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“All these people calling me, emailing, telling me the avalanche means we’re at a critical moment to talk to the public about Everest, and I’m the person to do it. I’ve got the experience, I’ve got the contacts in Nepal and with the climbers here in the United States, my mom’s Yangchen Beckett, and then there’s you.”
“What am I?” She closed her eyes.
“To Chris’s way of thinking, you’re a golden goose.”
“I thought the goose laid golden eggs.” She tucked herself into a small ball and pulled her hands into her chest. He gave her two minutes of consciousness, maybe less.
She looked sweet like that. He would have liked to pull her up against his body, lull her to sleep with the sound of his voice. But she was going to have to haul herself over to his mom’s bed eventually. No point making the transition even harder.
She made a noise, a moany little sigh, and put her bare feet on his leg.
“I had a lot of things going,” Kal said quietly. “School, a bunch of different internships here and in Nepal, meetings with officials to try to convince them to make it mandatory for trekkers to have local guides because I’m pretty sure it’s the best way to introduce higher standards of environmental protection.
“I had this pilot project out of Kathmandu running in cooperation with that guy we ran into on the street, Brian. Tourism’s the number-one source of revenue in Nepal, and it could make more money and help the country at the same time instead of sucking it dry. They just need better ideas and better planning, and I had that handled.”
The room heater came on with a loud rattle and a rush of forced air. His mom had monkeyed with it before going in the bathroom. They’d be boiling all night unless he remembered to turn it down when he cleaned up Rosemary’s food explosion and tucked her in.
“The thing is,” he told the top of her head, “if it was Chris calling me a couple years ago, every assumption he made would have been right. I would have jumped at the chance to write him an article. I would have taken one look at you and started trying to figure out how to get you to help me, fund me, put me in front of a camera, put you in front of a camera and have you sell my talking points. Anything to help Nepal.”
He was no longer as opportunistic and manipulative as he’d been when he was in thrall to his work. He’d stepped back from his own megalomania, fallen out of love with his power.
“Something changed,” she mumbled into the covers.
“Yeah. Something changed.”
Two avalanches. More dead than they could count. Lives ruined, homes destroyed, children trafficked. Something changed.
But the more time he spent with Rosemary, the harder it got to tell himself that what had changed was he’d given up.
If he’d given up, he would have felt some kind of surrender, some kind of peace. What he felt, every time he got a phone call or ignored a message, was tortured. What he felt was alone, without momentum or direction, but just as desperately interested in his ideals and plans as he’d ever been. It was true what he’d told Rosemary in Kathmandu: he never stopped thinking about it.
He thought about his mom, and Merlin, and the avalanche. He thought about all the people he knew who’d died at Base Camp, or in accidents on the mountain, or trying for the summit. He thought about reporters, and stories, and Nepal, and global warming, and global poverty, and Rosemary.
But he did nothing.
The air kicked off. The temperature shifted, and she shuddered.
“Come on,” Kal said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“I’m hungry.”
“You just ate a truckload of junk food.”
“I know, but I’m hungry.” She sat up. “Let’s go get something to eat, just you and me.”
“It’s late. My mom’s going to be up at the crack of dawn to finish the drive.”
Rosemary glanced at Yangchen’s sleeping form. “You have a curfew I don’t know about?” She smiled at him. “Come on. You need cheering up, and I need a cheeseburger and some french fries.”
“Sure.” It sounded good—some fresh air. Just him and Rosemary. “But I get to pick the music.”
Chapter 18
“Oh, look, they have cheeseburgers!” Rosemary held up the menu to show Kal.
The only restaurant they’d discovered to be open after midnight in this small Indiana city was a highly unlikely vegan Asian fusion cafe with six tables and an excellent rating on Yelp.
“That’s not a cheeseburger.”
