A Touch of Betrayal

by Catherine Palmer

  “Lunchtime!” Alexandra sang out as the tour leader headed the group off the main path and up a trail to an icy stream. As they emerged into a clearing, Alexandra linked her arm through Grant’s. “You know what?” she said. “This is the best thing I’ve done since I came to Africa.”

  “Lunch?”

  She swatted him. “No, this climb. I feel like I’m back on track now. This is where I was supposed to be, what I had planned to do all along. Jones is like a bad dream.”

  “Oh yeah? Then what am I?”

  Her blue eyes sparkled. “A good dream.”

  Unsure of the correct response to that comment, Grant seated himself on a fallen log and opened the box lunch provided by the tour. Alexandra dug out a boiled egg and began peeling. He studied her slender fingers as he bit into his chicken sandwich. Chewing, he pondered her words.

  “I don’t want to be a dream,” he said finally. “Dreams vanish.”

  She leaned against his shoulder and nibbled on her egg. “I think my money was a dream, and I have the oddest intuition that it’s all gone now. Somehow James Cooper has managed to sell off Daddy’s stocks. Either that or someone else has invaded the portfolio. I think I’m broke. But you know what’s really weird? I feel free.”

  He wished he could share in her elation. “I still don’t like being lumped in with the dream of Jones and your vanished money.”

  “Don’t you get it? I’ve surrendered, Grant. That money was such a weight, such a responsibility. In a way, it hung around my neck like a millstone. I felt like I had to find some means of honoring my father’s memory by investing his legacy in the best possible manner. Now I can honor him with the way I live my life—with the choices I make.”

  Grant downed the last of his bread crust. What choices would Alexandra make? If she had surrendered her money, had she also given up her goal of founding a big design firm? Did that freedom she felt include the independence to make a new life in a different land? And could she ever commit herself to a man she considered an illusion, a temporary mirage?

  He didn’t get his answers. The tour guide roused the sleepy group, and they set off again. Almost immediately the groans began. “I can’t breathe,” the smoker complained.

  “Can we slow down a little?” the portly lady puffed. And it went on. “My legs hurt.” “I have a headache.” “Are we nearly there?” “How much longer?”

  Grant’s lungs felt as if they were bursting from the strain of breathing the thin air. His calves complained, and the soles of his feet ached. Alexandra stopped swinging her arms. Her hair no longer bounced. She sucked in deep breaths, pausing gratefully with the rest of the group every few hundred feet.

  When the expedition reached the first camp—a simple stone building at the edge of the rain forest—everyone collapsed to the ground gasping. Grant tried to cover his amusement as he helped the tour guide and porters carry sleeping bags and backpacks into the hut. After a supper of hot soup, which the hikers devoured like ravenous hyenas, the whole group crawled gratefully into separate bunks.

  Grant lay awake listening to the snores. Even in their sleep, these folks couldn’t breathe worth a flip. He doubted the chain-smoker would last through the next day. Alexandra slept in a lower bunk across the room. He studied her profile lit by the single gas lantern, and he fell asleep wondering how it would feel to lie beside such a woman every night of his life.

  The next day everyone rose with the sun, ate quickly, and began the trek up a narrow, slippery path through dense forest. The four-thousand-vertical-foot hike demanded caution and vigilance. Grant pushed himself upward, occasionally using branches and vines for leverage. Sucking in deep breaths, Alexandra fell completely silent as she made her way over roots that stuck out into the muddy path.

  When a cold, misty rain began to fall, the whole group turned somber. Anoraks and sweaters grew wet and heavy. Mud clung to boots, weighing everyone down and making the climb even more tedious. The few glimpses of the peak the thick forest had allowed vanished as a wreath of gray clouds enveloped the mountain.

  Just when Grant was sure a mutiny was about to break out in the ranks, the forest ended. The timberline looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler. As the sodden group stumbled out onto a wide-open grassland traversed by crystalline streams, the sun peeped through the clouds and began to burn off the steam.

  The tired travelers found a new spurt of energy. But in the oxygen-deprived atmosphere, their enthusiasm didn’t last long. When they stopped for lunch, Alexandra flopped out on a rock and shut her eyes.

  “The terrain is alpine at this stage,” Grant said, hunkering down beside her and popping open a can of sausages. “That’s the amazing thing about East Africa. You can go from sea level to savanna to rainforest in a matter of miles. On the mountains, you can experience alpine terrain, and there’s tundra up ahead. When we get to the stony scree near the summit, you’ll think you’re on the moon.”

  Her eyes slid open. “Wonderful.”

  He grinned. “Air up there’s almost as thin as the moon’s. Everyone will be throwing up. You’ll think you’re going to die—or wish you were already dead. But, hey, why am I telling you all this? You read the brochure.”

  She groaned and curled into a ball. “Shut up, Grant.”

  “Weenie?” he asked, offering his fork. When she squeezed her eyes tight and shook her head, he chuckled. “Alexandra, you’re amazing. And you know what I’ve been thinking?”

  “What?” she mumbled.

  “I’ve been thinking about that prayer of mine. Maybe there’s been a plan for us all along. Look how things have worked out. You’ve realized you don’t need your money, and you’ve given it up. I’ve admitted science doesn’t have all the answers, and I’ve come to believe there really is a God. We’ve discovered a sort of compromise, a happy meeting place. And up here on Mount Kilimanjaro, we’re finding the real treasure we’ve both been looking for all our lives. Each other.”

  Drinking in a breath, Alexandra pushed herself up into a sitting position. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she regarded him with sapphire eyes. “Grant,” she said, and her voice sounded too much like a teacher’s to make him comfortable about what was to follow. “Grant, admitting there’s a God isn’t enough.”

  “Why not?” That had been a monumental step for him to take. What more could she want? “I said I believe, Alexandra. I believe.”

  “Even the demons believe there’s a God . . . and they tremble in terror.” She stretched out her legs and rested her forehead on her bent knees. “Oh, Grant, you have to go a step beyond belief. You have to surrender.”

  “What do you mean, surrender?”

  “Admit your mistakes. Your sins. Ask for forgiveness. Give up trying to run your own life. Turn around, start traveling a different road.”

  He prodded the sausages with his fork. That was a step beyond belief. A big step. Was he willing to take it?

  “There’s more to this than just acknowledging God,” Alexandra said. Her cheek lay against her knees, and her blue eyes searched his face. “Lots of people talk about a higher power—Hindus, Muslims, New Agers. But I’ve given my heart to Jesus Christ, God the Father, the Holy Spirit. My faith is not general. It’s specific. And I have a strong feeling that you and I . . . that we . . . we’re not together, Grant.”

  He tossed his empty can into the cardboard lunch box. “I need more time. Time to sort it out.”

  She nodded, but the fading light in her eyes said more than her words ever could. There wasn’t enough time, enough faith, enough hope to bridge the gap between them.

  Maybe there wasn’t even enough love.

  “Add miracles to the list of things in which I now believe,” Grant said as he and Alexandra sat beside a tiny campfire at two o’clock on the morning of their fourth day on Mount Kilimanjaro.

  After trekking across the alpine grassland, they had spent their second night in a tin-walled hut at thirteen thousand feet. The next day the party clambered up
and over rockfalls, through dry streambeds, and across prickly scrub grass. Frigid air nipped their aching lungs. At midafternoon, they reached the saddle between Kilimanjaro’s two peaks, Mawenzi and Kibo.

  Although the saddle was flatter and the climbing easier, the stony scree made for rough going. Gasping for oxygen, the climbers followed a rhythmic pattern—struggle forward a few feet, pause panting, rest ten minutes, stand and totter a few more feet before collapsing to the ground again. Despite nausea and headaches, everyone managed to make it to the last hut at sixteen thousand feet.

  “Did you notice Hubert yesterday?” Grant whispered to Alexandra beside the fire. She was sipping a cup of lukewarm coffee as she shivered beneath a blanket. “I bet he threw up fifteen times.”

  She covered his mouth with her hand. “Please, Grant. I’m barely keeping this coffee down as it is.”

  “But the guy’s been smoking two packs a day, and he’s still with us. It’s a miracle, Alexandra.”

  “So, now you believe in God and in miracles. Will wonders never cease?”

  He chuckled. “Maybe not.”

  Grant knew the best part of the climb was yet to come, and he was looking forward to spending it with Alexandra. She, too, had amazed him. Though her face turned pale and she couldn’t sleep at night, and her fingers were too cold and cramped to sketch, she marched doggedly onward. Long ago Grant had realized the woman was tougher than she looked. But this was conclusive evidence of the stubborn determination and sheer willpower that had brought her through two encounters with Nick Jones.

  “You know something?” he said. “You’re gritty.”

  “What did you expect?” she retorted. “I haven’t had a bath in days. Neither have you, for that matter.”

  He laughed. “I mean you’re strong. Determined. I like that.”

  “I get my mule-headedness from my father.” She lifted her focus to the moonlit sky. “Daddy wasn’t a quitter. When things got tough, he got tougher. That’s part of the reason he was such a success.”

  “Grit is a good legacy to leave. Better than money.”

  She nodded. “You’re right, Grant. I thank God for my father and the things he taught me.” She paused a moment, and her voice was wistful when she spoke again. “But he was wrong about people. I was wrong about them. Somehow . . . I want to be more open. Even though it might hurt, I want to trust. I just wish . . .”

  “What, Alexandra? What do you wish?”

  “I wish you could be around to help me work on that. You do it so well.”

  “Stay with me.”

  She shut her eyes, and the muscles in her face tightened.

  “Grant, you don’t know how hard this is.” “Guess again. I’m dying inside, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the altitude.”

  He took her hand as the tour guide began to round up the weary travelers for the final ascent. Abandoning their packs and sleeping bags at the third hut, the group donned parkas, gloves, mufflers. As they started forward, their destination emerged. Ahead in the moonlight a cinder cone, an impossibly steep slab of solid black, rose two thousand feet into the night sky.

  “Wait a minute,” Hubert, the chain-smoker, panted, coming to a halt. “We’re not climbing that, are we?”

  “Don’t worry,” Grant said. “The path zigzags.”

  The man turned toward him, his eyes dull. “I’m not going.”

  “Sure you are, buddy. All you have to do is walk twenty feet one way, turn, and walk twenty feet the other way. Then do it again. It’s not a problem.”

  “No,” the man said firmly. “I . . . can’t . . . breathe.”

  “None of us can.” Grant slipped his arm under Hubert’s. “Come on, we’ll make this a team effort.”

  Alexandra hesitated only a moment before taking the man’s other arm. “You can do it, Hubert.”

  Coughing, he took a tentative step forward. Then another. Grant had forgotten how terrifying the cinder cone could be. It was so steep, so dizzying, that one look down could send a person reeling with vertigo.

  Gasping, panting, sucking in one chilly breath after another, the travelers ascended the zigzag trail. By the time they were halfway up, Grant considered each footstep a major victory. Hubert dragged his feet over a stony rock, then through a patch of snow.

  “Snow in Africa,” Alexandra mumbled.

  “Another miracle,” Grant managed.

  Her smile carried him forward the next half mile. With each labored footstep, he played Alexandra’s words over and over in his mind.

  You have to go one step beyond belief. You have to surrender.

  One step beyond belief. To surrender.

  One step beyond.

  Surrender.

  Surrender.

  How to surrender? What to surrender? Grant studied his boots as they crunched down on black cinder. Surrender the things that stand in the way. Pride. Self-reliance. Intellect. Arrogant doubt. You stand in the way, Grant. You depend on yourself. Depend on Christ. Surrender.

  Why?

  For Alexandra? To make her stay.

  No. That couldn’t be the right reason.

  Grant’s lungs were bursting with the effort to breathe. He could hardly hold onto Hubert. Gritting his teeth, he took another step. Everything inside him ached. Most of all, his heart ached.

  That was why he must surrender. To fill his heart. To heal the wounded emptiness. To bring hope into the wasteland.

  A hot tear trickled down his frigid cheek. Yes, God. I want to surrender. I will surrender.

  I do surrender.

  Grant reached the last switchback and turned to start up the final few yards. Turn onto a new road, Alexandra had said. As his feet took the final steps to the peak, his resistance broke. Jesus Christ, I surrender. Guide my feet on this new road.

  And then they were there—all of them—standing at the summit and staring down into the wind-whipped crater of the dormant volcano, Mount Kilimanjaro. Hubert burst into tears. Alexandra hugged him. Everyone shook hands. Cameras snapped. The tour guide passed around a flask of coffee. Then everyone sank to the ground to await the sun.

  Alexandra snuggled down next to Grant, a little apart from the others, and kissed his cheek. “Miracles,” she whispered.

  Grant had the strangest sensation he was floating. But it wasn’t the altitude. It wasn’t even the woman beside him, though he took her hand and folded it within his own. He had expected surrender to bring darkness. He had anticipated a heavy depression at the death of what he had treasured most—the well-integrated sense of himself. The baring of his heart and soul should have brought despair. Instead, he soared.

  The stars faded. The moon slipped away. Pink light filtered across the eastern sky, banishing the blackness. An orange hue washed in behind the rose. And then the sun emerged—brilliant rays of burning gold. The snow turned to diamonds.

  Grant stared, transfixed. Awed. Humbled. His own significance paled in the glory of God’s majesty. Tears streamed down, and he couldn’t make them stop. Didn’t care.

  “I love you.” Alexandra’s words barely registered.

  God loved him. At this moment nothing more mattered to Grant. He understood; his vision was clear; he saw the road ahead.

  “I don’t know what to do about it,” she murmured into the wind. “I can’t figure out how to make my feelings for you okay, but I need to tell you. Grant, I love you.”

  He bent and kissed the chilly wool of her mitten. How could he speak? How could he convey what was in his heart—for her and for his Lord and even for himself? Wrapping his arms around her, he buried his face in her hair.

  Alexandra had said she loved him. Another miracle. A miracle so rare, so precious, the words of response failed to form on his tongue. He kissed the silky strands of gold and held her so tightly she could probably feel the beating of his heart.

  “Alexandra,” he tried. “I need . . . need to say . . .”

  Whoops of celebration shattered the moment as a second group of clim
bers emerged at the crest. Grant fell silent, observing the repeat of tears, photographs, and hugs. One of the newcomers, a burly fellow in a heavy parka and ski mask, pumped his fists and managed to do a modified victory tango. Grabbing a female climber, he swung her around twice and gave her a big kiss.

  Grant smiled, his own heart brimming with joy. “Alexandra, something happened to me,” he began again. “Climbing the mountain, I . . . saw . . . I understood . . . the reason—”

  “Look, everybody!” their tour guide shouted. “The clouds!”

  Grant and Alexandra scrambled to their feet. The thick mist that had wreathed the mountain had begun disintegrating rapidly in the early sunlight. As the clouds parted, a sweeping vista unrolled like a carpet. Greens, browns, and golds wove into rich brocade patterns. Villages nestled among patchwork fields of corn and beans. Like thin silver threads, distant roads crisscrossed and then forked into channels of rust red dirt. As far as the eye could see, this majestic Eden rippled on and on, finally fading into distant shades of olive, blue, and purple.

  “Where’s my camera?” someone cried.

  The stunned awe vanished as suddenly as it had come. Climbers began vying for the best and highest spots from which to photograph the scenery. Not far from Grant and Alexandra, the burly fellow dug around in his backpack and began fitting pieces of his camera together.

  Standing behind Alexandra, Grant held her close, sheltering her from the chill wind whipping across the mountaintop. He had to tell her what had happened to him, had to find the words. For a man whose life had been consumed with choosing the right phrases to convey folktales of mystery and wonderment, he was at a loss to explain the puzzling miracle that had just occurred in his own life.

  Paradoxical phrases tumbled around, tangling his tongue. Surrender had brought victory. Death had led to new life. Sacrifice had allowed healing. Darkness had transformed into light. Ironic. Confusing. The experience of transformation defied analysis and explanation, yet it demanded revelation.

  Grant took a deep breath.

  “It’s about God,” he said. “Jesus Christ. Alexandra, a few minutes ago . . . while we were on the last few steps of the cinder cone . . . I finally understood.”