The thin light of dawn began to seep in around the edges of the curtains.
Kal wanted more time.
Chapter 19
Rosemary’s daughter smelled of unfamiliar soap and lotion, and faintly of poorly cleaned laundry. She felt perfectly correct against Rosemary’s body.
When she began to pull away—too soon—Rosemary bussed her cheek and said, “You look well.”
Beatrice’s hair was dyed a rainbow of oranges, purples, and blues, and hung halfway down her back. Rosemary had seen it, of course, in her daughter’s Instagram feed, but the effect was better in person. It suited her.
“Can you move it up, Wash?” Beatrice shouted over Rosemary’s shoulder to a young man holding a microphone on a boom—one of several people assembled to help Beatrice film her documentary. “I want the longer shot, but it’s getting in my way.”
“It’s extended as far as it can go.” Then, upon registering Beatrice’s dissatisfied expression, he changed course. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Beatrice turned her attention back to Rosemary. “So you made it.”
There was a sour note to the proclamation, an implication that Rosemary had taken longer than she ought to have done. She ignored it. “Yes.”
“You drove?”
“Well, I didn’t myself. I have traveling companions.”
“Where are they?”
“They’ll be along in a bit.” Rosemary had left Kal and Yangchen in the car after Kal declared his interest in locating a cup of coffee and something to eat—a ploy, she assumed, to give her some polite space to reconnect with her daughter.
“Who are they?” Beatrice crossed her arms. The sole of her right foot came off the floor to rest against her left calf. The faint line between her eyebrows matched the one her father got when he was in a mood. “These mystery people.”
“They’re not mysterious, they’re simply not people you know. They’re…Kal.”
The furrow between Beatrice’s eyebrows deepened, and Rosemary felt a familiar mix of concern that her daughter’s feelings had been hurt combined with irritation that Beatrice refused to treat her as an independent and competent adult who was permitted a life of her own.
They’d been down this road before, had versions of this same prickly conversation over the phone, and afterward Rosemary always felt guilty—certain she’d failed her daughter—at the same time she felt trapped and resentful.
This time, though, she remembered Kal telling her that you hurt children by hurting them. Not by caring for them, loving them, and living your life.
It helped.
“Kal is a man I was climbing with who helped me in the avalanche.” Rosemary watched the faint lines bracketing her daughter’s mouth deepen. “And his mother, Yangchen Beckett, has come along. She’s very interesting—she’s summited Everest more than any other woman alive.”
“And, what, they wanted to see the sights of Wisconsin? Why didn’t you just fly instead of dragging along a support crew?”
“It’s a long story.”
Beatrice managed to look past Rosemary’s shoulder at the film crew and somehow, simultaneously, to roll her eyes. “I’ll bet. How long are you staying?”
“Only a few hours, I’m afraid. I have to get to Milwaukee—”
“No, it’s fine,” she interrupted. “I’m busy, you’re busy. I get it.” She spoke quickly, her bloodless cheeks and brusqueness clearly indicating that she’d passed from feeling hurt to feeling slighted. “I have to get this shot while the light’s good, but we can grab a bite to eat or something when I’m done here. If you’re not already gone.”
“I’d like that.”
Rosemary wanted time with her daughter. She wanted a chance to fix the distance between them. She felt compressed by forces beyond her control, though of course she was the one who’d made the plane ticket, she’d decided on this quick trip to Wisconsin, she’d planned the climbing excursion and wrestled the book deal out of her publisher.
Everything that was happening to her was something she’d made happen. Only the avalanche had been beyond her control. The avalanche, and Kal.
“Find somewhere to sit, or you can walk around town, give yourself a tour.” Beatrice was already walking toward her crew. “Hey, Wash?”