I think about his hand around my wrist and the moment on the overlook where he didn't step back, and I think about the traverse that goes somewhere good instead of somewhere obvious, and I think: I am in a significant amount of trouble.
I don't reach for my phone in the dark. I don't need to. There's already something else to think about.
four
Dawson
Itakethedetourat the junction without explaining it.
She doesn't ask. She just watches me angle left onto the narrower trail and follows, and I feel the specific quality of that — the trust in it, or maybe the curiosity, or the fact that she's three days into trusting the mountain to hold her and has extended that trust, without negotiating it, to me.
I have a rule about clients. I've had it for twelve years and I've never needed to think about it twice.
The trail going right leads back to the trailhead. Eight kilometres, mostly downhill, and she'd be back at the hotel by early afternoon with cell service and notifications and the full weight of the world she came here to escape. The trail going left is the start of the northern traverse. The one I don't take clients on.
I'm not taking her on the traverse. Just the first section, up to the high meadow, which is a full day's walk and makes tonight's camp impossible anywhere except the shelf above the snowlinewhere I know the ground is flat and the wind is blocked by the north ridge and the stars, on a clear night, are enough to make you believe in a higher power.
I should have turned right.
I turned left.
The trail narrows in the first hour. I can hear her breathing behind me and the particular cadence of her footfall that I've learned over three days without meaning to. She's found her stride now. Day one she was fighting the mountain. Day two she was negotiating with it. Today she's just walking at peace.
Around midmorning we hit the first stream crossing.
Last week's snowmelt has the creek running thigh-high and fast, white over the rocks, cold enough to be dangerous if you go down. I cross first, find the footing, turn back.
She's standing at the bank looking at it with the expression of someone doing rapid calculations.
"Okay," she says. "How…?"
"Give me your hand."
She reaches across and I take it. Her hand is smaller than my grip and I close around it and step back through the current, watching her feet, watching the water, keeping the line between us taut. She makes it across in four careful steps and when she clears the last rock and lands on solid ground her hand tightens in mine for a half-second before she lets go.
She looks up at me. Her hair is escaping its tie. There's colour in her face from the cold air and the effort and she's looking at me with an expression I don't examine.
"There are more crossings," I tell her.
"How many more."
"Three."
Something moves through her eyes. She looks away first. "Lead the way."
The second crossing is wider and I take her hand before she can reach for it. The third one requires her to step up onto a midstream boulder and she wobbles and I get both hands on her waist and hold her there until she's balanced, her hands coming down to cover mine for one moment before she steps to the far bank and I let go.
The scramble comes on the approach to the high meadow. A short technical section — fifteen feet of exposed rock, good holds, nothing that requires rope, but enough that you have to think about your body. I go up first, find the line, look back down at her.
"Left foot on the ledge. Right hand on the horn above your head."
She does it. Gets the first two moves cleanly and then the third one throws her — the hold she reaches for isn't where she expected it and she presses into the rock face for a moment, recalibrating.
"Look left," I tell her. "Six inches."
She finds it. Pulls up. On the last move I reach down and get her forearm and bring her up onto the ledge beside me, and then she's standing a foot away, catching her breath, and we're on a rock shelf barely wide enough for both of us with the valley dropping away below and her face is right there, tipped up, and her eyes are bright and I am very aware of my own hands.
"Okay," she says, a little breathless. "That was excellent."
