Passenger (Page 2)
“The old man had better be right this time,” Julian said, starting up the trail again. From where Nicholas stood, it looked like an endless ribbon of steps that had been draped over the rough, rocky face of the cliff, rising and falling with the natural shape of the landscape. “I’m tired of this game of his—the blasted thing is lost. Even he doesn’t win sometimes.”
He always wins, Nicholas thought, fingers curling into fists at his side. I am never going to be free of any of them.
“All right, come on then, Nick. We’ve a journey to make,” Julian called back. “And I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.”
The first fat splatter of rain caught him across the face, sliding down his cheek to drip off his chin. It was a strange, trembling sort of moment. Nicholas felt caught in that instant, glancing around for some form of temporary shelter, which he knew Julian would demand, rather than risk getting his boots wet. Aside from the choten—the low white buildings that sheltered the elaborate, brightly colored prayer wheels—there were a few small covered ledges where mourners had placed conical reliquaries of ashes.
“There!” Julian let out a sharp, joyful cry, pumping a fist into the air. The mist shrouding the monastery had settled, as if the rain had dragged it down. It sat like the foggy surface of a lake, disguising the thousands of feet between the ledge and the sheer, rocky drop below. “Where’s the camera? Break it out, will you? No one around to see it anyway—”
The thunder that exploded overhead ricocheted like cannon fire through the mountains. Nicholas’s whole body tensed, cringing away from the deafening roar. No sooner had it faded than the heavens opened up and rain poured down from the clouds, momentarily blinding him with its strength. Nicholas let out a startled gasp as the pounding intensified into a solid sheet of water, a surge he’d only ever witnessed once at sea when his ship had drifted toward the edge of a hurricane. Rivers of rain were washing down from the ledges above, pouring around him, nearly carrying his feet out from under him.
Julian—
Nicholas spun back toward the edge of the trail just as Julian turned to shout something to him, and watched Julian’s left foot disappear as the muddy ledge crumbled beneath it.
As he dove, throwing himself across the distance, a single thought slammed through Nicholas’s mind: Not like this.
“Nick! Nick!” Julian had managed to grab on to the fractured remains of the ledge, his hand already sliding out of his sopping wet glove as his full weight dangled over a vast spread of air, stone, mist, and trees. Nicholas crawled the last few feet between them on his stomach and was reaching, reaching, and the contents of the rucksack were rattling, digging into his back—
Julian’s face was bone-white with fear, his mouth moving, begging, Help me, help me—
Why should I?
This family—they’d taken everything from him—they’d taken his true family, his freedom, his worth—
A cold, bitter satisfaction filled him to the core at the thought of finally taking something back.
Because he’s your brother.
Nicholas shook his head, feeling the force of the rain start to carry him toward the ledge. “Reach up—swing your arm up—Julian!”
A look of determination crossed Julian’s mud-smeared face as he thrust his free arm up, trying to catch Nicholas’s grasping hand. Julian sacrificed his grip on the ledge to swing himself up; Nicholas lunged forward and caught his fingers—
The weight he’d been holding disappeared as Julian’s hand slipped out of the glove, and his dark shape slipped silently down through the feather-soft mist, parting just enough for Nicholas to see, at the bottom of the ravine, a burst of light as Julian’s body broke apart into glittering dust.
There was a boom and rattle from miles away, and he knew the passage they’d come through had just collapsed. Blood roared in Nicholas’s ears, chased by his own soundless scream; he did not need to look, to search through the haze and rain, to know that time itself had stolen Julian’s broken body, and dissolved it into nothing but memory.
THE AMAZING THING WAS, EACH time she looked at them, Etta still saw something new—something she hadn’t noticed before.
The paintings had been hanging in their living room for years, in the exact same spot behind the couch, lined up like a movie reel of the greatest hits of her mom’s life. Now and then, Etta felt something clench deep in her stomach when she looked at them; not quite envy, not quite longing, but some shallow cousin of both. She’d done her own traveling with Alice, had hit the international violin competition circuit, but she’d seen nothing like the subjects of these paintings. Nothing like this one, of a mountain with its spiraling, shining path up through the trees, toward the clouds, to its hidden peak.
It was only now, leaning over the back of the couch, that Etta noticed Rose had painted two figures working their way up the trail, half-hidden by the lines of bright flags streaming overhead.
Her eyes skimmed over the other paintings beneath it. The view from the first studio Rose had lived in, off Sixty-Sixth Street and Third Avenue. Then, the next painting: the steps of the British Museum, spotted with tourists and pigeons, where she’d done portraits on the spot after moving back to London. (Etta always loved this one, because her mom had painted the moment that Alice had first seen her, and was walking over to scold Rose for skipping school.) The dark, lush jungle reaching out to caress the damp stone of the Terrace of the Elephants at Angkor Thom—Rose had scraped together enough money by the time she was eighteen to fly to Cambodia and sweet-talk her way into working on an archeological dig site, despite her complete and total lack of qualifications. Next was the Luxembourg Garden in full summer bloom, when she’d finally studied at the Sorbonne. And below that, perched on the back of the couch and leaning against the wall to the left, was a new painting: a desert at sunset, cast in blazing rose gold, dotted with crumbling ruins.
It was the story of her mom’s life. The only pieces of it Rose had been willing to share. Etta wondered what the story was with the new one—it had been years since Rose had had the time to paint for herself, and even longer since she’d used the paintings as prompts for bedtime stories to get a younger Etta to fall asleep. She could barely remember what her mom had been like then, before the endless traveling to lecture on the latest restoration techniques, before her countless projects in the conservation department of the Met, cleaning and repairing works by the old masters.
The keys jangled in the door, and Etta jumped off the couch, straightening the cushions.
Rose shook out her umbrella in the hall one last time before coming inside. Despite the early autumn downpour, she looked almost pristine—wavy blond hair, twisted into a knot; heels damp but not ruined; trench coat buttoned up all the way to her throat. Etta self-consciously reached up to smooth back her own hair, wishing she’d already changed into her dress for the performance instead of staying in her rainbow-colored pajamas. She used to love the fact that she and her mom looked so much alike—that they were a matching set—because not having to see her father looking back at her from a mirror made it easier to accept life without him. But now, Etta knew the similarities only ran skin-deep.
“How was your day?” Etta asked as her mom flicked her gaze down at her pajamas, then up again with a cocked eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t you already be dressed?” Rose answered instead, her English accent crisp with the kind of disapproval that made all of Etta’s insides give an involuntary cringe. “Alice will be here any moment.”