Madly (New York 2)

“You guys just took a thousand years to walk one city block,” she said when they arrived. “I hope you’re proud of yourselves.”

Nev grinned. “I’m proud of him. You should be, too. He’s not a bad gent, your father.” He slapped Winston on the arm and sauntered into the restaurant, stroking his absurd hipster beard, his expression smug.

When Bea moved to follow him, Winston grabbed her hand. “Beatrice.”

“Father.” She said it lightly, an inside joke between the two of them, as though the scene at the coffeehouse had never happened.

“May I have a word?”

“Make it quick. I don’t want to miss anything.”

For a moment, he hesitated. A sign on the door read, RESERVED FOR PRIVATE PARTY. sorry for the inconvenience. As Winston drew his daughter aside, a couple approached the door and saw the sign. “This sucks,” the young man said, and he and his partner fell into murmured conversation, whipping out their phones to make a new lunch plan.

Beatrice craned to get a view inside the restaurant, and he thought of what Neville had said. That she was here for him, because she wanted to support him, wanted his happiness. That it wasn’t out of line for him to insist on telling her what he wanted, and thought, and deserved.

“I wanted to check in about whether you’d phoned your mum.”

Bea fiddled with her overall strap. “Yeah. I talked to her last night.”

“And?”

“She hasn’t changed her mind about Everest.” She looked past him at the street, her eyes glistening. “But I made the list, like you’d said to, and told her the things I needed to say. So if she dies up there, you know, that won’t be on my conscience at least.”

“I didn’t mean for you to say some final goodbye. She isn’t climbing Everest for months.”

“Yeah, but she’s climbing a lot right now with some Russian dude, and it’s dangerous. Have you looked at any of these Instagram accounts, or Tumblr? These are some crazy motherfuckers.”

“Language, Bea.”

“Sorry. It’s just, I can’t know that she’s being careful enough.”

“I can. I’ve known your mother longer than you’ve been alive. She’s risk averse and extraordinarily intelligent. She’ll be fine.”

“Things happen.”

“Things do happen. It’s part of being alive.” Bea looked away from him again. “Look at me.” She did. Her cheeks were pink, full of feeling she couldn’t contain inside herself. “I was thinking about what you needed to hear about your mum.”

“I’m good, Dad. Really. You don’t have to give me some—”

“Shh.” He said it sternly, the way he’d spoken when she was small and too full of her own ideas to listen, and she stilled. “What you need to understand, Beatrice, is that you are the only person in the world with the power to call your mother down off a mountain. If you phone and tell her that you need her, she’ll walk away from her tent and her plans, and she’ll keep walking until she gets on a plane and another plane, puts herself behind the wheel of a car, and ends up at your door. You know this is true. You know it.”

She stared at the sidewalk, one foot pressed against her calf in her thinking pose. Listening.

“She loves you, and you love her, and that gives you the power to stop her from doing what she most wants to do. It gives you the power to control her. And you could try it. You could tell her not to climb that mountain and see how you feel when she comes home to you safe, all yours.”

The tops of her ears were red. Her scalp was pale where she’d parted her hair, her head down.

“But I could tell you, right now, how you would feel if you tried to keep your mum safe,” he said gently. “Because I know a great deal more about this than you do.”

“Bad,” she said quietly.

“What’s that?”

“I would feel bad.”

“You would be devastated.”

Love had such incredible power to ruin people.