Read Chapter 15: The Turning Point

The refuge door screamed on its hinges, a sound swallowed instantly by the wind’s howl. Snow had drifted against the leeward wall, half-burying the small stone hut, but inside, the air was still. Sheltered. Luc swept the beam of his headlamp across the room—two bunks, a wood stove, a rusted cabinet.

And on the wall, a radio unit.

He crossed to it in three strides, already twisting the frequency dial with gloved fingers. Static hissed. Then a voice cut through, tinny and distant.

“—say again, Rocher Blanc refuge, you are breaking up.”

“Base, this is Luc Fournier, PGHM.” He pressed the handset closer to his mouth. “Repeat last transmission.”

The speaker crackled for a long moment before the voice returned, clearer now. “—eather update, Fournier. The front has consolidated. We’re looking at sustained winds over a hundred kilometers per hour within the next twelve hours. Visibility near zero. All air assets grounded until further notice.”

Luc’s jaw tightened. “Understood. And the ground team? The one moving toward the crevasse field?”

Silence. Then: “They’ve been ordered to hold position at the mid-mountain hut. They’re not moving any closer. Nobody moves until this system clears. You’re looking at a minimum of four days, maybe six.”

Six days. Luc set the handset down slowly, the plastic creaking under his grip.

Behind him, the door clicked. He turned.

Élise stood in the frame, her goggles pushed up, snow crusting her jacket. She must have read his face even before she spoke.

“How bad?”

He didn’t answer. Not because he was deciding what to say, but because he was deciding whether to lie. And she knew it. She always knew.

“Luc.”

“The rescue window’s gone,” he said flatly. “Storm front’s too big. We’re here until it breaks. Days, not hours.”

She stepped inside, swung the door shut behind her, cutting off the wind’s scream. The silence that followed was worse. She shed her pack onto the floor, unzipped it mechanically, as if the world hadn’t just realigned around them, then stopped.

“Four days?” she said.

“Maybe more.”

“Philippe has a broken leg. The group has a medic, but nothing for a real surgical repair. And Ingrid’s group—” She stopped. Ran a hand through her hair, leaving dark streaks of meltwater. Then she looked up at him. In the dim light, her face was sharp with unspoken accusation. “You should be down there. With the main rescue team.”

Luc said nothing.

“You’re the most experienced pilot in the unit,” she pressed. “When a storm like this is moving in, command doesn’t send you on a side errand to a refuge. They keep you in reserve for the first weather window. So why are you really here, Luc?”

The silence stretched. Outside, the wind screamed past the corner of the hut, rattling the window frame. He could feel the cold of the room now, the space between them filling with every question she’d never asked out loud.

“Because I asked for this post.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Three weeks ago, when I saw the patrol route and the forecast, I put in a request. I told command I wanted to rotate through the high refuges. Reconnaissance, they thought. Preparation for early-season rescue contingencies.” He let out a breath, the words scraping out of him. “I knew you were coming here.”

Élise stared at him. Her goggles hung from her neck, and he could see her pulse beating in the base of her throat beneath the tan line the hood left. In the dim light, she looked younger, or older—he couldn’t tell anymore. He’d never been able to tell.

“You requested this assignment,” she said slowly, “because you knew I’d be on this mountain.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Luc didn’t answer right away. He looked at the radio, the dial still on the frequency he’d been speaking on, the static hiss filling the pause. Then he met her eyes.

“Because last winter, when I heard you’d taken the avalanche photography contract, I didn’t sleep for three weeks.” His voice was lower now, almost inaudible against the wind. “Because every time there’s a report of an avalanche in the Alps, I check the list of names before I check the forecast. And because I have spent four years telling myself that what we had was finished, and I was wrong.”

Élise’s breath stopped. The words hit her like cold water, one after another. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

Luc pressed on, the dam breaking now that the first crack had opened. “You left. No explanation. No call. Just a note on the kitchen table saying you couldn’t do it anymore. I thought you’d chosen the photographs, the career, the climb over everything. I told myself I was fine with that. I wasn’t. I’ve never been fine with that.” He took a step toward her. “So when I saw your name on the schedule, I asked for this post. Not because I thought I could save anyone. Because I wanted to see you. To ask you the question I’ve never had the courage to ask.”

Élise’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away. She stood rigid, a woman who had survived six days on a collapsing glacier, face-to-face with the one thing that could break her.

“What question?”

The wind hit the hut like a freight train. The radio crackled, spat, then went silent.

Luc watched her, the words hanging raw in the air between them.

“Why did you really leave?”