Ross breathed in the cool air. Pieces were falling into place. He imagined a girl of thirteen, her mother dying on the way back to see her, and he thought about her father, stuck in some kind of self-destructive need to go back to the mountain that had claimed his wife. For the first time, he thought he might be starting to understand her. “When did you start climbing the big mountains?” he asked.
She flashed a smile. “When I was born. My mom had this crazy wrap thing that she used to tie me onto her back.”
“Did it ever occur to you not to do it? I mean, I understand that it’s something you’ve always done, but why keep it up?” He struggled to find a way to word the question so that it wouldn’t upset her or set off her alarms. “You don’t seem…suited for it, somehow.”
She paused, and he could feel the muscles of her leg tighten where they leaned against his. “I love being outside. I love hiking and seeing things no one else has ever seen. I love using my body and challenging myself to go beyond my limits.”
“But you don’t have to climb Annapurna to do that,” he pointed out, knowing he was wandering into dangerous territory.
“He’ll die if I don’t go.”
She spoke so softly, he wasn’t sure if he had heard her correctly. “What? You mean your father? Why?”
“Normal people have a voice in their head that tells them when to turn around. When it’s not safe. My father doesn’t have that—at least, not anymore. He won’t believe anyone who tries to tell him to turn around or go back. Anyone but me.”
Ross had to take in a breath and wait for a moment to let the magnitude of those words wash over him. All this time he’d been thinking Kelsey had a death wish. But she didn’t. It was her father who did.
“That’s crazy.”
As soon as the words left his mouth he regretted them. She turned her head quickly away from him, sending a wave of hair tumbling over one shoulder. “Right. I’m crazy. And you’d let your father walk off a cliff, even if you could steer him away from the edge.”
He put a hand on her leg. “Kelsey, that’s not what I meant. It just doesn’t seem fair to me. That you’re living this life because of your father. What if you’re the one who dies? The mountain doesn’t care why you’re up there, does she?”
“People make all sorts of sacrifices for their families. Marie gives up half of what she earns to her mother, who promptly throws it away on whoever she’s infatuated with at the time. Hope is buried under thousands of dollars of debt thanks to her mother’s cancer. We’re all just doing the best we can.”
“But you could die,” he said, unable to shake the possibility from his head.
She stood up and walked over to the tiny stove that was still set up on a patch of bare earth. Methodically, with motions he was sure she had made thousands of times, she took the pot off the top and set it to the side, then began to dismantle the stove. “You’re making it sound like I hate climbing. That’s not the case. The thought of a desk job and a nine-to-five life leaves me cold. I didn’t climb the fourteeners because I had to. I did it because I wanted to. Because I love it.”
He couldn’t seem to stop pressing. “But Annapurna?”
“He’s determined to summit it, and I’m not letting him go back there alone.”
Ross shivered. “Kelsey—”
She cut him off with a firm voice. “I’ve known for a long time that I might die on the mountain, and I won’t say it doesn’t scare me. But I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve gotten to travel all over the world and spend most of my life doing exactly what I want.” She laughed, quiet and self-deprecating. “I’m not good for anything else at this point.”
“What about a family?” Ross asked, struggling to take in all that he was hearing. “What about kids of your own?”
She put the pieces of the stove into a small bag and zipped it closed. “That’s not in my future. I’m going to attempt to summit a mountain that is a climber’s dream. It’s breathtakingly beautiful up there. I can’t possibly describe it but it’s stark and haunting and gets inside of you like nothing else. My mother is up there. I’m not ready to walk away from it. Especially knowing that my dad can’t.”
There was nothing he could say to that. A fire had begun, deep in his belly, as he thought about Kelsey’s father and what he had done to his daughter. He supposed he should feel sympathy for the other man, for the loss of his wife and the way it had changed him. But he couldn’t. All he could think of was Kelsey. The life she had lived. The sacrifices she was willing to make.