Completely (New York 3)

“I knew right away,” Yangchen said. “People will say I killed him. He was sick, he had fluid in his lungs, but he was Merlin Beckett, dead, someone has to be blamed. I decide, I don’t care. I’m going to the top of the mountain. He can’t stop me. No one can stop me. I left in the morning. It was the easiest thing. Only wal

king. I walked right to the top. Merlin did it, everyone gave him praise, said he was special. But I did it seven times, and nobody cared. That’s okay. I didn’t do it for them.”

She went to the kitchen, took a glass from the drain board, and ran water from the tap. The house was silent as she drank it, and Rosemary thought, yes.

Yes, this was it.

This was what she was meant to be doing. Pursuing these moments, in rooms like this one, among women like Yangchen and Jigme, Beatrice and Nancy.

This was her Everest, her Seven Summits.

These were the stories Rosemary wanted to tell—women’s stories. Her own story. Not just because they inspired and interested her, but because she felt instinctively that it was right for her to dig deeper into this world in the aftermath of the avalanche and her failed plan to climb the Seven Summits, in the flotsam and jetsam of her divorce and what she’d tried to do afterward.

She wanted to live in this broken-open emotional place, to walk the turned earth of her ambition, to get more intimate with life and death and the space in between by gathering other women around her and listening to them, feeling with them, thinking with them.

This was her work.

At the base of the mountain, she’d wanted to climb it because it was so big. Not for attention. Not because she’d gone crazy, or was so wounded that she required a journey to heal. It was the same feeling she’d had as a young bride, when Winston showed her the massive pile of rot and disaster that was to be their home. She’d felt certain the work was too enormous, too overwhelming, for her to be able to hold it all in her head at the same time, but in the end that was the part she liked about it: that she could tackle the task, break it down into smaller pieces, count her steps to the top.

It was never about the mountain. It was about the work. Her work.

This was the work she wanted to do now, and in the future. To find stories like Yangchen’s or Jigme’s or Nancy’s and make them louder, to make them so loud they became impossible to ignore.

“Thank you,” she said, from her heart.

Yangchen replied, “You’re welcome.”

—

It only took a few minutes to get Rosemary to the airport.

Kal pulled up beside the curb and left the car idling. He opened the trunk and removed Rosemary’s luggage while she hugged his mother and said goodbye.

His mother got into the front passenger seat and sat looking through the windshield, her posture erect, her eyes averted from whatever it was Rosemary and Kal needed to say to each other.

Kal didn’t know what to say.

His mother hadn’t killed his father. She didn’t feel responsible for his death because she wasn’t responsible. It sounded like high-altitude pulmonary edema was responsible, combined with Merlin being an asshole.

It sounded like his mother climbed Everest over and over because she wanted to.

Because it made her feel good.

Rosemary was getting on a plane and flying out of his life because she had her own mountains to climb. She had her own reasons, her own things that made her feel good, and she didn’t need Kal for any of it.

None of them did.

This new understanding brought such relief, and such grief, he didn’t know what to do with it. And it didn’t matter. The time had come to see Rosemary off regardless of his messed-up psyche.

He set her bag down. “Thanks for getting me home,” he said.

“Thanks for getting me to my kid.” She put her hand on his arm and looked right in his eyes, doing her princess thing, her three seconds of complete attention and sincere gratitude. He didn’t think anymore she’d learned it in princess school. He thought maybe it was just Rosemary being Rosemary. Paying attention to people. Caring. “Thanks for helping me.” She swallowed. “Thanks for everything.”

He would miss her face. He would miss seeing her when he woke up in the morning, spending time with her, hearing what she thought about things. Kal was no Buddhist, but he had enough of a basic grasp of chains of causation to understand that the fact that he’d invited Rosemary into his life, promised to help her with her book, and taken her home to meet his mom meant that for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand, this was what he wanted. Every action he’d taken since Everest had been leading him to this moment, the chain of causation a gigantic arrow pointing Kal toward the obvious reason why a man would upend his life for a woman, invite her into its messiest corners, want to tell her everything even when he couldn’t quite bring himself to, want her to stick around, want her in his bed, want to buy her coffee.

Probably he loved her. And if he loved her, it was because he wanted to.

He didn’t regret it. She was worth loving.