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“We’ll talk next week, okay? I’ve got a thing, Midtown, half an hour, I’ve got to get moving if I’m going to make it on time, but this was really productive, confronting, like I said, and I like confronting, it’s good for the spirit.” He stuck out his hand. “I like you, Rosemary Chamberlain.”
“Thank you.” She shook, her warm palm against his damp one, and she didn’t know when he turned and made his way out of the diner if she’d completely cocked up her plan or transformed a setback into an exciting opportunity.
She didn’t know, either, if Kal would be waiting for her at the end of the hall, or if she’d driven him away for good.
She hoped not. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him. Not just yet.
Before she could find out, her phone buzzed, announcing the arrival of a text from Beatrice. Can’t come to NY, it said. Filming.
After a pause, another text arrived. You can come here if you want.
Rosemary didn’t hesitat
e. She tapped out her reply and sent it off.
I’ll come tomorrow.
She had time to fly to Bea and visit before her flight to London—just.
Forty-eight hours, give or take, and she would put her life back in order.
Chapter 13
Rosemary found Kal on the street, leaning against the plate glass display window of a jewelry store. He wore his impassive face.
She was beginning to hate that particular expression—the water-over-stone look he hid behind, the look that meant, Nothing bothers me, nothing hurts me, nothing means anything. He’d looked just the same when the avalanche struck, when he must have been as frightened as she was. And on the street in Kathmandu, when his old friend had called his name, as well as afterward when Rosemary tried to find out more about it.
She knew she’d acted badly at lunch. She was prepared to apologize for putting him right in the middle of a conversation he didn’t want to have.
But she didn’t intend to talk to that face.
“You want some bubble tea?” Kal asked. “There’s a good place a couple blocks down.”
“We just ate.”
“Think of it as dessert.”
“I suppose that would be fine.”
She followed him to the shop, let him order for her, let him pay for the tea, let him make conversation about nothing while his face and his posture made an impenetrable wall she couldn’t see a way over. Then she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Kal.”
He turned. “You want to go to the zoo?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said. “I need to go to Wisconsin. My daughter can’t get away, or won’t, so I haven’t a choice.”
Rosemary wanted him to acknowledge this in some way, to tell her he wished she didn’t have to go or that he would miss her.
Kal looked at his phone. “For real. Let’s go to the zoo.” He opened an app, arranged for a car-share ride, all while keeping up a running patter about the neighborhood and the history of the park where the Queens Zoo was located, and without meeting her eyes.
In the taxi, Rosemary drank Hong Kong coffee milk tea with boba, milky and not too sweet, with chunky bits. She began to feel hostile.
They pulled up at the entrance. Kal ushered her through the ticket collection point and into the zoo. “What do you want to see?”
“I don’t mind.”
“It’s all pretty good,” he said. “The aviary’s the best part, I guess.”
She liked Kal. Very much. He’d been, on the whole, good-natured and easygoing from the moment they’d made it off the mountain. But he was also a man who was protecting something, a man who, according to his mother, had lost his priorities, and Rosemary didn’t know how far he could be pushed before his easygoing facade broke to reveal the true feelings beneath.
