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“Tell me why,” I said.
“I don’t know.” Frustration seeped into her voice. “Something feels off. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not tired. I’m not lost. I think I’m doing pretty well, actually. But something is…weird.”
“Hm.” I opened my laptop to check the weather advisories for Hart Mountain. “Maybe you miss me?” I teased, stalling for time while the page loaded. Internet was fucking slow here. “You don’t want to get to the top without me.”
She sighed. “No, that’s not it.”
“Wow, Nora. That hurts. That hurts a lot.” It did, actually. But the forecast loaded, so I pushed that away to focus. Just light rain, not the heavy drenching the mountain had endured for the past several days. Nothing to worry about there.
“I miss you.”
Her voice was barely above a whisper, but I heard it. Suddenly I felt a lot better.
She cleared her throat. “I feel like I should turn back. But that’s stupid. I should keep going, right?”
I scrubbed a hand over my beard. She wanted this so badly. How could I tell her to turn back, that today wasn’t her day? I couldn’t do that. It would break her heart. But if she felt like she was in danger somehow, there was no way I could tell her to keep going.
“What should I do?” she asked. “What do you think?”
I didn’t hesitate. “Turn around and go home. The mountain will be there tomorrow.”
She made a sound of extreme annoyance. “I called you for encouragement. You’re supposed to tell me to climb this goddamn mountain. Summon my inner Jack Kerouac. Tell me I’m being paranoid and I’m just tired and looking for a reason to quit.”
“I can’t do that, kitten.” My hand clenched the phone so tightly my knuckles turned white.
“Why? I’m scared and out of my depth here. Tell me I can do it.”
She made a gulping noise that sounded suspiciously like swallowing a sob, and my chest squeezed tight. I should be there. What the hell had I been thinking, leaving for the White Mountains before taking her up Hart Mountain? It was so important to her. I should have known she’d go without me.
“I have full faith you can do it, Nora. And you will. If you were just feeling tired, you wouldn’t need me to tell you to keep going. You called me because something feels wrong. I’m not there. I can’t see what you see or feel what you feel. But it doesn’t matter, because if you say something’s off, then it’s off. I trust you, Nora.”
“But what if I’m wrong?” she whispered.
“Do you think you’re wrong?” I countered.
There was a long pause, during which I paced the room and debated checking flight availability for that night. But that would be stupid, right? I couldn’t fly home just to check on her. It was going to be okay. This was Nora. Whatever decision she made, it would be okay. She might get herself into a lot of weird situations, but she always got herself out of them, too.
“I’m so close to the top,” she said. “I could be there in less than an hour. If I could just get there, everything would be okay.”
I knew how much she wanted that to be true. And it wasn’t my call to make. It was hers. “I trust you,” I said again. “If you think it’s safe, it probably is. Is that what you think?”
She barked a laugh of disbelief. “How can you trust me? I can’t even trust myself.”
“Yes, you can. Fear is a gift, Nora. It’s your body’s way of keeping you alive. Yeah, sometimes our bodies go overboard, and that’s when you need to use your brain. So think about it for a minute. What is scaring you? Analyze it, weigh the risks, and decide.”
For a moment there was only the sound of her breathing. Then, through the phone, I heard the dull thump of her footsteps. She was moving again. “Heading up?”
“No,” she snapped. “I turned around. The ground looks sketchy as hell right there, and I can’t figure out a way around it. But I’m not going to walk on it, so that means I’m turning back. I’ll wait until everything dries out more and try again.”
She was pissed. At herself, the universe, and probably at least a little bit at me. I didn’t care. Disappointment was hard to bear, but mountaineering was full of stories of people who chose to press forward to their doom. My theory? Turning back was almost always the right decision. The mountain would be there tomorrow. What mattered was that she was safe today.
“I tried to send you a picture, but it wouldn’t go through,” she said. “I’ll try again when I’m back at the car.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to hang up. I wanted to talk to her forever. “I don’t have to be anywhere, if you want to stay on the phone.”
She paused. “I should probably focus on where I’m going. There’s no trail, you know.”
Right. I knew that, but I still didn’t like it. “Okay. Let me know when you get back to the car? If I don’t hear from you in two hours, I’m sending out a search party.”
