“Is that Kilimanjaro behind you?” Gretchen asked.
“No, that one is Meru,” Richard said. “It’s shorter, but much steeper, apparently.” He turned and pointed. “Kilimanjaro is that one.”
The mountain towered in the distance. A behemoth. “Oh, my,” Gretchen said, even more concerned now, but vowing to keep it to herself. “That’s stunning, and, oh, my, very tall! How are you feeling?”
“I feel fantastic! Really good,” Richard said. “Is everyone at home okay—you, the kids?”
“We’re all absolutely fine,” Gretchen said. “You just focus on taking care of yourself and coming home safe.”
“I will,” Richard said, his face turning serious in the way it did when he wanted Gretchen to know that he was really listening. They were quiet for a long moment. Just staring at each other. Even with thousands of miles between them, Gretchen felt the years, in a good way. The best way. “Let me introduce you to everybody!”
The camera jumped around then, pointed briefly at the sky and then the grass, until finally it was on Richard’s face again. He’d walked over to the group at the table. He’d also fixed his hair. “These are our guides, Kito and Bakari.” Sticking his face into the frame, Richard pointed the camera toward two smiling men, oneolder and stockier, the other young and thin. “You guys are going to keep us safe, right?”
“Absolutely!” Bakari called out, lifting his bottle of Coke toward the camera. “You have nothing to worry about—Richard and his friends will all be fine!”
Richard then shouted toward Van, Brooks, and Scotty in the distance. They were standing with some other people, one of whom could have been a woman; it was hard to tell with all the gear. Gretchen hadn’t considered that others might join the expedition, much less that one might be female. Maybe she was part of a couple. The other figures were either guides or climbers—they were too far away to be sure.
“And the guys—hey, guys, wave to Gretchen!”
As Richard turned back to the camera, something about the light in his eyes made Gretchen uneasy. His face was filled with pure hope. With excitement and possibility. It was a look she had seen on her husband’s face only once before. The day he first looked at her.
***
“Let me show you a picture, see if you recognize her,” Gretchen said. She needed Deborah to confirm the woman she’d seen was not Frankie. Gretchen tapped her way to Frankie’s website and handed the phone to Deborah.
“Oh, no, that’s not her,” Deborah said, squinting at Gretchen’s phone, a relieved hand to her chest. It seemed they’d both been worried about the same thing. “I’m sure it was nothing. Like I said—Richard wasn’t even here, and I never mentioned it to him. The woman never came back, either.”
“And she didn’t say who she was?”
“No. And I didn’t ask.” Deborah made a face. “I just escorted her downstairs and out of the building. Goodness, she prattled on the whole time in the elevator about how sorry she was to be a bother. Except, of course, she looked like a person who made it her business to bother. You know the type. The kind of woman who looks to a man to solve all her problems. And if that manhappens to be someone else’s husband?” Deborah shrugged and raised her hands in the air theatrically. Then her expression softened as she reached over and again squeezed Gretchen’s hand reassuringly. “Don’t you worry about Richard’s responsibilities at the office. I will take care of things here. People don’t need to know everything about everything. You just focus on taking care of the family.”
“Thank you,” Gretchen said.
“I wonder, though…Should I let Shawna know? Maybe she could be helpful?”
Gretchen was drawing an absolute blank, and it made her feel addled. “I’m sorry, I don’t…”
“Oh, she’s the corporate coach Richard was seeing.”
Richard hadn’t mentioned anything about a coach to Gretchen. “Why would he need a coach? Was he having some sort of issue?”
“No, no, it’s not— Shawna is available to everyone on the executive team, I think.” Deborah shook her head. She looked mortified. “Anyway, I guess there were some things—I don’t know the details. Goldman sends Shawna in at the first hint of…The company wants it to seem like they are on top of every little problem these days, even the invented ones. And not just Goldman. She told me she works with hundreds of companies. Shawna sees lots of senior people.”
“Is she like a therapist?” Gretchen asked, still not understanding exactly what it was that Deborah was saying, only that it was clear that she was trying to claw it back.
“Well, yes, I guess in a way.” Deborah was considering her words very carefully. “But not— I guess, yes. Richard and I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t feel like it was my place to ask.”
Gretchen looked back out to the river, searching for the cargo ship. But it was long gone now. She felt like she might cry.
“I’m sorry, Gretchen,” Deborah said. “I feel like I just complicated matters. I was trying to be helpful. There really is nothing to worry about.”
“I know,” Gretchen said, rising to her feet. “Everything will be fine. Of course it will.”
Life is all about expectations. And for me, so many things have turned out so much better than I ever could have hoped.
Actually, that’s not exactly true. It’s not like I didn’t work hard for them. I wouldn’t say that I deserved all of it necessarily, but it’s also not like it was handed to me. No matter what anyone thinks.
But then people have expectations of you. No one really warns you about that. The world wants you to fall into line. To do the things you’re supposed to. To behave. Even when you end up building a life that doesn’t work the way you want—that doesn’t make you happy.
