“Not quite,” he replied. “I still have to fly back to Boston. I’m not keen to fly again, as you can imagine. I don’t even know if my townhouse is still there. If they thought I was dead, what did they do with all my stuff?”
“I’m sure your sister will be able to answer those questions,” I replied.
We arrived at the sliding glass doors and I held his elbow as we crossed the threshold together. As soon as we stood outside in the sun, he stopped briefly to inhale. I saw his breath on the winter air like a graceful puff of smoke.
When he opened his eyes, I again marveled at how clear and blue they were.
“Now this feels real,” he said. “Now I know I’m not dreaming.”
“Of course you’re not,” I replied, “but you’ve had an unbelievable experience. Not many people have been through what you have and lived to come home.”
His gaze met mine. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Although in some ways, I feel transformed.”
I nodded and held his arm as we circled the small courtyard.
o0o
Aaron and I sat down on a bench that overlooked a dormant winter garden buried beneath the snow. “Can I ask you something?” I said as a seagull soared above our heads.
“Anything,” he replied.
“You were the last person to see Seth. What was he like in those final days?”
Aaron gazed up at the sky. “We weren’t stranded together very long, so I didn’t get a chance to know him that well, but he taught me a lot about wilderness survival. He talked about his climbs up Everest and showed me pictures on his cellphone. He also taught me how to use his compass. A gift from you, I believe.”
“That’s right,” I said, remembering the day I had given it to him.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I claimed it after he was gone. I often pulled it out of the casing just to read the inscription on the back. Do you remember what it said?”
“So you’ll always find your way home,” I replied.
He reached for my hand and nodded. “Yes, and in many ways, those words saved my life. They gave me a sense of direction and hope. The nurse told me it was in one of my pockets when they found me. I should give it back to you, since it belonged to Seth.”
“No,” I replied without a second thought. “I want you to keep it. Please.”
He hesitated, then spoke softly. “Thank you.” He gazed into my eyes for a few seconds and I felt as if he were reading my thoughts.
Everything inside me seemed to wobble and come loose.
“You want to know if Seth talked about you,” he said.
I felt strangely exhilarated that he had guessed right, but then I thought of Seth and looked down at the cold hard ground.
“Now I feel insecure all of a sudden. I’m afraid you’re going to say ‘No, he hardly mentioned you at all,’ and I’ll feel like a fool for asking.”
The truth was, I’d felt insecure about Seth’s feelings the entire time we were married, and for good reason. Now that I was here with Aaron, however, I wanted to hear the worst. I wanted confirmation about what mattered most to Seth at the end of his life.
What had I been hanging onto all that time, anyway? Was it the simple idea that asking for a divorce would mean accepting my failure as a wife? As a woman who couldn’t compete with a mountain?
Or had I tried to protect Kaleigh from feeling that her home was broken? Was that why I hung on?
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Aaron said. “He talked about you and Kaleigh quite a bit. He had a video of you on his phone that he played for me.”
“A video?”
Aaron nodded. “Yes. You were in the Public Garden in Boston near the swan boats, and you seemed happy. You told him you wanted him to buy you a house on a lake with purple flowers.”
I swallowed uneasily. “Oh… I’m surprised he kept that video.”
I racked my brain to remember how in love we had been in those first few months after we were married. Those were undoubtedly our best days, after he came home from that disastrous climb up K2 and said he wanted to turn over a new leaf. I’d had such high hopes.
I shook my head at myself. “That house on the lake was just a fantasy. I wasted far too much time waiting for him to come home to me when I should have given that up and taken more control of my life.”
“He never gave up on it,” Aaron told me. “He kept re-uploading that video every time he got a new phone.”
“Really?” I said. “That surprises me.”
“Why?”
“Because he rarely called or wrote those last few years. I didn’t think he cared about us at all.”
A church bell rang somewhere in the distance and Aaron spoke earnestly. “He did care and he had his own regrets. He told me, just before he died, that he felt guilty about breaking his promises to you, and that he wished he’d been a better father. I believe he wanted to be.”
“That may be true,” I said, “but wanting to be a better father and actually doing something about it are two very different things.” I looked at Aaron. “Do you think he would have come home to us and tried to start over if he had made it home with you? Do you think the experience of crashing in that plane might have changed him?”
Not that I would have wanted that. I don’t think anything could have changed my feelings back to what they once were.
Aaron looked away. “I don’t know, Carla. But I can at least tell you what his dying wishes were, if you want to know. I think you deserve that much.”
I waited with bated breath for him to reveal them to me.
“Just before Seth died, he asked me to cremate his remains and to save his ashes, and when I got rescued, he wanted me to give half of them to his mother, then to find a friend of his named Mike and ask him to release the other half at the top of Everest.”
Hearing this from Aaron was like a punch in the gut. Were there no final wishes about Kaleigh and me? I swallowed over my sorrow.
I’d always known the mountain would win.
“I’m not really surprised,” I said, looking up. “He was every inch a climber, straight to the bone, and a very good one at that. It was his passion. Though it hurts me in some ways to know what was most important to him, I’m glad he spent his life doing what he loved most. We should all be so lucky.”
I looked down at my wedding band, then slid it off my finger, reached for my purse and dropped it into my wallet.
When I set my purse back on the bench, Aaron was watching me intently. I regarded him with a comfortable sigh. “There.”
He smiled and squeezed my hand.
“So tell me,” I said. “What went through your mind when the plane was going down?”
He sat quietly, then scratched his temple with his forefinger. “I remember wishing I’d had children. I even tried to bargain with God and I promised that if I survived, I’d be more open to…” He stopped.
“To what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Love, I guess.”
“You weren’t open to it before?”
“Oh, I was,” he replied, “but I went through a rough relationship that ended very badly. After that, I just wanted to focus on work. No more complications or drama.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
Squinting in the bright sunshine, he looked away. “She and I lived together when I was in grad school, then she just packed her bag one day, told me she was bored, and left. The last time I ran into her, she was struggling with addiction.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t be so nosy.”
“It’s fine,” he replied. “It was a long time ago. Almost eighteen years ago now. I’ve had a few relationships since then, but nothing ever felt quite right.” He grinned at me. “Some analyst, eh? You’d think I’d know what was wrong with me.”
I laughed softly. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe you just haven’t met the right person.”
He nodded, and we sat in silence for a while, listening to the seag
ulls overhead.
I was surprised by how tempted I was to lay my head on his shoulder.
A sudden wave of guilt washed over me because I was supposed to be in love with another man—a handsome, heroic police officer who was waiting faithfully for me at home.
My attraction to Aaron Cameron, however… It was distinctly compelling and mystifying, and I believe with all my heart that I might have given myself over to it completely if he had turned to me with those striking blue eyes and kissed me right then.
The hospital doors slid open, and I felt rather shaken as we both looked back.
“It’s my sister,” Aaron said. He smiled, then his eyes filled with tears.
Mine did as well.
As soon as Penny saw us sitting on the bench, she broke into a run.
I helped Aaron rise to his feet.
Chapter Fifty-five
Later that evening, after booking Gladys, Kaleigh and myself on an early morning flight back to Boston, I returned to the hospital to say good-bye.
I don’t know why I expected this visit to be straightforward. I suppose I’d been trying to deny how I felt about this man I’d met only a few days ago, because intellectually, I knew it shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t feel so close to him, as if he had been a part of my life forever, or that I was capable of knowing him better than anyone else ever could.
In the courtyard earlier, after a tearful reunion, Aaron’s sister Penny had thanked me profusely for staying with him until she arrived. She’d also assured me that she had plans to remain in the U.S. for a number of weeks until her brother was fully recovered, and to help him get his life back in order. She was just so happy he’d survived the ordeal of the past year. And so thankful she’d found him again.
The fact that he had someone here on this planet who loved him deeply filled me with relief, because if she hadn’t arrived, I’m not sure I could have left him. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone again after the year he’d just spent on that island. I couldn’t breathe when I imagined his loneliness, and I became filled with a yearning that perplexed me.
When I knocked on his door that evening after dinner and announced that I was there to say good-bye, his mouth fell open slightly and the color drained from his face.
Penny left us alone for a few minutes.
Aaron inched himself up higher against the pillows, and I sat down beside him.
The air in the room seemed to thicken as we stared at each other, and I wondered where all the oxygen had gone.
“I can’t let you leave without thanking you,” he said. “Not just for staying here at the hospital, even after you found out I wasn’t your husband. I know it might sound ludicrous, but I don’t think I could have survived on that island without you.”
My gaze remained fixed on his, but I couldn’t find words to speak.
“Am I scaring you?” he asked with a hint of a smile, leaning forward slightly.
“No.” I smiled too.
He seemed to relax. “I don’t know what I would have done without your picture to look at, the compass to keep me from getting lost, and that video. I must have replayed it twenty times until the battery died. Then, the sound of your voice in my head always calmed me at night. Now I really do sound crazy.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad you’re telling me this.”
He squeezed my hand. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
All at once, I sensed in him a desperation, not unlike what I’d felt in the courtyard earlier when I allowed myself to acknowledge the inexplicable yearning I felt.
I felt it again now.
“Our flight leaves in an hour,” I said, running my hands over his, noticing all the calluses.
He nodded, accepting that I had no choice.
We gazed at each other for an intense moment until those blue eyes of his made me feel like I was floating. My body felt weak and shaky.
“Do you mind if I bring Kaleigh in now?” I asked, stumbling over the tangled mess of my emotions. “She’s waiting in the lounge and wants to say good-bye to you, too.”
“Of course,” he replied.
I rose from my chair and quickly left to fetch her.
o0o
“I’ll miss you,” Kaleigh said, bending forward to hug Aaron. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” he replied. “And I won’t forget to send you that list of books. I’ll need your email address,” he said to me.
Kaleigh glanced over her shoulder at me, but I was distracted and flustered. “Of course.” I dug into my purse for a pen and paper, wrote it down and handed it to him. “My phone number’s there as well.”
“I should go,” Kaleigh said. “Gram says bye, too.” She turned to walk out.
“Tell Gram I’ll be right there,” I whispered to her, then I moved closer to the bed and held out my arms to embrace Aaron.
It was awkward because I had to lean over the bedrail. Or maybe that’s not why it was awkward. Maybe I knew there was something gigantic between us that I wasn’t prepared to openly acknowledge.
As I turned to leave, he sat up. “Carla, when I get back to Boston, can I see you? Can we have dinner or something?”
I blinked a few times and my heart began to pound. “I want to,” I replied, “but I probably shouldn’t. I’m… I’m seeing someone right now.”
I simply couldn’t lie.
Aaron’s lips parted. He stared at me blankly. “I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” I replied. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I thought you knew that.”
Why would he know? I hadn’t told him.
He relaxed against the pillows. Although relaxed probably wasn’t the right word. It was obvious he was disappointed. Even that word was an understatement.
“So now I know,” he said. “Have a good flight, and I’ll send that booklist to Kaleigh as soon as I can.”
“Thank you, Aaron. Bye.” I hesitated, then turned and walked out.
o0o
Shortly after takeoff, I gazed out the window at the full moon reflecting off the cold North Atlantic water below.
The starboard wing dipped sharply downward as the pilots steered the plane toward the south.
The glistening dark sea held me mesmerized. All I could think of was Aaron and the terror he must have felt when the plane was going down. I thought of every word we’d spoken to each other over the past two days, and my heart ached as we ascended into the sky and headed for home.
Three Months Later
Chapter Fifty-six
Kaleigh
Shortly after my thirteenth birthday—while I was enthralled with my weekly group guitar lesson on Friday nights and becoming infatuated with a darkly handsome, seventeen-year-old student with a lip ring—my mom was doing her best to pretend she was in love with a cop who tried way too hard to be perfect husband material.
And perfect father material.
Empirically speaking, I suppose I couldn’t deny that Josh was a pretty good catch. He was good-looking by most women’s standards, he held down a steady job and wore a uniform. Most importantly, as far as Mom was concerned, he lived here in Boston, had a large, closely knit family, and held no secret ambitions to run off to the Himalayas and scale mountains.
Mom liked that he was so committed and reliable, and it didn’t hurt that her friends and co-workers were all thrilled for her, including Aunt Audrey and Nadia, who loved the idea of welcoming a cop into the family.
“He has so many great stories to tell at dinner parties,” I heard Audrey say one night when I went to the kitchen to make popcorn for me and Wendy while they were drinking wine in the living room. Audrey gushed over how great Josh looked in his gun belt, and how wonderful it was that Mom had finally turned a corner and let go of my dad.
Meanwhile, I was the only one who knew the real truth—that Mom had been deeply affected by our brief encounter with Dr. Cameron in the hospital a few months earlier, a
nd she hadn’t forgotten him. Not by a long shot.
I’d been affected by it myself, and I still wasn’t sure why that experience seemed so colorful in my otherwise lackluster life.
I couldn’t stop wondering if it had been our voices that brought Aaron back from the abyss. Or my mom’s touch? And why did all of this happen? Were the three of us meant to cross paths? Had it been fate?
I didn’t mention anything like that to Mom because I knew what she’d say: that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I was a thirteen-year-old girl with an overactive imagination who had been reading too many books about mystical things.
But I’d seen them together with my own two eyes, and I knew my mother better than anyone.
Something in her had changed after we flew home. She’d grown quiet and adopted a habit of staring off into space. Sometimes I would catch her in the kitchen, leaning against the counter while a pot of something boiled over on the stove, right beside her. She wouldn’t even notice. She was a million miles away.
I often asked her what she had been thinking about. A few times she admitted openly that it was Aaron. She said she was imagining his flight from the polar bear, or his climb up the iceberg with the killer whales circling below.
Though we didn’t hear from Aaron at all, except for the list of books he sent via email, we did hear from Gladys about the journal.
Two months after we arrived home, she called Mom and said that although Aaron had stubbornly refused to hand over the journal to anyone, he had been kind enough to transcribe the early entries Seth had written on the island. Aaron had mailed the pages to her, which she photocopied and shared with Mom, who shared them with me.
The last entry was written under the tree when they were lost and trapped in a storm. My father’s final words were: I said another prayer.
He died the next day, and I’m pretty sure God must have been listening because that was around the time I had the dream about my dad. He’d seemed at peace about saying good-bye. He’d almost seemed happy. I suspected he was climbing a mountain somewhere in the high altitudes of heaven.
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