Page 153 of Free Heart
As I climb, the clarity spreads. The past crystalizes in a way that is neither distracting nor painful. I see my mother’s dark hair, and I can almost see her face. It doesn’t hurt to think of her.
Mama, he’s doing it again!The child from my first foster home cries out in my mind, but it floats away on the wind, gossamer and long over. The cat that’d hated me and led me to hate cats in return stalks through my mind without menace. The scent of Edith’s beauty parlor and the taste of the honey-flavored candy she gave me when I was especially good in church embrace and release me as I surge on ahead. That song, “How to Save a Life.” The crying twins. Mrs. Crawford and how hard she’d tried. Mr. Anderson and his bike. Henry and the now-empty trust fund. Ghosts that seem to visit only long enough for me to smile at them before they blow away with the mist from the falls. And then come the beautiful memories.
Peggy Jo.
That first climbing gym.
Meeting Rye and glimpsing the friendship in his eyes.
Lowell’s fierceness as he’d swung down to rescue me from that ledge when I twisted my ankle a few years ago.
The hookup app. Sejin’s smile.
Sejin’s smile, his smile, his smile.
The warmth of his arms, his eyes,his smile.
Our love, our life.
The wall flows, and I move up it. The memories and ghosts solidify behind me, the entirety of my history locking into place like a scaffold that’s lifted me up to here, to this penultimate moment as I grip the lip, as I summit, as I pull myself up to standing… and it’s done.
It’sdone.
Tears rise in my eyes, my throat is tight, and I let out a strangled whoop. I’m done. I did it. I’ve won. Heart Route is finally mine.
Ours.
I’ve climbed on my own, but not alone. Never again alone.
A drone lifts into the sky, and I shout, raising my arms in victory.
*
Sejin
I watch throughthe binoculars as Dan lifts his arms, and his shout echoes and falls down to me. My heart hammers. I’m dizzy still, but it’s over. He’s completed his mission, and we’ve both lived to see it.
The noise in the meadow is enormous. The shouts, the gasps, the cries of joy. Hands clap me on my back, on my shoulders. I drop the binoculars, unable to see anyway since my eyes are full of tears. I’ve never cried as much as I have since I met Dan McBride, and yet I’ve never felt so alive either.
Alive.
Alive, he’salive.He did it.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. The ringtone is “gemini.” It’s him. With a shaking voice, I answer, “Dan?”
“Baby, I did it,” he gasps in my ear. “I did it. I really did it.”
“I know. I’m so proud of you,” I get out.
“Thank you for believing I could do it.”
I laugh, but it sounds more like a sob. “I’m not sure I did?”
“You did. I know you did, Doc. I felt it the whole climb.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
