“Who knows? It was all such chaos after. But I was definitely ahead of him. Kito, too. He came up to check on me. Maybe if he hadn’t—”
“No, no. Don’t do that to yourself,” Richard says. “Scotty was the one who suggested we move out of the deep sand. That put us on that edge. But I’d never blame him for that. Van tripped at the worst possible moment. It was an accident. A horrifying one.” We’re walking in the general direction of my apartment, I realize. “Like I was saying at dinner, it’s better for all of us not tojudge ourselves by the mistakes we’ve made…” He gives me a quick side-eye I know is meant to be playful, but it feels like I’ve been poked with something sharp.
“Ah, so I’m the mistake.” I think about that night on the mountain, after Van died. Of course I do. I haven’t really ever stopped thinking about it. “Or I’m making a mistake?”
Richard stops and closes his eyes, a hand on his forehead. When he finally lowers his hand and looks at me, his eyes are heavy, sad. Their usual bright blue turned almost gray.
“You could never be a mistake, Frankie.”
***
As we headed toward Arrow Glacier Camp at the end of day six, the hiking had become much harder. The altitude was part of it, and the wind had picked up, blowing nonstop in our faces. There was also the cumulative toll of the preceding days: My legs felt wobbly and my eyes burned with exhaustion. The ground was more uneven, too. Loose rocks between volcanic sand slid underfoot. With every passing day, the terrain seemed born of a completely different planet—none of them Earth.
But, my God, was it breathtaking, just as Kito had promised. Especially when the sun broke free of the clouds, or, rather, once we had broken free of the clouds. Ahead of us the summit loomed, looking deceptively close even though it was still a day or two away. Below us on either side, smaller mountains, ringed by their own clouds, marked just how far we had already come.
A vast space opened up inside of me. I felt infinite.
“By the way, thank you for pressing Van to be careful yesterday,” Richard said when we stopped for water. Scotty, Van, and Brooks were standing a little distance away, all smiles. Van, who had been visibly struggling the day before, was now eating a package of energy gummies with gusto, an encouraging sign.
“He seems better today.”
“Luckily. But it was good you made him take a second and think,” he said. “As close as we are, we hold back on doing that kind of thing.”
“Looking out for each other, you mean?” I asked.
“Ha. Fair enough.” Richard smiled slightly. “That’s what I like about you, Frankie.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re no bullshit. Most people don’t have access to their own truth, much less anyone else’s.” He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “You tell it like it is. It’s probably that eye of yours. You see the world more clearly than most people.”
“It’s easy to coach from the sidelines. I’m not sure I’m very good at facing things in my own life.”
“Maybe you will be after this,” he said gently. “Maybe we all will be.”
“I hope so.”
Everyone was slipping back into their packs. Kito looked our way as he tugged on his hat and clipped his bag closed in front of his chest. He was more patient than Bakari, who didn’t hesitate to shout orders. Kito would wait, smiling pointedly until we eventually got moving. Each approach, it turned out, was a comfort in its own way.
Richard stepped forward, adjusting his sunglasses and hiking his shoulders up against a fresh blast of cold wind. “You can see it in your work, too.”
It took me a beat to process. “What do you mean?”
“Clarity. Honesty. It’s in your paintings.”
It was what I aimed for first and foremost in my work—to tell the truth. About love and sex and what it meant to live as a woman, both painfully exposed and dangerously hidden at the same time.
Richard started walking toward Kito.
“But, wait—you haven’t even seen my work,” I called after him.
“Sure, I have.” He paused and turned around. “Before we came, I looked you up, too.”
“But you pretended you hadn’t when Brooks mentioned it?”
His eyes lingered on mine. “Apparently so, Frankie.”
***
