Twenty-Two
I worked late into that day and the night searching for survival items to bring on my fictional hike.
I still hadn’t decided fully if I was brave enough to leave the chalet, but waiting felt just as futile.
Would I survive if I left? Would I survive if I stayed?
On my hands and knees, I sorted through Tav’s laptop bag again. I didn’t know what I might find, stray cash or bank cards if I was even lucky enough to reach society? A note or receipt or some other indication that he’d known what he was doing when he brought me up here and left me? I fingered through the small zippers and slots, curiosity driving me forward as I suddenly felt like his life had become so removed from mine these last months.
Has it always been this way? Had we let our love wax and wane like the cycles of the moon? Were we settling or just getting started? I emptied his bag of the last remaining bits of paper and scribbled notes of computer code, finding nothing of value, until I turned back to his wallet.
I hadn’t bothered searching it since the first time, figuring I’d find nothing of value, but now as I searched the slots nestled between the layers of fine leather, my fingers ruffled the edges of something old. I angled the thin paper out, surprised again to find another small polaroid, this one a quarter the size of the ones hanging in the room downstairs, even though the subject was the same.
Me.
Bradley held me in a bear hug in the foreground of this photo, my braids flying through the air as he spun me as a laugh lit my cheeks. Mom stood in the background, one hand on her hips and a smile on her face.
But she wasn’t looking at me, she stared at whoever was taking the photo off-camera.
Who had been the photographer?
I struggled to remember Bradley’s parents ever coming to Sunday church, his own dad a miner that worked jobs away more months of the year than not.
I began to wonder if there was more I was missing. Was this another surprise I was meant to find? Or a coincidental mistake?
I know the baby isn’t mine.
Tav’s words rang through my head. If he’d been in possession of so many photos of Bradley and I from our shared childhoods, some I hadn’t even seen or known of their existence before, no wonder Tav thought I might have an affair with Bradley.
Did that justify him following me?
And where had he gotten these photos?
Confusion pounded through my mind as I considered the range of possibilities, and the far greater probability that the reality of the situation was probably something I couldn’t even think of. Tav had probably found this photo at our house in one of my mother’s boxes—maybe he’d meant to frame it and present it to me.
Or maybe he considered it evidence.
I continued searching in the folds of the leather, surprised when two more, almost tissue-paper thin polaroids fell from a slot.
The first, a picture of me and my mother that same day. The same braids, the same flowers on my mother’s Sunday dress.
The other photo wasn’t a photo at all, but a postcard-sized sheet of glossy photo paper. I unfolded it quickly, fingers shaking as awareness rocketed through my nerves.
An ultrasound photo.
Ourultrasound photo.
Our baby.
Twenty-Three
I tossed two water reservoir packs up the stairs, pulling the other two over my shoulders and powering up the steps until I reached the top. I’d been stretching out my muscles all day, trying to build some small resistance training in preparation for snowshoeing down it in the next few days. I was worried about leaving the chalet, but I was more worried about staying.
I couldn’t sleep at night, unwilling to be locked up inside like a caged animal.
My life had been small before the chalet, but it was mine. I wanted it back. It’d been over ten days since Tav had been gone, he was either off of this mountain or dead. Either way, I couldn’t wait to find out.
I reached the top of the stairs, tossing all four of the water reservoirs into the sink to wash before filling them to test their ability to hold water.
