“Kaye, for the love of—”
“Does she have ties to the Zacatón Cartel?”
His expression was a study, which told me my sister-in-law was correct. “How did you…?”
“Dani told me, and she heard it from your father, who heard it from Tomás!”
His brow furrowed. “They know a lot more than I thought they did. That’s troublesome.”
“I swear, your family needs to rent space in Area 51, for all the secrets they have.”
He braced his arms on the dresser, head down. “Listen to me. We weren’t lovers, but she was important to me. Yes, she had ties to the Zacatóns. I haven’t heard from her in years and, as far as I’m concerned, the matter is finished.”
“One more question.”
Samuel sighed, resigned. “Fine.”
“If the matter is finished, why are you still barred from visiting your Ciudad Victoria family?”
“It’s not that I can’t go back to Ciudad Victoria. It’s that I won’t go back. I pissed off a few people, and it’s best if you not know the details. Now please let this knowledge be enough for you.”
My hands flew to my mouth. “Oh my God, Samuel.” People only said this kind of stuff on Dateline. “Did you do something illegal?”
His voice was rough. “Something that was necessary but morally gray, not to mention illegal, dangerous, and probably stupid.”
“And because it was illegal, you can’t tell me about it.” Did I believe him? I wasn’t sure, and that was a giant problem.
He continued, either ignoring or not seeing the distrust in my face. “It’s in the past. All I want is for our marriage to thrive, to keep rebuilding our lives in Colorado, and be an uninteresting yet meaningful part of our community.”
“One last question, I promise.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
I bit my lip. “This woman. Is she alright?”
Samuel’s eyes softened. “I believe so.”
We spent a half hour playing catch-up with each other’s skin before Samuel had to catch his flight out of Denver. The air between us was strained, but I was able to forget the truths he had (and hadn’t) revealed, at least for a time. I couldn’t bear to let him fly off to New York without telling him I was still in this marriage, and I believed he felt the same. Wasn’t that a form of trust?
His suitcase was packed and ready at the door, yet we were still in bed. He straddled my back and ran fingers along my spine, dug thumbs into my shoulder blades. He cupped my bottom.
“Come here, let me put my arms around you before I have to go.” I crawled into his warmth.
“Tell me about your book.”
“I promised you mountains, remember? For our anniversary?”
“But we’re already writing about mountains together.”
“And we’ll continue to work on Hydraulic Level Five. This is another fantasy series. A wife and her husband—the heroes—buy property in the foothills of the Rockies. On this property is an entrance to an old mine shaft.”
“Hmmm. Familiar.”
He kissed my forehead. “‘Write about what you know.’ But this is where the story skews from reality. One day, the wife goes into the mine shaft and vanishes. See, it isn’t only a mine shaft. It’s an ancient portal that can carry a person to different mountain ranges, all over the world. The conundrum is, how do you control where the portal carries you? She tries to return, but the portals shift. The woman has nothing on her, no identification, no money, only the clothes on her back. She tries to work her way home. Meanwhile, her husband hunts for her, travels from mountain to mountain to find her.”
“Does he find his wife in the mountains?”
“They find each other, eventually. It just takes time.” He gently poked my ribs. I laughed and squirmed. He held me tighter and trailed his lips along my neck, breathing in our scent. “I love you, Aspen Kaye Cabral. Too much for reason.”
“I love you, Sam.” I kissed his chest, brown hair tickling my nose. “I’m glad you’re writing a new series. I think it’s brave of you to admit when something isn’t working and start from scratch. It can’t be easy to shelve three years of work.”
“Honestly, it’s freeing. I feel excited again, passionate about what I’m putting onto paper.”
“What’s the rest of the series about?”
Blue eyes danced. “The husband and wife travel mountains together, solve mysteries and hunt down bad guys, of course. The Sherlock Holmes of modern mountaineering.”
“Ooh, you could send them to the Himalayas, maybe Bhutan or Nepal. Did you know Everest is exactly twice as high as our Mount Elbert? Doesn’t that blow your mind? They’d need oxygen masks, though, and a Sherpa guide. They are the most amazing climbers, it’s unreal how fast they are. Can you write in a Sherpa?”
Samuel chuckled. “I’ll write a dozen Sherpa. An army of Sherpa ninja warriors who fight an epic battle over the Khumbu Icefall.”
“That would be hazardous. The Khumbu Icefall has terrible avalanches.” My eyes blurred on a random object across the room, seeing that blue and battered hand, trapped in a landscape of pure white.
“Kaye? Kaye.” Samuel jostled my body, bringing me back. “Don’t return to that place, mi vida. Just forward.”
I rubbed my cheek against his bicep. “Hector asked us to climb Torreys Peak this weekend. You’ll be out of town and Luca’s wife is having the baby any day now, so it would just be the two of us. Are you okay with it?” I searched his face for any sign of discomfort. His mouth lifted in a telling, overly easy smile.
“Yes. Just let Hector know if you start to panic, okay? Last I heard, no one’s giving out medals for bravery on Torreys Peak.”
Apart from the occasional business trip, Samuel and I never traveled without the other. I could count on one hand the number of times we’d slept apart since remarrying. Even when we circled each other like hyenas in the sun, come nightfall we shared a bed.
I couldn’t sleep. The possibility that Samuel had been involved with the Zacatóns, even in a minor capacity, blared through my head like an emergency siren. No matter how much Samuel downplayed it, “pissed off a few people” did not sound minor.
Earlier, I’d been gleeful with the prospect of sprawling across the entire mattress, all to myself. I’d stolen Samuel’s pillow and propped myself up with a book and a slice of French silk pie from the deli. But once the lights went out, our sheets were too cold without the warmth of Samuel’s body. The room was too quiet without his soft snores.
The French silk pie had been a bad idea. Sugar trembled through my veins and I flipped and flopped, kicked off the covers, and finally rose. When one isn’t sleepy enough for sleep, one cleans. I dug out an arsenal of spray bottles and sponges from the laundry closet and tackled the kitchen floor, the counters and floorboards, then the bathrooms until exhaustion crept into my muscles and fogged my brain. Not long after one a.m., I collapsed into bed. Sleep should have come quickly and peacefully in the satisfaction of a spotless home, but my mind was as relentless as a summer drought.
Won’t go back to Tamaulipas…
Should our new home have a first floor laundry or second floor laundry?
Pissed off a few people…
What about a mud room? Definitely a mud room, especially for el changuito and his sibling.
Did something illegal…
A toy room would be a nice addition, or even a few well-placed baskets filled with toys.
Of course, if Samuel changed his mind someday about children, we’d want a toy room.
A darker idea—would we need some sort of safe room? It would be too easy for a Zacatón mercenary to slip into the immigrant communities of Colorado. If we had a family in the future, we’d need extra security measures.
It’s in the past…
My mind needed a safe room. Soon, my thoughts drifted into tangible imaginings of a small, warm body curled into my lap, of whispered nursery rhymes and hugs from tiny arms, and before I could chide myself for i
ndulging in dreams that could never happen, my mind gave way to weariness and I slept.
Chapter 9
Whipper
When a climber takes a significantly long and hard fall, enough to lift the belayer into the air and past the first point of protection.
Hydraulic Level Five [WORKING TITLE]
Draft 1.109
© Samuel Caulfield Cabral and Aspen Kaye Cabral
COLORADO IS FOR BOTANISTS
Aspen knows she’s in for a wild ride when H calls at two a.m. and tells her to pack her ski gear, they’re not just climbing Torreys Peak. They’re skiing Dead Dog. So here she is, lugging not only her hiking pack, but skis and poles up the trail ridge toward the “saddle” between Torreys and Kelso Mountain. When she was a child, she’d peer at the mountains through the car window as her mom drove down I-70 and she’d imagine a giant Pecos Bill who rode the “saddle” between the peaks. Now she squints up at the saddle and, through the sun of early spring, sees a cowboy’s outline in the clouds. Her eyes water. Though the sun is low, it blazes against her black fleece, which haywires her nerves all the way down to her frigid toes as she mucks and sucks through snowmelt.
The ascent is not bad, but whoever set the boot pack must’ve had a stride the size of her imaginary cowboy giant. By the time they reach the top of the snowy apron, Aspen will be walking like him, too.
Torreys Peak is named for a botanist, of all professions. She’s met plenty of rough-and-tumble botanists in her Colorado adventures, but she can’t shake the image of John Torrey as a bespectacled, lily-faced researcher, bending over seedlings in a Columbia University greenhouse.
Once, she joked about this to Caulfield. He didn’t find it funny.
“Scientists have an undeserved “nerd rep,” simply because they’re curious about the natural world. If not for the ‘nerd scientists,’ the backcountry would not have been explored and catalogued.”
“True.”
“How can you possibly consider explorers like Lewis and Clark ‘fragile’? Or Linnaeus, Carver, Mendel, even Beatrix Potter?”
“Well, the last one wrote bunny books.”
Caulfield eyes Aspen the way a vegan eyes a hot dog. As a child, he was the owner of a plethora of botany books, not to mention a rock collection that claimed a whole bookcase.
She kicks it in gear to catch up with H. Torreys Peak ducks above the trail ridge…just a couple more hours to the technical. She thrusts her hand in her pocket. Even through gloved fingertips, she feels the familiar edges of the Rose of Sharon rock, smooth and cold. A few years ago, she plucked it from Bear Creek in the middle of an epic fight with Caulfield at Maria’s wedding rehearsal cookout, of all places. She gave it to him as a memento (of what, she’s not sure. Their lost childhood? A relationship gone sour?) Caulfield must have read it with a dose of optimism, because he returned it to her—a good luck charm—to carry in her pocket when she climbed.
Her mind sees him waking in a New York hotel bed, bleary-eyed and rumpled, the staleness of a good sleep clinging to his skin. Is it ten o’clock there? He’s already showered and shaved, buttoned into an immaculate suit, and off to his publisher in the Bertelsmann building.
She rubs the Rose of Sharon rock and picks up her pace.
H is bounds ahead, a blue push-pin in a map of white.
Her friend always treats her as an equal and though he’s slowed his gait to allow her to catch up, H hasn’t taken any of her gear. It’s fine. She doesn’t expect special treatment because she’s a woman. Still, Caulfield would have at least offered. She would refuse, of course, but the gesture alone would have burned in her heart.
It’s unfair to compare what H does to what she thinks Caulfield would do, so she concludes she’s spoiled rotten, hitches up the skis strapped to her back, and boots through eight inches of snow.
“Thought I’d lost you to the mountain goats!” H calls above the roar of the wind and points across the snowfield to several goats on slope crags, hooves tucked beneath their bellies.
He says something else she can’t catch so she taps her bad ear and shrugs. He points to a solo skier at the base of Mount Kelso. They wave him over.
“How’s the snow?” Aspen asks.
The skier wipes his face. “Blowing powder over rocks, fine as flour. I’d take a different set of tracks.” He gestures to footprints leading up the northeast face of Grays, sparkling white and washed in morning sunlight.
Turns out, the tracks belong to one of the mountain goats. The goat has a smaller stride than the giant cowboy, and now she has no trouble keeping up with H. Soon they trudge into the saddle between Grays and Torreys, and it’s just a quick jaunt up the summit. Well, as quickly as a mountaineer can jaunt through five feet of snow, when said mountaineer is five-foot-two.
At last, she and H stomp onto the summit overlooking Denver, smug and on top of the world.
“Hey H, did you know this massive piece of rock is named after a botanist from New York City? Isn’t that funny?”
He gasps in faux horror. “New York City? Hilarious!”
Sam—how’s your trip? Are you coming home tonight?—K
Kaye—I’m not even sure how you want me to react. Is this chapter some sort of passive aggressive vent? Are you upset because I believe your botanist joke isn’t funny, or is it something else?
Samuel—I just want to share my climb with you and tell you, in my own way, how I miss you despite your ‘awesome’ attitude about the botanist joke. Are we really wasting page space on something so silly?
Kaye—I’m positive I don’t need to bring this to your attention: you intentionally drew a stark contrast between your husband and the man you spend time with when your husband is away. Take my name off this chapter—I want nothing to do with it.
Sam—Can we take this from email to phone?
I reread the chapter I’d sent to Samuel. Admittedly, I’d taunted an already snarling tiger. I knew I’d made a mistake in writing about my Torreys Peak climb while I was still upset, but that little friend called “rationalization” got in the game:
He needs to know what you’re thinking, doesn’t he? How he hurts your feelings. How you are trying to be the bigger person. Besides, he hid things from you, too. He ticked off a drug cartel!
True. But he hid it to protect you. Just like you hid your desire for a baby to protect him. You both made crap calls.
Sadly, this seemed to be our MO.
It doesn’t have to be.
An hour after our heated email exchange, my phone rang, cutting short this flash of hopefulness.
“Hey Samuel.” I was outside, viciously scrubbing my hiking boots clean of caked mud.
“What just happened?”
“I think we had our first e-fight. Not bad for three-and-a-half years of marriage.”
I heard the buzz of what sounded like a cocktail party in the background, but it grew fainter and then ceased altogether. “Kaye, listen. I know when I left for New York, the air between us wasn’t great. Well, it was amazing right before I left. Really, really amazing…”
I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself. “One track mind, I swear. Are you at a party?”
“Dinner and drinks, celebrating the new book deal. Honestly, it’s turned into more of a party. I stepped out, but I think I’ll call it an early night. There are only so many mocktails I can swill. Bottom line: I overreacted to the story about Hector in your writing and I apologize. But firecracker…I think you wanted to make me jealous.”
“That’s ridi—”
“You’re kidding, right?” His tone sharpened. “I’m trying to talk to you and you’re going to discount me?”
“No! Why on earth would I want to make you jealous?”
“Because you’re angry with me.”
“About the woman with Zacatón ties? Scared out of my mind, maybe, but not angry. I understand—”
“You’re angry because I don’t want to have children. You want to hurt me the way I’ve hurt you, and
the quickest and easiest way to do that is to throw Hector in my face—that tried-and-true fallback. Then you cushion those barbs with passages about how you love me, how you appreciate my kindness, so you can label your bitchiness as honesty.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know I’m right.” I heard a muffled question from what sounded like a female. Samuel told her “no” and “goodnight.”
“Was that a woman from your publicity team?”
“Who else would it be?” Sam paused. “Are you jealous, Kaye Cabral?”
My cheeks heated. I didn’t know whether to be pissed or turned on. I jumped to my feet and paced the small balcony like a caged ferret. Rein it in, Kaye. He’s still coming down from his last episode.
“What I know is I’ve married a man who refuses to share himself with me. You take, take, take, keep taking until I’m stripped bare, yet you’re buttoned and zipped so tight, I have to move mountains to get anything from your mind.” And that was reining it in? Well done, Kaye.
Samuel’s voice rose to match mine. “What more do you want? I have given you everything. My writing. My broken mind. Every damned fear.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me you were involved with the Zacatón Cartel?” I all but hissed into the phone.
“Because I want to protect you from—”
“Drug thugs? Or maybe you wanted to protect yourself.” My neighbor halted halfway to his mailbox and peered at me, and it hit me how quickly our fight had escalated. But we’d always fed off of the other’s emotions, even when we were children. I lowered my voice. “It’s like you have this deep need to make people believe you’re a saint. Sam—I know you’re not perfect. I love you anyway.”
“I love you, too. And yes, perhaps I have hidden my interactions with this woman because she reminds me of a time I was ruled by drugs and illness, and I never want to be that man again. God knows it’s selfish and unfair, but some days I’m dangling over the edge of a cliff with only a few fingers gripping sanity, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from tumbling over.” He sighed. “But my failures aside, we can’t make the animosity between us go away by saying ‘I love you.’ This fighting…it’s too much.”
Fourteeners Page 15
