Page 2 of What Happened to Nina?

We started down. It wasn’t fun. Simon’s progress was jerky and unpredictable, which meant that, on the other end of the rope, mine was too. He was doing it on purpose. I gritted my teeth. Decided that I was done pretending that things were okay. When we got to the bottom we were going to get everything out in the open. The rappel didn’t take that long. Half an hour, maybe, including the time we needed to detach our gear as we progressed. Simon reached the bottom first. I had about twenty-five feet left to descend. I kicked off, landed, and bounced lightly off the wall, letting the rope slip through my gear. I pushed off again, the rope slipped through, and then it happened. The rope went slack. Completely slack. I had nothing to hold on to. I was falling.

It’s the most sickening thing in the world, losing the support of your rope. It had happened to me only once before, in a rock-climbing center in Boston, when an auto-belay apparatus failed. But that was indoors, and I’d only been about five feet up, and there’d been foam mats below me. This was different. I just... fell. There was no scrambling, no grabbing for a tree branch or an outcropping. There was nothing to reach out for but air. I fell, I think, maybe ten feet. Not far, but far enough. I landed on my back, on dirt. There were rocks either side of me. Any one of them would have broken my back if I’d landed a foot to my left or right. My head hit the ground hard. I was wearing a helmet, which saved me, I guess, but I still blacked out for a minute. When I woke up, I couldn’t feel my body, which must have been shock, and then the pain came flooding in and with it the need to vomit. I couldn’t roll to my side. My body wouldn’t obey me. I was sure that I was going to choke, and then Simon was there.

“Oh my God! Nina. Jesus.”

He turned me onto my side, one hand supporting my neck the whole way. I vomited up my chicken sandwich. When I was done, he rolled me back and ran his hands down my shoulders and arms, and my legs down to my feet.

“Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

I tried to take a mental inventory. Everything hurt. Had I broken anything? Maybe some ribs. My ribs were on fire. I tried to move my legs. They responded. I clenched my fists. That worked too.

“I think I’m okay.”

“Don’t get up,” he said. “Don’t even think about it. My God. What the hell were you thinking? You just let go. Did you think you were down already?”

I hadn’t let go. Had I let go?

“Can I roll you back on your side again? I want to check your back, that you didn’t land on anything.”

I said okay, and Simon rolled me. His hands were very gentle, but everywhere he touched hurt.

“Jesus, the back of your helmet is completely fucked. It’s cracked right across. Good thing you were wearing it.”

I started to cry, though it was a weak sort of noise, a kind of whimper. I was too sore for howling. Simon rolled me over again and took off my shoes and my helmet. He gave me orders—wriggle my toes, my fingers, touch my nose, follow his finger. He was completely confident, like he knew exactly what he was doing, and I did everything he told me to do. At last, he sat back.

“I think you’re going to be all right. You got so lucky. You scared me. You really did.” He asked me to sit up, and I did. He packed away my climbing shoes and put my boots back on my feet and laced them up tightly. He picked me up off the ground and asked me to try standing. I was sore and shaky, but I could do it. He picked up both packs, took my hand, and led me away from the crag. I think I was still in shock. The pain in my ribs and head was pretty bad, but I just held on to Simon’s hand and kept limping along while he chatted and made soothing noises. His mood had changed completely. He was... cheery. At the house he brought me upstairs, helped me undress, and tucked me into bed. He brought me painkillers and water and kissed my forehead and told me we would have to go to the doctor the next day but for now it would be better to rest.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.” He leaned down to kiss me and then he left the room. And left me with something to think about. When he’d leaned down, I’d caught his eye, and in it I’d seen not concern, but... pleasure? Just a tiny hint of joy? Or triumph? I couldn’t nail it down.

I rubbed at my forehead with my left hand. With my right I cradled my sore ribs. What had happened on the mountain? I hadn’t let go of the rope. For sure, I hadn’t. Could the rappel anchor have given? Yes, a possibility, but hadn’t I seen the rope, hanging slack but still suspended, from my place on the ground? So the anchor couldn’t have given. The only other explanation was that Simon had completed his rappel, then let the rope go from his end. He would have had to untie his stopper knot first. It couldn’t have been a mistake. Could he have done it on purpose? Had he wanted me to fall? I told myself that was ridiculous. I told myself that I was being crazy and of course Simon hadn’t done that, would never do that, would have no reason to do that. But it was like I was going through the motions in the privacy of my own head, for no one’s benefit. Because I knew, for sure, that he had.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. I took off my top and looked in the mirror. There were marks on my body, old and new. A lot of them. Bruises on my shoulders. A bite mark on my left breast. I pushed my pants down. The bruise on my hip was yellowing. I turned, twisting to look over my shoulder. My back was a mess of black and blue. There was blood too, from a new cut on my shoulder blade that I hadn’t even felt.

I put my top back on and walked back to the bed. I sat there for a long time, looking down at my toes. I thought I had a decision to make, but when I sat down I realized the decision had already been made. All that remained was to decide how to do it. I searched for the fuck-you deep in my stomach, found it, and fed it. I wanted to be angry. For months, for half a year, he’d made me dance around, trying so hard to please him, trying so hard not to upset him. He’d wanted me to be afraid, and I was done with that. I started to get dressed. I put on my jeans and my boots and my sweater. I tied my hair back. I took my clothes from the wardrobe and my toiletries from the bathroom. I packed my bag. And then I went downstairs to tell Simon that we were over and that I never wanted to see him again.

CHAPTER ONE

Leanne

On Sunday afternoon, I went to find Andy in the barn. He’s not supposed to work on Sunday. We’d made an agreement that we would take at least one day of the week for family, but since I hadn’t even come close to sticking to that promise, I couldn’t really give him a hard time about it. I could hear the chain saw going as I crossed the courtyard. There are two doors to the barn. The double doors at the far end, which Andy uses to drive in his mini excavator and dump truck to get them out of the weather, and a small side door that Andy put in a couple of years ago. I went to the side door and pushed it open. Andy was hard at work, cutting a log down into firewood. He was wearing ear protectors, and his back was to me. I decided to wait, rather than tap him on the shoulder while he was operating the saw. I sat on a stool, breathed in the smell of sawdust, which I love, and waited.

Five years ago I applied for a barn-preservation grant from the State of Vermont. The frame of the building is red oak, and that’s always been pretty solid, but the roof and sidings and floor were all in bad shape. Andy used the grant money to replace the roof and the sidings and to put down a brick floor. I love the barn. I love that it’s open right up to the rafters and I love the way the light comes in through the small windows. I love the smells of machine oil and cut timber, and the way everything in it is so neatly lined up and organized, from the bags of fertilizer and peat moss to the pallets with landscaping stone and the stack of railroad ties in the corner.

Eventually, Andy turned off the saw. He pushed back his ear protectors and started stacking the wood.

“You need some help with that?” I asked. I’d startled him, and he jumped a little. “Nina still hasn’t called me back,” I said. I had my phone in my hand. I looked down at the screen, as if it might show something new. “I called her twice this morning. Both times it went through to voice mail. I sent her a text and nada.”

Andy returned his ear protectors and the chain saw to his tool bench. He checked his watch, took off his work gloves, and leaned against the wall opposite me.

“Well, Lee, she’s probably pissed. And I guess, maybe, she’s returning the favor.”

He was referring to the fact that Nina had called me three times that past week, and I’d been so mad at her that I hadn’t answered or returned any of her calls.

“Seriously?”

He shook his head.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com