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Show ALASKA -13 Alaska climb next summer." She smiled on one side of her mouth and shrugged. "Next week I leave to train on Mt. Washington." His dark eyebrows drew together like fingers crossed against her. Last month, the Wind Rivers, last summer, the Andes, always to where she couldn't follow, though he used to ask. She'd had the grace for climbing, more strength than she'd imagined, but always the rock defeated her. It gave her no terms she could meet. And, after she'd been stuck for an hour on a move where a fall would have scraped her in a great pendulum arc across the granite, she had quit. A failure of courage was something he'd never forgive in himself, and to accept it in someone else would be to cease respecting at all. He moved away from the table, and she stopped herself from reaching out to him and saying, "I love you." Instead, she stood up quickly, brushed past him, and went into the bathroom, locked the door, and turned on the fan so he couldn't hear. She stood in front of rhe mirror and said to her reflection, which she kept slightly out of focus, "you will feel nothing for this man." She repeated this until she began to feel power enter her fingertips and she made a pyramid with them, angular, upright. Ian was in the bedroom already pulling his nylon tent out from under the bed. She went back into the kitchen and telephoned Jo. "Jo, I want to sail." "You?" "Yes." "It's hard. Dangerous." "Fine." |
