It felt dangerous. Like a crack in the glacier just waiting to open up into a crevasse and swallow him.
&nbs
p; “There’s a prayer service tomorrow,” she said. “Eleven o’clock.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be there.”
“Yep.”
“All right.” She stood, brushing invisible lint from her slacks. She picked a small bit of nothing off her sleeve as she said, “It’s good you’re safe. Wear something nice tomorrow. Not that”—she gestured at his loose, colorful Nepali pants and loud Annapurna T-shirt–“whatever that is.”
Kal finished his soup, thinking of the names he’d read in the online edition of the newspaper earlier.
The count was up to twenty-nine names. Twenty-nine people who would never go home again.
I love you, too, Mom.
Chapter 11
Rosemary stared at the blinking cursor on her laptop screen. Still in bed, she’d opened the red email folder at five-thirty a.m., immediately after reading the news.
Twenty-nine dead on Everest.
Twenty-nine names released, with the search ongoing.
Katix was dead.
Sajit was dead.
Rachel was dead.
Lapsang was dead.
Beatrice was in Wisconsin and hadn’t responded to the voicemail Rosemary left for her or her texts. Or the email she’d sent in desperation, knowing Bea never looked at her email.
Give her time, Winston had said yesterday, in the kitchen. She’ll come round. I’ll talk to her.
Rosemary wanted to give her time, but Sajit would never meet his baby.
I’m in New York, she texted. Come see me?
The message status shifted from “delivered” to “read.” Three dots appeared on the screen, and she waited for her daughter to reply, but no reply came through.
With a ball of grief in her throat, Rosemary had blown through the red email folder and then the orange one, offering breezy reassurances, sincere statements of condolence, updates, information. She connected with Indira, promising she would return to London in a few days and setting up a meeting time for the two of them to get together to talk about the next steps for their expedition. She booked a plane ticket to London in two days’ time, giving herself a deadline to finish up her personal errand and return to the adventure she had no intention of abandoning. She answered an email from her editor in London, who’d written three times, urgently requesting a meeting.
Happy to meet, Rosemary wrote. When would you like to talk?
The reply had come through immediately. I’m going to hook you up with colleagues at our NY office. Will be in touch shortly with details.
Fifteen minutes later, Rosemary had a new email chain six messages long in the red folder, and texts binging onto her cellphone from a man she’d never met who wanted to get together at the publisher’s headquarters at nine, or ten, or they could do lunch—he’d cleared his calendar, so she just needed to let him know where she’d be, and they would work something out.
She didn’t respond right away. Instead, she answered more email.
At seven-thirty, her head pounding, she got out of bed and made herself a cup of tea. Jet lag. Too much screen in the dark bedroom. Exhaustion. Trauma.
She crawled back into bed with the tea, arranged the blankets around her, and hovered the mouse pointer over the file that contained the beginning of her book.