Had I mentioned how classy Sofia was? Proper and tactful, rolled into one motherly package. Unfortunately, the two classless paparazzi staking out my staircase were neither proper nor tactful. I started to object, but then changed my mind. “You know what? Screw the paparazzi. I’m going to sit on my balcony with my hot chocolate and my friend, enjoy the fresh air, and show them I’m not doing anything wrong. They can publish all the garbage they want about me.”
Hector saluted and grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair. Still, I settled far across the deck, a good four feet away so there could be no mistaking the nature of his visit.
We sat in silence for a long time. (Sticking it to the paparazzi wasn’t as earth-shattering as I’d thought it would be.) The air carried just enough chill to frost our breath. I burrowed into my pockets and waited for Hector to speak. An occasional light flashed from a camera across the street, but when we didn’t embrace or kiss, or toke it up, they lost interest.
Finally, Hector spoke. “Okay, here goes. I’m sorry for leaving you behind to summit Longs. I knew the dangers. But I just couldn’t resist bagging that winter climb. It was a crap thing for a friend to do and I should have stayed behind with you and Molly, and Hippie.”
I shrugged, not wanting to go there yet. “There was nothing you could have done. Who knows, you might have been one of the people buried alive on the snowfield. You—” I inelegantly wiped my nose on my sleeve “—you might have died, too.”
“How are you and Molls doin’ after finding that woman? Okay?”
“Well enough. Molly’s closed mouth about it. Hector please, I don’t want to talk about this, not the night before my wedding.” I tried to open the metaphorical door and jump out of this conversation, but he casually leaned back, blocking my escape.
“Are you sure this is what you want, mamacita? To marry him again?”
“Of course.”
“It’s only, this seems kinda…rash.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “After all the stunts you and I have pulled? This is what crosses the line in your mind?”
“No. But the cliff-hucking and skydiving is all about pushing the limits of the human body, defying physics. We do something crazy and stupid, feel like gods for a bit, then high-five each other when we’re done. But this—marrying the man who left you high and dry for seven years?”
“Hey.” I straightened my spine. “You know why he left. Heck, by now, every Nixie in China knows why he left. But he came back, and he has broken himself in two trying to make things right between us. You have no idea what he’s sacrificed—”
“He convinced you to bail on everything and everyone you love, just so he can have a booty call in L.A.!”
“Shhh!” I pointed in warning to the stalkers across the street. Hector rolled his eyes but lowered his voice.
“It seems like you’re the one doing all the sacrificing. Come on, Kaye, don’t be a doormat.”
I leaned in. “For the record, I left him high and dry, too. I’m the one who filed for divorce, remember? But we’ve forgiven each other and are ready to move on. I suggest you do the same.” I stood, signaling the conversation was over. He only stared up at me, dark eyes wide and glittering. “Look. I know you’ve never liked Sam, but because you’re my friend, I hope you’ll be there tomorrow.”
“Of course. And as your friend, a real friend, I had to speak up. I hope you can appreciate that.”
The fight drained from me. “I do. But I disagree with you on this one.”
“If it goes south, give me a call and we’ll tackle a summit.” He caught himself and grimaced. “Or take a quiet tubing trip down the river.”
I clenched my teeth to hold back the images of twisted limbs and frozen hands and patted my well-meaning friend on the shoulder. “Have a good evening, Hector. Watch out for the soul-eating parasites at the end of the drive.”
“See you tomorrow, Trilby. Or Cabral, I guess.” Cameras started to flash again as he jogged down the steps, and I ground my teeth even harder because even though I told myself it was my balcony and I’d done nothing to be ashamed of, I hated that tomorrow, somewhere, hundreds of gullible people would read a blurb about a strange man leaving my home in the middle of the night and believe the real life Neelie Nixie was a cheating tramp.
“I should go home, as well.”
Sofia had quietly slipped out of my apartment. Well, perhaps only fifty people would believe I was a cheating tramp.
“Thank you for coming down, Mamá. It means a lot.”
Sofia pulled me into her warm arms. She always smelled of chocolate and cinnamon.
“Don’t fret over the Valdez boy. It is difficult to disappoint someone we care for, but being honest is the best you can do.”
“If nothing else, I was honest.”
“I have thought of a way to keep unwanted eyes from your wedding tomorrow. Do you trust me?”
“I trust you.”
“Gracias, mi corazón. Here’s what we’re going to do…”
Chapter 3
Matching Hands
A climbing hold in which both hands are placed side-by-side to allow a mountaineer to reach the next hold more easily.
Boulder, Colorado
October, present day
Sam—Our Pikes Peak climb last weekend kept swimming in my head, so I had to get it down paper before I forgot the details. Needless to say, I may be working late. Again.
Time for honesty. Next month we’ll mark our third anniversary. I know the past couple of years have been rough, with my panic attacks and quirky little phobias. I get that you and Hector think you can fix this by throwing me onto a mountain again…and my therapist might actually agree with you. The Longs Peak avalanche really messed me up.
My fearlessness has been something you’ve loved in the past and, though you’d never say it, you have to be disappointed. I’m disappointed in me, too.
Perhaps the need to shed this constant disappointment is what made me agree to your and Hector’s fourteeners proposal—climb Colorado’s tallest mountains. Even writing it makes my heart race with excitement and fright. (Trust me, it’s not your combined persuasive skills. But by all means, please continue to ‘persuade’ me. I kind of like it.) —Love K, who is trying to be brave again.
Hydraulic Level Five [WORKING TITLE]
Draft 1.103
© Samuel Caulfield Cabral and Aspen Kaye Cabral
COLORADO THE BEAUTIFUL
Purple mountains’ majesty,” Aspen whispers. Katharine Lee Bates had it right, with her ‘sea-like expanse.’ The mountains circling Pikes Peak are white-capped waves, frozen mid-crash against fourteen-thousand-foot walls.
Aspen’s cheeks have numbed and her nose is a solid icicle, but she’s glad her first summit in years is in October. The fall foliage is at its peak; the trees that share her name are coffers of quivering gold.
The gift shop behind her certainly lends a surreal element to the summit. It also makes her feel safe, surrounded by price-tagged hoodies emblazoned with ‘Colorado the Beautiful’ slogans. Now she feels bad for giving H and Caulfield crap about choosing the most commercialized peak in Colorado as the first summit in their fourteener challenge. With the clanking cog railway just feet away and tourists in trendy parkas snapping pictures, potential avalanches are the farthest thing from her mind. Today, their biggest concern is getting down the mountain before a FLASH-BOOM gathers. And that’s exactly what it is—thunder and lightning that’ll make a gal fear for her soul.
She’s still not sure how she landed herself in a race to tackle fifteen of Colorado’s fourteeners, but she has difficulty refusing H’s dares. Coupled with Caulfield’s Sam-I-Am charm, she didn’t stand a chance. She shakes her head as she recalls her conversation with H just days ago, his bold black eyes round with innocence…
“I have a proposal for you.”
She glances at the office invader over her monitor. “What can I do for you, H?”
“You remember the
Canadians?”
“The brothers we met on Longs Peak? Sure.”
H gets comfortable in the chair across from her desk and plucks a peppermint from her candy dish. “Well, they have this plan to bag all of Canada’s fourteeners this year—that’s fifteen peaks.”
“I know how many fourteeners Canada has.”
“Right, okay. You know how crazy competitive these guys are. They’ve decided it’s not enough to get fifteen peaks in a year. They want me to bag fifteen of Colorado’s this year, too, and see who gets their summits first. That’s cake, because Colorado has fifty-three alone.”
She rubs her eyes, not liking where this conversation is going. “I also know how many fourteeners Colorado has.”
“Right, of course. I’ll need a good partner. L’s in, but they have the baby on the way, so he won’t be able to make every climb. Mountaineering isn’t really my wife’s thing—she’s more of a one-sport woman, and that sport’s skydiving. Then there’s you and Caulfield.”
“H, I haven’t summited a mountain in three years.”
“It’s like riding a bike. You just have to get back—”
“Caulfield put you up to this, didn’t he?” She shoves his feet off her desk and opens her old-school planner to note of a new client appointment.
“Aspen,” he says in a wheedling tone, “it’s been three years since the avalanche. When are you going to start living your life again?”
He’s beginning to sound like her therapist. “I am living my life. I have a wonderful career, a great town, a husband and family who love me…”
“And you also have a daily affirmations calendar on your desk. With mountain views, ironically.” She grabs the calendar from him and stuffs it in a drawer. Like a toddler who can’t keep still, H next flips open her planner, scans her schedule and jabs a finger at her free weekend. “Look, what you saw on the Longs climb, that woman…I get why going back up there is scary.”
Aspen slams her planner shut. “No, you don’t. You didn’t dig through snow that was packed so hard it was like digging through concrete with your fingertips. Or claw into it with an ice axe and pray to God you didn’t kill someone, only to dig them out and find them so...” She buries her face in her hands as the trembling starts. “You didn’t see her face, or feel her skin when you had to find a pulse—”
“Aspen, shhh, shhh, tranquila. No te enojes.” H’s arms are around her and she stiffens at their unfamiliarity. He hasn’t been affectionate with her in years, not since he walked out of her wedding. “You’re right, I haven’t been in an avalanche. But I’ve seen legs snapped in two, heads gashed by ski and skydiving accidents—remember your bounce several summers ago? It’s part of the lifestyle.” She calms to the point where she sees the truth in H’s words.
“So here’s the gig: Pikes Peak, super easy. It’ll be a late autumn climb, but we’ll take it slow. Just you, me, and your ball-and-chain.”
Unbelievably, H and Caulfield have reached a friendly understanding in recent weeks. “I haven’t been training, not even a rock wall. And Caulfield’s never climbed a fourteener in his life.”
“You guys run, like, seven miles a day. And the terrain around here isn’t exactly flat.”
“Yes, but—”
“And you’re freakishly strong for a Cabbage Patch Doll.”
She shoves his arm, proving his point. She wouldn’t say she resembles a Cabbage Patch Doll, though her face does have a baby-ish shape, and she’s been plagued by freckles and frizzy ringlets since she was a tot. Ringlets which, when she’s active, she’ll braid down either side of her head. Fudge it all, she looks like a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Aspen sighs. “You have to admit, we’ve experienced some incredible things. How many people can say they’ve climbed above the clouds?”
“That’s it, Aspen. We’re not like other people. Some would be happy to call it a day after that avalanche, but not you.” He leans in with that intense gaze of his. “You survived.”
Caulfield comes up beside her and together they stare over the rock wall into the fog of a cloud passing through.
“I bought you a bag of cookies.” He holds them out to her. She smiles and takes them. The warm chocolate chip cookies have been a favorite of hers since she first rode the cog railway years ago on a school field trip.
The wind bites and whips what little skin is exposed beneath stocking caps and fleece. Temperatures read eight degrees. But Aspen might as well be standing at the golden gates of Heaven, because as much as she’s denied it, she’s longed for mountain summits. What’s more, she’s longed for them with Caulfield.
Too bad she chickened out at the trail head and ascended Pikes Peak via the cog railway. H grumbled, but in the end he too boarded the train and slouched next to a toddler with snot bubbling from his nose.
“I’m glad we came up, even if it was just the railway,” she tells her husband.
“I was worried I’d made a mistake in pushing you to do this.”
“Sometimes we need a little pushing.” She peers up at him—another mountain she’d needed a lot of pushing to summit. “Thank you.”
Caulfield steals a cookie, though it’s not in his strict food plan. “Thank you for wanting me along. Though I’ve got to admit, I’m bushed after climbing those five whole stairs. Any chance I can convince you to take the railway back down?”
Kaye—If you come home on time tonight, I’ll personally demonstrate my power of persuasion.
All seriousness now. I am not disappointed in you. I am concerned for my wife. Among everything and everyone under the sun, I love you most. This will never change—I made you that promise on our wedding day, nearly three years ago. This fourteeners challenge is one way of keeping that promise.—Sam
Boulder, Colorado
November, three years earlier
My travel agency clients pushed elopement as the stress-free route to marriage. Ha! Maybe it is in Hawaii, where you can forget the shirt on your back and the sandals on your feet, and still have a beach wedding. A courthouse wedding, however, was complicated.
Five days after the avalanche, I slid into the front seat of Danita Valdez’s beautifully restored Coronet muscle car and unbuttoned my red wool coat. I’d creaked down the old servants’ staircase of my Victorian home, through my Trilby Jones office, and out the back door without alerting Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. The rest of our tiny wedding party waited across town at the county courthouse—thankfully paparazzi-free. At Sofia’s brilliant suggestion, the Valdez boys’ parents took Samuel’s car for a spin earlier this morning, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum trailing after them, all the way to Denver.
If my string of questionable life choices hadn’t clued one in to my impulsive personality, my elopement to a man I’d just as hastily married and divorced seven years ago should’ve sealed the deal. Fortunately, I had friends who managed to turn our spur-of-the-moment wedding into something cohesive.
My once and future sister-in-law unceremoniously tossed a small bouquet of delicate paper whites into my lap. She and Molly, who fidgeted with her neckline in the backseat, also had bouquets resting in cup holders. “I stopped by a flower shop—assumed it slipped your mind with everything else.”
I inhaled shakily. “What else am I forgetting?”
“Forms of identification?” Molly asked.
“Got it.” I patted my purse.
Danita drummed the steering wheel with perfect French-tipped nails. “Decree of divorce paperwork?”
I looked to the ceiling. “That’ll be fun to explain to the county clerk.”
“Hmmm.” She gave me her no-nonsense stare. “You’re sure about this? Life has been awfully crazy, as of late. Especially after the av—”
“Let’s not discuss it today, Dani. Please? Wait until after the honeymoon.”
Molly’s ginger complexion had gone sickly pale, and I knew the things that flickered behind her eyelids. “I don’t want to talk about it, either.” Dani relented, for now.
A smile played upon Danita’s lips. “Something old?”
I exhaled (the defense I’d prepared wasn’t needed after all) and touched the satin-covered Bible tucked in my clutch. “I have my something old. Though, I suppose this could also pass.” I fluffed the knee-length hem of my dress. No white, just pale gray tulle pulled from the depths of my closet, stored away after a black-tie fundraiser two autumns ago.
I’d forgotten my ‘something blue,’ though the sky that November afternoon was crisp and clear. I did have a brand new gold band to give to Samuel, and that was more important to me than new dresses and manicures.
I nervously twisted my bare ring finger, where Samuel’s diamond had once rested and would rest again. Before we exchanged vows, we had to obtain a license from the recorder’s office.
Danita steered the car through mid-morning foot traffic near the University of Colorado. Students blearily stumbled through rotting leaf piles toward Pearl Street for coffee and pastries, book bags slung over their shoulders. I bounced my knees and peered down the road.
When we pulled up to the government building that housed the recorder’s office, Samuel was already there, pacing the sidewalk, eyes intent on his shiny black oxfords. His hands were crammed in his pants pockets and frenetic energy spiraled around him, so much so that pedestrians gave him an extra foot of space. His head lifted when we shut our car doors. Joy lighted every corner of his face as he strode toward us, a small cluster of paper whites resting in the button hole of his suit coat (Dani had kindly thought of more than my bouquet).
I stood across from him, twisting the paper whites’ stems between my palms. His fingers trailed a tamed curl along my temple, down behind my ear to the nape of my neck, where it was tucked into a bun.
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