Page 2 of Mountain Summons

Lena

She wasn’t one of those people who said yes when they meant no.

In fact, one of the things Lena hated most in life was people who said they were going to do something and then didn’t keep their word.

And yet, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

It was worse than that, even. Because she’d been the one to call Tristan to tell him she was back in town. And now she was the one standing him up.

She’d been almost ready to go, applying the last touches to her make-up, when she’d suddenly looked down at her phone and noticed the date.

October 7th.

The anniversary of her mother’s death.

The shock had been instantaneous. In the six years since her mother had passed away from an aggressive type of breastcancer, Lena had never once forgotten the date. And she’d always found the time, on this day, to go to the cemetery and lay some daisies—her mother’s favorite flowers—on her mother’s grave, and to have the chat that she wished they could have in real life.

But this time, the date had snuck up on her, catching her off guard in the worst possible way. Instead of remembering her mother, she’d made plans to go on a date with a random guy, hoping to end up in bed with him. It felt like she’d betrayed something—betrayed her mother, the one person who’d never let her down.

Her fingers had frozen in mid-air, hovering over the lipstick she’d been about to apply, a tight band wrapping around her chest, squeezing so hard she could hardly breathe. How had she let the day slip past her?

Now, over an hour later, she was still here, all dressed up in a short black dress and dark tights, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She was a proper mess now, of course, all runny make-up and smeared mascara, with some snot over her mouth for good measure. And she just couldn’t find it in her to move.

Six years hadn’t been nearly enough to even begin to dull the sharp edges of grief. She tried to think back to the five stages of grief her therapist had spoken about. It seemed to her, she’d never made it past stage two—anger. Regardless of how much time had passed, it still made her angry that her mother had been taken from her so early.

Lena looked down as her phone beeped. She was a complete bitch. Tristan would have been waiting for her at the bar for roughly half an hour now—assuming he was still there and hadn’t already left. She wasn’t about to explain the truth to him, but she had to at least call and apologize. She wasn’t intentionally a cruel person, and to leave someone hanging like this was the definition of cruel. Except she couldn’tmuster the strength to pick up the phone. Something inside her had crumbled, and the thought of confronting yet another expectation, was more than she could bear.

Lena knew that if her mother were here, she’d be telling Lena to forget the daisies. She’d be telling Lena to go on that date.To live. But her mother wasn’t here. That was the whole point. Her father wasn’t home, either, of course. That was no surprise. Though he’d always worked long days, in the years since her mother’s death, his working days had become sixteen hours long. It was as if he couldn’t bear to be alone in the house with her. Maybe that’s why Lena had gone to Paris for her last two years at university—to escape this empty house.

But you’re back now. And it’s harder than you thought it was going to be.

Lena sighed. She had to stop pretending she was going anywhere tonight. She washed her face, wiping off the thick, smudged make-up, watching as the freckles over the bridge of her nose reappeared as if by magic. Next, she took off her short dress and put on her softest gray pajamas.

Being back in her childhood bedroom wasn’t as strange as one might have thought. She’d left home three years earlier, shortly after her twentieth birthday, so it’s not like her bedroom was still decorated in bright pink unicorns. But being back in her father’s home was taking some adjustment.

Eventually, the front door opened. She listened as her father closed the door behind him.

“Madeleine? You’re home?” he called out softly. Colonel Pelegrin didn’t shout. Lena could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d heard her father raise his voice, and yet, his voice radiated authority. The kind of authority that made men and women follow him blindly at work. The kind of authority that had always made Lena tremble at the thought of disappointing him.

Not that he’d ever said an unkind word to her. The colonel was too restrained for that. But Lena had never felt his love was truly unconditional. Unconditional love had been her mother’s secret power. Lena had grown up knowing nothing in the world could ever stop her mother from loving her.

Not even death.

Her family wasn’t religious, but Lena believed, with her whole heart, that her mother, or at least the stardust that was her essence, was somewhere up there, watching over her.

“I’m having an early night, Dad,” Lena said from behind her closed door. She didn’t want him to see her like this. There was no way he would miss her red eyes, and the ensuing conversation was one she really didn’t need.

There was a long pause, during which she imagined her father taking off his uniform jacket and hanging it up carefully on the hook by the entrance.

“These pictures are beautiful, Madeleine,” he said, finally.

Her heart bunched up in her chest. She’d left a few prints on the dining table of the family of chamois she’d managed to capture on camera a few weeks earlier. In all fairness, the images were so striking, they had required little touching up on her part.

The approval in her father’s voice warmed her. He’d never said anything, but she knew he’d been disappointed by her choice of career. He would probably have preferred it if she’d studied to become a doctor or an engineer, or some othersensiblecareer. But photography was in Lena’s blood. She saw life best from behind her objective, and there was no chance of her doing anything else with her life.

“Thank you,Papa.”

Truth be told, she was proud of those photographs. Finding a chamois and her offspring was not uncommon, but last time she was here Lena had found one of the less common female groups, including three females and five young. The photographs hadsold almost immediately, and the nature platform that had bought the photographs had asked her for more—which was one of the reasons she was back in town so soon after her last visit. Somehow, she was going to find that family of chamois again before the first snow fell.

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