to pack Ambien, even though she never managed to sleep on planes, just put herself into a zombie state that made the whole traveling process feel like a fever dream. Still, she’d be equally miserable if she spent the entire flight hyperaware of being trapped in a metal tube, thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean. She could only handle heights when her feet were solidly on the earth.

Evelyn set her keys on the counter and heard the bedroom door open. It was late morning, a Friday, so Miles was home, probably just waking up after a late night with his artist friends. One of them had recently rented an art studio in Crown Heights and Miles had been spending most of his time there, sharing the space in exchange for modest rent. Evelyn knew it was a good deal, less than he’d spend on studio space virtually anywhere else in the city, but it seemed to go hand in hand with hangovers. She set her luggage down and waited.

He emerged into the kitchen with bags beneath his eyes, curls falling to his shoulders. He’d been growing his hair out for a while now, but it surprised her to see him after a few weeks, how scraggly he looked—it was then she realized that she’d anticipated him getting a haircut while she was away. He crossed the room to her and kissed her, his breath sharp with mint toothpaste. He rested his hand on the back of her head and then her left shoulder blade and then traced his fingers down her spine. He let go and stepped back. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

“Coffee?” he asked, heading toward the pot on the counter. “Leftover from last night, admittedly. But probably still good.”

“No, thanks. I’m awake enough.” She glanced at the pile of mail on the counter, some of it already opened. “What’s all this?”

He took his time answering, poured a cup of coffee, sipped it. “I thought you might be able to tell me.”

She lowered her gaze, suddenly cautious, and picked up one of the open letters. It was addressed to her.

Dear Ms. Wright,

The following letter describes your options for continuing insurance coverage following your termination of employment from J she slipped past him and picked up her luggage, carrying it to the bedroom. Miles didn’t follow her. Thirty minutes later, while she was still unpacking, he entered the room without acknowledging her, stuffed a backpack with clothes, and left again. Evelyn let the guilt wash over her as she filled her laundry basket, struggling to understand why their conversation had turned so antagonistic. He’d confronted her with the letter, but there must have been a path through the conversation that didn’t end with Miles storming off. Sometimes when they argued, she forgot the most important part—that they loved each other.

He didn’t come back the rest of the day, and when she woke up the next morning, Evelyn tried not to think about how well she had slept without him there. She was just used to it, she told herself, she’d been away for weeks. As she packed the last few items in her suitcase, she thought of Sophie. Dropping out of school, moving to Wyoming—she always suspected that Miles had influenced those choices and had told Sophie as much. She had thought that the six-year age gap between Sophie and Miles had resulted in a lopsided power dynamic, with Miles calling all the shots by default. But now, maybe he was trying to do the same thing to her, to subtly control her decisions. Or maybe he just wanted what was best for her. For them. She knew they were both unhappy in the city, but it was also where they had the most opportunities—for Miles’s art, for her career as a lawyer.

She let a shirt fall into her suitcase and lifted her hands to her face, surprised to find tears pooling in her eyes again. She and Miles were headed toward an impasse. He’d given her a chance to turn back and she had barreled straight ahead. Evelyn dropped her hands to her lap and surveyed the clean, minimal bedroom that looked exactly as it had before Miles had moved in. They’d never hung up any of his art, or any art for that matter. No new furniture, nothing to make it his place, too. The reason pierced her like a bullet. This was never his home.