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She wanted this.
She wanted Yangchen to say yes.
She wanted it more than she could remember wanting to reach the peak of Everest, which didn’t make any sort of sense, but this was where Rosemary found herself—gathered around a fami
ly’s table in Elmhurst, New York, eating Indian food and praying with her whole body to be granted the opportunity to tell Yangchen Beckett’s story.
She didn’t understand how the avalanche had brought her to this moment, or why, but she understood that what she felt in her body, in her heartbeat, was hope.
Hope had become unfamiliar.
Whatever she’d been doing on Everest, and planning to climb the Seven Summits—what she’d spent the last few years engaged in, night and day, to the exclusion of everything else—hadn’t made her feel a fraction as hopeful, or as interested, as she felt right now.
Yangchen cleared her throat. “When are you leaving?”
“New York?”
Yangchen nodded.
“Tomorrow,” Rosemary said. “I have to go to Wisconsin to see my daughter, and then I’m flying to London right after, to put the pieces of my expedition back together.”
“We have no time.”
“Not on this trip, no, but I thought we could video chat, or speak on the phone”—Yangchen’s mouth had begun to turn down at the corners—“or if you like, I can come back to New York as soon as I’m able and we can work together in person.” Even as she said it, Rosemary doubted it would be possible. The article needed to be written soon if it was to be written at all. Since she concluded the meeting with Nikil, he’d already talked to her editor in England, who’d asked to see new pages, an outline, a definitive plan. Unless Rosemary put off her return to London—but Indira had made it clear she was needed in London—
“I’ll go to Wisconsin,” Yangchen said.
“What?” Kal asked.
“I’ll go to Wisconsin,” Yangchen repeated. “Kal can drive us. We’ll have time to talk. It’s the best plan.”
“You would do that?” Rosemary asked. She was already shuffling travel plans in her head. Kal had said it would take two days to drive to Wisconsin, but if she rebooked her London flight through a different airport she could see Beatrice quickly and still make it to the meeting with Indira. Just. “That would be absolutely—”
“Nuts,” Kal interrupted. “That would be nuts. She’s flying to see her kid, not embarking on the Beckett family road trip. I don’t think—”
“Kalden.”
Kal went instantly, completely silent. He and his mother stared at each other.
He crossed his arms.
She raised an eyebrow.
He glanced at Rosemary, who raised an eyebrow of her own. You promised to help me. So help.
Kal let out a long sigh. “Fine.”
Then, all at once, Patricia asked if she would be allowed to come, Sengmu began complaining that Kal was supposed to cover her shifts at the restaurant, and Tenzing—or perhaps it was Tashi—said he would be happy to drive if Kal didn’t want to, which resulted in Kal fixing him with an absolutely withering glare, none of which seemed to perturb Yangchen in the least. The older woman’s smile drifted to Rosemary through the chaos, and Rosemary smiled back at her. It was the wrong adventure, with the wrong companions—a distraction from everything she was meant to be doing. But it felt marvelous.
“We’ll leave early,” Yangchen said. “Six o’clock.”
“That sounds perfect.”
Two days with Yangchen. Two more days with Kal. A journey with a story along the way, and her daughter at the end of it.
Crazy, and unanticipated, and completely perfect.
Chapter 15
