Suddenly (21 page)

This time when they moved on, those at the front stuck closer to Noah than before. They were frightened, which was fine, as far as he was concerned. Without fear there would be no sense of achievement, which was what he wanted most for them.

The rain started slowly, in random drops that came and went and caused more apprehension than damage. Though wearing rain suits now, they were exposed and vulnerable, a ragged cord of climbers moving six by six through the lowering mist toward a point they couldn’t see.

Noah felt the anticipation building, both in himself and in those around him. “Tired?” he asked, and was gratified to receive head shakes instead of complaints. Yes, there was fear, but they had come too far to turn back. Stubbornness had set in, and determination. The troop huffed and puffed but climbed on.

When the skies opened and the rain came in earnest, there were some complaints and open epithets from the faculty members, but the voices were quickly drowned out. Leaning into the deluge and the shifting fog, the group closed in and climbed more slowly, moving higher and higher until finally, on what looked like little more than another of the plateaus they had reached so many times before, Noah stopped.

“Here we are,” he said. “Knife Edge.”

There was utter silence behind him. He dared a glance back to find those who had been closest to him staring in horror at the path ahead. As lower climbers joined them, all, save the young couple who had done the climb many times before, looked similarly horrified.

Knife Edge was a span of rock barely ten feet wide that undulated along the top of the mountain. They would be following it single file for a mile until they reached their trail of descent.

Noah could feel their terror, even shared some of it, and in that instance wondered if he had made a mistake. Even with two experienced climbers along, as the Head of Mount Court Academy, he was the one ultimately responsible for the group. Knife Edge had thrown better climbers than he into a tailspin.

“We can’t go on that,” came one cry.

Then another: “There’s nothing on either side but clouds.”

And another: “There’s nothing to keep us from falling off.”

“No one’s falling off,” Noah said. “I’ve been here in the snow, and no one fell off then. Jane, Steve,” he called to his backup, “are you planning on losing anyone here?”

“Nope!”

“No way!”

“The path is perfectly safe,” Noah told the group. “We’ll just take it slow.”

“I’m not crossing that.”

“Me neither.”

“Let’s go back the way we came.”

Noah had wanted a challenge, and a challenge he had. He shook the rain from his glasses. “We can’t go back the way we came. The vans will be waiting for us here.” He put the glasses back on. “Look,” he said calmly, but loud enough to be heard above the rain, “the path is safe. We’ll go single file and stay close. Anyone who is uncomfortable walking alone can hold on. Okay?”

Knowing that the longer they stayed there, the more frightened they would be, he called Abby Cooke to the front. His voice brooked no dissent. “You lead the way with your group. Steve and his group will be right behind you.”

Abby stared doubtfully at the path, which at that moment looked like the thinnest ribbon of rock in a swirling cauldron of fog. Noah was acutely aware that more than one climber had died falling off its edge in a panic. He put a hand on her shoulder. “The rock looks wider when you’re actually on it. It just rolls across the top of the mountain. Go slowly, but keep it steady. The day is wearing on.”

He hated to pressure her, but the fact was that if they didn’t traverse Knife Edge and start down, they would be engulfed in darkness long before they reached the bottom. That would be a challenge in and of itself.

Pale and quiet, Abby started off. Noah sent each member of her group off after her with the squeeze of an arm and quiet words of encouragement. “Just keep to the center of the path and relax. One after the other…. That’s right. Good…. That’s it. Hold on to the jacket of the person in front of you if you’re frightened.”

This was Sara’s group. He figured it would be more able to handle Knife Edge than some of the others and would set a good example. If someone freaked out, he preferred that it happen in Jane’s group or Steve’s, better still at the back of the pack, where few would see and catch on.

Steve set off with his five, then, cautiously, Gordon and his.

“In the center, Sherri,” Noah coaxed. “That’s it. Good, Morgan. Hold on. That’s fine.”

By the time the third group was making its faltering way along the rocks, Abby’s group was lost in the clouds ahead. The rain came steadily. The fog rose on either side of the path.

The fourth group set off, a reluctant caterpillar making its slow and uneven way behind Jane. The fifth group gathered around Noah. Annie Miller was in tears.

Noah put an arm around her and spoke by her temple. “You can do this, Annie. You’re as physically coordinated as they come.”

“But I can’t see the path.”

“Sure you can. It’s wider than you think, much wider than you. Remember that, and take it one step at a time.” He reached out for Ryan and brought him close. “Annie’s following you, Ryan. She’ll hold on to the back of your jacket. Just take it slow and steady. Got that?”

Ryan nodded, though he looked none too steady himself.

Noah gave Annie a squeeze. “We’ll be right behind you. You’ll do fine.”

She started off gingerly, gripping Ryan’s jacket, hunching into herself, but moving.

“Stay together,” Noah urged the others as one by one he sent them off, leaving only Tony Phillips and the final five students. He turned to find one of the latter sitting on the ground and knelt beside her. “Julie?”

She shook her head. She wasn’t budging.

“Can’t stay here forever,” he coaxed, acutely aware of the passage of time, the rain, the chill.

She nodded vigorously.

The others in the group knelt around her, dripping wet and shivering. “We have to go, Julie.”

“It’s too cold to stay here.”

“You can do it.”

“I never asked to go mountain climbing,” Julie cried.

“Neither did we, but we’re here.”

“We’ve come too far to turn back.”

“We made it up the mountain. Now’s the easy part.”

“That isn’t easy!
” Julie screamed in a tone that suggested she was on the edge.

Noah, who knew that things wouldn’t get better until she saw for herself that the path wasn’t made of thin ice, put an arm around her and pulled her to her feet. The others crowded in.

“You can hang on to me, Julie,” said Mac, the only senior boy in her group. He had been heavily disciplined for using sexually derogatory language to a female faculty member, but his chauvinism was welcome now. “I’ll go right in front of you.”

“I can’t,” Julie wailed.

“I’m scared, too,” one of the other girls cried, “but no one ahead of us has fallen off.”

Julie backed up, right into Noah, who didn’t move an inch.

“Come on, Jules,” Mac said, taking her hand. Between his gentle pull and Noah’s small nudge, they moved her to the start of the path. Tony Phillips set off, followed by Brian, then Hope, then Mac, then Julie, and Marney, who squeezed in between Julie and Noah and put her hands on Julie’s waist.

“I won’t let you fall off,” she called over Julie’s wet shoulder, then shot a terrified glance over her own shoulder at Noah. “Don’t let me, either.”

“I won’t,” Noah said. He stayed close behind her, talking to her so that she would know he was there. He called encouragement to Julie and those in front of her and peered through the clouds ahead for sight of the others, but the visibility was too poor to see much of anything.

He pushed the thought of tragedy from mind, but it kept coming back, along with every sort of remorse imaginable. He cursed himself for thinking that he could successfully lead so large, untried, and reluctant a group, even with two experienced climbers along. He cursed the mountain, cursed the weather, cursed the Mount Court Board of Trustees for hiring him in the first place.

Knife Edge should have been crossable in half an hour, but they spent three at it. The weather slowed them to an agonizing pace that was further delayed by panic stops. When the group worked together, the panic passed. That was some solace, what with the self-reproach Noah was feeling.

The sky darkened. Dusk was fast approaching and so was foreboding. “Can we pick it up any?” Noah called, then quickly muttered, “Forget that. You’re doing just fine.”

They stumbled along in the rain, crossing one stretch of rock to the next. “Center of the path,” Noah yelled from time to time when someone strayed perilously close to the edge. He was in a cold sweat by the time they finally reached the spot where Knife Edge ended and the rock flared out into a wider, safer plane.

They were greeted by the wild applause and cheers of the waiting groups, then by hugs and laughter—even
he
hugged and was hugged—and in that short period, before the reality of the descent could loom before them, Noah knew that the trip had been worthwhile. The climbers were cold, wet, and tired, but spirited and enthusiastic enough to include him in their glee. They had tasted a kind of victory that not one of them had ever tasted before.

It kept them bolstered, even when night fell and the descent grew labored. What with rest stops and snack stops and stops when someone stumbled in the dark and fell, it was midnight before they reached the vans and four in the morning before those vans finally turned in under the wrought-iron arch and pulled around the campus drive to the dorms.

“Sleep in today,” Noah told them as he sent them off to bed, and for once no one argued.

Exhausted, he headed for his own house, but exuberance kept him awake. He stood for a time at the back window with a cup of hot cocoa, thinking how much he wanted to tell someone what had happened, if only to keep it real. But he didn’t have anyone, and the sadness of that seemed all wrong, given the victory he had scored. So, when the first hint of dawn cast its slim line of light on the horizon, he put on his running shorts and set off for town.

Paige awoke at six to tiny sounds coming from the monitor that linked her room to the baby’s. She crept upstairs to change Sami’s diaper, then brought her down, warmed a bottle, and settled back into bed. Kitty joined them, curling in a ball at Paige’s feet.

“There,” Paige whispered to Sami. “How’s that?” She gave the pillows another nudge. “Better?” Comfortable and lazy with the pleasure of staying warm in bed on a cool October morning, especially when she knew she’d have to get up before long, she watched Sami drink. Tiny hands framed the bottle, overlapping Paige’s Sami’s eyes held hers.

“Taste good?” Paige whispered with a satisfied smile. “I’ll bet it does, warm milk going down just the right way.” As she said it, she ran her thumb down Sami’s tummy. Sami drew up her legs and made a gurgling sound that Paige chose to think was a laugh. She gave the little girl a kiss on the tip of her nose.

Settling back onto the pillow, she was struck by the loveliness of the moment. It had become a miniroutine, this early morning time with Sami, stolen moments before the day began. The house was quiet, save for the soft sound of sucking and the gentle beat of rain on the leaves of the trees in the yard. Between those lulling sounds and the warmth of the bed, of Sami, and even of kitty, she felt an unexpected peace. She knew it couldn’t last. Sami and kitty both were temporary fixures in her life, and it was surely the novelty of their presence that gave the illusion of peace. Still, it was nice for now.

A tap came at the window. Paige guessed it was a branch from the nearby maple and ignored it, until it came again, more insistently. She looked at the window and gasped. After setting Sami down, she climbed from bed and raised the sash.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked in an urgent whisper. The last thing she wanted was for Jill to wake up, look down, and see Noah.

“Running.” He was out of breath. “Had an incredible experience. Had to tell you about it.”

The incredible experience was seeing him there with what precious little he was wearing clinging to his body. “It’s six-thirty in the morning!” she managed to say.

“Can I come in?”

“No!” She tried to pull her nightgown more tightly around her, but it was a poor substitute for a robe, and then Sami began to whimper, so she hurried back to the bed. “Shhhh, sweetie, it’s just Noah.” She sank down, returned the bottle to the child’s waiting hands, and looked up just as he climbed through the window.

Her protest came too late. He was already in the room, shutting the window behind him. “Noah, this is
my
morning,
my
house.” And he was disturbing her peace.

He looked around, spotted the bathroom, and disappeared, only to emerge seconds later wiping first his glasses, then his face and neck with a towel. His shoulders were leanly muscled and gleaming.

“Still raining,” he said unnecessarily. His sneakers, running shorts, and singlet were all drenched. “But it was incredible. We were up there at the top of the mountain.” He peeled the singlet over his head, tossed it aside, and rubbed himself down with the towel. “I thought for sure I’d made one hell of a mistake. I mean, the rain was coming down. The path was obscured by the clouds. The kids were terrified”—he shimmied out of his shorts between swipes with the towel—“and I mean
terrified.
I thought we were in for a major disaster”—he kicked off one sneaker and bent to dry his leg—“someone falling over the edge, someone pushing someone
else
over the edge.” He kicked off the other sneaker. “And then they came together. I mean, it worked the way it was supposed to, but I didn’t think it would. So help me, I didn’t.”

Tossing the towel aside, he came to the bed and then slipped under the covers. “God, am I freezing,” he said, sliding closer to her. “And tired. Haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.” He tugged off his glasses and closed his eyes. “Just wanted to tell you. The good news.”

Paige wanted to say something. She tried to think of what it was. But the sight of Noah Perrine naked had swept every other thought from mind, and then it was too late. While she stared in astonishment, his features slackened, his breathing slowed, and he fell into a deep sleep.