Fourteeners

by Sarah Latchaw

  Fourteeners, Copyright © Sarah Latchaw, 2020

  All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  Omnific Publishing

  2355 Westwood Blvd., Suite 506

  Los Angeles, CA 90064

  www.omnificpublishing.com

  First Omnific eBook edition, February 2020

  First Omnific trade paperback edition, February 2020

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Latchaw, Sarah.

  Fourteeners / Sarah Latchaw – 1st ed. ISBN: 978-1-623422-67-7

  1. Contemporary Romance — Fiction. 2. Mountain Climbing — Fiction.

  3. Bipolar Disorder — Fiction. 4. Authors — Fiction. I. Title

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover Design by Amy Brokaw

  Interior Book Design by Amit Dey

  Printed in the United States of America

  To foster

  Moms and Dads in the trenches for your kids. You are heroes.

  FOURTEENERS

  When a mountain crosses the towering threshold of fourteen thousand feet, it is known as a ‘fourteener.’

  Fourteeners shadow the twisting spine of the Colorado Rockies, and mountaineers, in their desire to be ‘above it all,’ will face grueling terrain to place these peaks on their mantles.

  Chapter 1

  ANCHOR

  To offer protection against a potentially fatal fall, mountaineers will bolt their rope to rock, ice, or snow at an anchor point.

  Hydraulic Level Five [WORKING TITLE]

  Draft 1.100

  © Samuel Caulfield Cabral and Aspen Kaye Cabral

  EMOTIVUS DROWNICUS NIXIUS

  Caulfield sees the half smiles of his wife.

  Having her safe in their Bear Creek home, rooted to the ground while he writes and she canoes and hikes, works with her art galleries and cave clubs…she has all of her fingers and all of her toes, but she withers in his hands.

  Her mountains are casual acquaintances—warranting a nod, but never an invite. The top-of-the-line hiking pack he gave her for Christmas collects dust in the closet. Next to it rests his own unused pack, bought in a flash of optimism. Every morning she watches the sun hit their mountains in a blaze of gold. Then, at night, they fall into shadow, and another day has passed.

  Ever since the avalanche.

  Nearly three years ago, they promised themselves to each other again, and when they repeat their vows on this date, every year, they say them with the painful knowledge of what it means to forsake those vows. Their wedding anniversary is a time of celebration. But for Aspen, the days preluding it are a bitter token of ice and panic. She marks them alone, from the safety of her desk chair.

  Caulfield’s subtle. “Has H contacted you about a climb?” (He has long suspected H is in love with his wife, or was, once upon a time. Now H has his own wife, and he no longer watches Aspen with burning eyes.)

  Aspen’s not subtle. “How’s the new pirate book doing?” She knows this will shut him up. He feels his manhood shrivel at the mention of that book—the book with great expectations attached to it. The fledgling fantasy series was supposed to be better than his nixies, and critics couldn’t wait to prove those claims wrong. It was lambasted before it hit the shelves. The reviews sit in his brain like his mother’s ancient upright piano: dissonant and immoveable.

  “By the standards of his auspicious career, Sea Rovers is a cliché-strangled shipwreck destined for the foreboding depths of dust bins…”

  Still, he’s a storyteller. He sifts through his brain and seeds of ideas tumble through his fingers where they root on paper. Caulfield writes, not about far-away nixies or water horses, or universally panned pirates. He turns to his beloved Colorado. To the drama of its mountains, where life thrives and dies through sun, and snow, and thin air fourteen thousand feet above the earth.

  “And so, Aspen, my wife,” Caulfield says, “I propose this: I’ll write mountains for you, and we’ll conquer them. As much as I want you in my hands, I will not watch you wither there.”

  Kaye—It has been a long while since we’ve worked on our book. Are you game?—S

  Sam, I’m game for most anything. Not once have I regretted what I did for that Klondike bar. –K

  Boulder, Colorado

  September, present day

  My fingertips skimmed the edge of the glowing laptop screen as I read Samuel’s email. The light glinted white against the facets of my wedding diamond and I twisted it, mesmerized. The man who gave it to me breathed soundly into his pillow. Sleeplessness plagued me this time of year, as the mountains trickled from golden autumn to the frozen limbs of winter. Winter brought memories of other frozen limbs, tangled and mangled by the snowy fury of an avalanche on the North Face of Longs Peak, now almost three years past.

  Had it really been that long? I counted back the anniversaries to the stretch of time before the Longs Peak climb, when Samuel suffered his last major bout with mania. (Since he’d stormed Fenway Park in Boston with his mother’s crematory urn and paid a visit the psych ward, we’d happily had few and far-between slug-fests with his bipolar disorder.)

  I’d also eased up on my adrenaline-driven hobbies. Skydiving was a rarity. Kayaking and skiing trips stuck to tried-and-true routes. And my mountains? What Samuel wrote was true. My mountaineering dearth had little to do with Samuel’s tenterhook illness and much to do with my fear that the entire mountainside would sweep me away in a wave of snow boulders.

  Shivering, I burrowed beneath our comforter and pressed my body against the warmth of Samuel’s back. Unconscious, he turned and lifted a bare arm, allowing me a safe haven in his musky embrace. From the comfort of Samuel’s body, I closed my eyes and let my mind carry me back, three years ago …

  Longs Peak, Colorado

  November, three years earlier

  I’d like to say our Longs climb was as smooth as summer cherries and Samuel worried needlessly. (With a permanent marker, he’d scrawled “I love Samuel Cabral” on my forehead as a Hector deterrent, though the only thing it accomplished was to incur relentless mocking from my pun-happy climb team.) He was a nervous wreck over this winter climb, but he’d still insisted I go. I’d wanted that summit badly and he saw it.

  “I can’t lock you away in a closet, so I’ll have to trust you to take care of yourself up there. It’ll be worse for both of us if I hold you back from the things you love.”

  “Are you and Jaime sure you want to tag along? It’ll be a boring couple of days at base camp, just you and Betty the Campervan.”

  “I’ll work on the next movie script for the studio, appease them for a while.”

  “And from what I hear, Jaime’s bringing enough legal journals to argue her way out of Purgatory. Although, she may use them to bludgeon you, so watch your back.”

  The climb took a turn for the deepest circle of Hell (or at least the circle for politicians and litterbugs) when we met two Canadians at Granite Pass, where the path skimmed along the top of an airy world.

  It began with a mysterious red object, wedged in an ice crevasse ten feet below.

  I think it’s….ah…” Hippie squinted against the sun bouncing off the steep slab of ice.

  “Actually, I don’t know what that thing is.”

  Our climb team—Cassady (aka Hippie), Molly, Hector, Luca, and me—crowded around the edge of the slope, wind biting our cheeks as w
e stared down at the stark blotch of red.

  “Do you think it’s…blood?” Molly, my best friend, would spot a wounded creature on a coke can.

  I shook my head. “Some hiker probably just lost a hat.”

  An unfamiliar voice answered me. “Quite the challenge, eh? C’mon! Let’s go after it!”

  I screeched and whipped around to find two men already anchoring rappel ropes, their weathered faces creased with glee. We’d glimpsed them some distance down, and they’d already gained us. Longs Peak was a popular destination in the summer, but winter climbs were notoriously demoralizing and weeded out novices.

  The sun never graced the north slopes of Longs in colder months, and it felt as though we were scaling the dark side of the moon. We started our climb with six inches of rain, which meant snow and ice, and claw-like crampons fitted on our shoes for the higher reaches of the mountain. I’d done climbs in which the wind howled and, by the time we reached the tundra, we battled a wall of blowing snow. Then, it was turn back or face deadly exhaustion and hypothermia. But this day, weather conditions were mild.

  The trek took us through six miles of lush forest, staggering views, and a mountain lake.

  A pit stop here and there for solar-powered toilets, water, and nasty but effective Clif Shot Gel. Finally, we broke the tree line and stared in awe at the vast and empty Boulder Field—our high camp for the night. Tomorrow, we would summit the peak via the flat-sided North Face route, which was a grueling, vertical slope that billowed from the edge of the Boulder Field like a cloud pillar.

  There were few markers on the Boulder Field and even fewer signs of life. Only a scattering of colorful dome tents nestled in the barren expanse told us we hadn’t been drugged and dropped in the middle of Antarctica. At thirteen thousand feet, we’d left anything green behind long ago.

  It turned out, the red thing was not blood or a hat, but a Kit Kat bar.

  The two climbers who joined us were from northern British Columbia, down for a mountaineering vacation. They also had a sobering adrenaline addiction, and Hector was drawn to them like a marmot to antifreeze.

  Canadians have a reputation for being overly polite. They beat us to the field by ten minutes, so by right, the best wind-shielding rock wall was theirs.

  “Oh no, we insist your women take the spot.” Molly and I smiled at ‘your women,’ but we appreciated their chivalry, especially as it meant we’d sleep in the snug shelter of a rock wall.

  “I love Canadians!” cried Molly. “You are true gentlemen.” She kissed their cheeks and I swear their frost-bitten faces reddened like maple leaves.

  Evidently, Hector also loved Canadians. He invited them to share the prime rock shelter and they sandwiched their tent between our two tents, making for cramped, but warm, sleeping quarters.

  “Fuuu…..”

  “Again.”

  “Fuuu….”

  “Again.”

  I scrunched my eyes and shook my head, as if I’d bit a Lemonhead in two. “I can’t, Molly.”

  “Kaye, just say the word.”

  I scowled at my intimidating linguistics coach, a dirty Henry Higgins popping glass marbles in my mouth.

  “Fuuuu…rick. Frickety-frick-frick. Mother-frickin’ Jacques H. Cousteau.”

  “Nice, Kaye. The ocean guy?” She rolled off her thick hiking sock and violently rattled a bottle of nail polish.

  “At least I have class, you foul-mouthed Amazon.”

  “Says the woman who wore yoga pants to work.”

  I tossed my inflated pillow at her head. She deflected and it bounced off the lantern in a flurry of shadows. “One time. One time. And they were black.”

  A deep, lilting Canadian accent rose from the tent next to us, in between wind gusts. I only caught half of what they said given my partial deafness in one ear, but it sounded very Canadian. “You could always say ‘fokk.’ Like, ‘Way to lose yer lumber on de ice, ya fokken bird.’”

  Molly’s polish brush paused over her foot. (To Molly, third degree frostbite was a fair exchange for perfectly pink toenails.) “I forgot you were over there,” she called. “What else do you say in Canada?” We listened with widening eyes as a litany of Canuck-centric curses—from overtly sexual to overtly Catholic—pleasantly filtered through our tent wall. And I thought Samuel and I had been creative with our faux cursing. Molly carefully dotted the edge of her big toenail where the pink had chipped and wiggled her toes in delight.

  “I can’t believe you packed nail polish for a mountain climb, you overgrown teenager. You do realize temps have been known to drop to forty below at night on the Boulder Field.”

  “Not tonight.” She shifted, her long legs uncomfortable in the cramped tent. “And I can’t believe you still say ‘frick.’ Step off the shiny, it makes me happy.”

  “So does Cassady. Usually.” No one else had noticed the stand-offishness between the two of them, but I saw the extra foot of daylight. Molly appreciated frankness. Her eyes dimmed like cooling coals, and I knew I’d unearthed something raw.

  “He’s leaving, you know. Moving to Breckenridge to work at a ski resort.”

  I blinked, surprised. “I didn’t know. When? Why?”

  “When? I’m not sure, but he’s restless. It won’t be more than a month. Why? Once a nomad, always a nomad, I guess. I didn’t expect him to put down permanent roots just because we’re dating.” She raised a parka-clad shoulder, trying for dispassion but her open heart told a different story.

  A year ago I would have said this was complete crap, but life and love had more complications than a Tolstoy epic. “Hippie has put down roots. This isn’t a casual thing for the two of you, anyone can see it.”

  “I think I’m going to go with him.”

  My breath froze in my chest. “Leave Lyons? Really?”

  “What, you think you and Samuel are the only ones allowed to nose-dive out of the nest?” Her lips lifted. “I told you years ago I wanted out of Lyons. Just because you two are squawking to get back under mama bird doesn’t mean it’s the same for me. Besides, Breckenridge isn’t far—just a couple of hours. This would be a good opportunity to scout out new accounts for TrilbyJones, and you’ve already proven that it’s possible to telecommute. It boils down to this: I think I might love Cassady and I want to see where this leads.”

  It was leading my friend away. I had focused so much time on bringing Samuel home, I’d forgotten that life also continued for others. Like when I barged into Angel’s hangar and found out in an embarrassing way that he and Danita were trying for a baby. Or when I ran into my old babysitter at the gas station and couldn’t believe she had gray streaks and a minivan. In my head, she was still a metal-mouthed teenager hiding in the basement closet while my four-year-old self chucked strawberries at her. (In my defense, I thought she was playing along. I still owed her an apology.)

  “I get it, Molly.” I tucked limp blonde curls under my stocking cap. “I’ll just miss you. Who else is going to ply me with red wine and convince me to send e-mails to my ex?”

  “Your not so ex,” she amended.

  “My ex ex.”

  She gave me a knowing smile. “You’re going to marry him again, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I just have to convince him to ask me again. After what happened in Boston, he’s waffling between keeping me at arm’s length or all in, so at any given moment, it’s hard to tell what kind of hint he would welcome.”

  “Pssh. The Age of Aquarius is dawning, my friend. You should do the proposing.”

  I was a bit astounded I hadn’t thought of it myself. “You think?”

  “Mm-hmm. Samuel would take your fine tush right there on Sofia’s front porch if you asked him to marry you.” She replaced her extreme weather socks and scrambled beneath her bedding, signaling her need for sleep. “Something to think about. Goodnight Kaye.”

  “’Night, Molly.”

  “Goodnight, American ladies,” echoed a Canadian on the other side of the ten
t wall. “Best of luck bedding your hosers, eh?”

  “Fokking courteous Canucks,” Molly grumbled as the men chuckled. I slinked beneath my sleeping bag, as mortified as a sixteen-year-old at a slumber party.

  The first time I ever heard ‘four-by-four’ used as a verb was huddled over the breakfast stove the next morning, between nibbles of freeze-dried food. It was also the first time I’d met someone with a ‘gold claim in the bush.’ Not a euphemism—I asked.

  Dusky pinks of the alpenglow swirled over rocks, though the air was still as cold as the dead of night. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, but that could change in a heartbeat. Today would be sunny and warm (relatively speaking for a tundra zone). We watched as early morning climbers trickled onto the field and others stretched stiff cold limbs. A pair of park rangers trudged over boulders, checking ground and weather conditions. I dug through the ‘marmot-proof’ box and handed out a round of granola bars.

  “If you were up in Prince George, you’d just four-by-four those off-roads,” crowed one of our new friends, chewing through a bar. “You don’t bike the forest during moose-calving season.” There was laughter and back-slapping, even though Hector didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. My friend was already half in love with his new climbing buddies, and a part of me was relieved he’d made a new adrenaline junkie connection. I had a feeling my cliff-hucking days were over unless they involved a brown mop of hair with a Latin flair.

  A heavy boom echoed across the Boulder Field. We stilled, panicked stares flying to the great Diamond slab, then the Keyhole, searching for the beginnings of an avalanche. The loud crackling which followed was too far away to be our snowfield, but the warning was clear. Cassady had been right—warm sunlight after days of snow meant avalanches and, somewhere, a bank of snow had cracked and tumbled down the mountainside.

  Minutes later, one of the rangers—I mentally called him Ranger Rick—barreled over to our campsite, a two-way radio clutched in his hand. “Avalanche at Glacier Gorge, just off the west ridge. Don’t make plans to take the Keyhole approach today.” Cassady raised an ‘I told you so’ eyebrow. Dang it, that was our return route.