Read Chapter 42: The Aftermath of the Fall

The antiseptic smell of the hospital hit Élise first—clean, sharp, and utterly foreign after days of ice and granite. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead as they wheeled Luc through the double doors, his hand still wrapped around the yellow scarf tied to his wrist.

She walked beside the gurney, her own arm in a sling where the crevasse wall had wrenched it, her ribs aching with every step. The doctors had wanted her in a wheelchair. She'd refused.

"Moreau," a nurse called. "Élise Moreau. Room 214."

She stopped, watching them take Luc toward a different corridor. He turned his head, found her eyes, and gave her a small smile. *Don't go far.* She read it there, in the tired lines around his mouth.

"I won't," she said aloud. He didn't hear her, but she said it anyway.

---

Three hours and fourteen stitches later, Élise sat in a plastic chair outside Luc's room, her good hand wrapped around a cup of coffee that had gone cold. She hadn't drunk a drop. The door to his room was cracked open, and through the gap she could hear the steady beep of his heart monitor.

She'd been told he had a mild concussion, two cracked ribs, and a deep gash above his temple that had needed twenty-three stitches. He was lucky, the doctor said. Storm exposure, blood loss, untreated head wound—things could have gone much worse.

"Élise."

The voice came from down the hall. She knew it before she even lifted her head. Theo Moreau stood in the corridor, snow still melting in his dark hair, his jacket unzipped over a fleece that had seen better days. He looked older than the brother she remembered. There were lines around his eyes she couldn't place, and he held himself like someone who'd been carrying something heavy for a very long time.

"Theo." She stood, and the coffee cup tipped, spilling cold liquid across the floor. Neither of them moved to stop it.

He crossed the space between them in four strides and pulled her into a hug. Her ribs screamed. She didn't care. She buried her face in his shoulder and smelled the familiar scent of his cologne—the same bottle he'd worn since they were teenagers—and for a moment she was twenty years old again, standing at the bottom of a mountain with her brother, both of them too young and too stupid to know what the mountains could take.

"Mom called me," he said, pulling back. His hands stayed on her shoulders. "She said you were in an avalanche. I took the first flight from Geneva. I've been driving since—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I've been driving since the storm broke. Hit three road closures. I thought—" His voice cracked, and he looked away.

"You thought I was dead."

"I thought I'd never get to say it." His eyes came back to hers, red-rimmed. "I'm sorry, Élise. For everything."

A nurse walked by with a crash cart. A distant PA system announced a code blue somewhere in the building. And Élise stood in that plastic chair under the fluorescent lights, feeling the weight of years settle between them.

"What do you have to be sorry for?" she heard herself say. The words tasted strange. She realized she'd been rehearsing them—or their opposite—for years. Until this moment, she'd always imagined the conversation going differently. She'd always imagined herself angry.

He started to speak, stopped. Then he took a breath and told her.

"The debt. It was never Dad's. It was mine."

She blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"Your camera gear. The second mortgage Dad took out when you needed that expedition funding. When you found out, they told you it was for the medical bills after Mom's accident." He laughed, a hollow sound. "It wasn't. I racked up debts in university. Stupid student loans. Gambling. I was young and I was scared and I didn't tell Dad, and when he found out he sold what he could, borrowed what he couldn't. The mortgage was his way of fixing it without telling me he knew."

Élise felt the cold coffee seeping into her shoes. She didn't look down.

"And the accident," Theo continued. "The one that put Mom in the hospital in the first place. Remember how I said I was at a friend's house? I wasn't. I was driving her car. I'd taken it without permission. I was seventeen and I thought I was invincible and I hit a patch of ice on the pass road and—" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "I told you I wasn't there. I lied. For years, I let you think it was just a random accident. That she was unlucky. But it was me, Élise. It was my fault. She was in that car because I took it. I've been carrying that lie for seventeen years and I'm done."

The corridor seemed to stretch and narrow around them. A vending machine hummed. Somewhere, a door closed.

Élise remembered Mom lying in that hospital bed, her leg in traction, her face pale. She remembered holding her hand while Theo stood in the corner, quiet. She remembered thinking her brother was just scared. She'd never thought—she'd never once thought—

"I always blamed myself," she said, and her voice sounded strange even to her. "Dad sold the house. I thought I was too demanding, that my photography career cost us everything. Every mountain I climbed, every grant I applied for—I thought I was the one who bankrupted our family. And then Dad died before I could ask him." She pressed her fingers to her eyes. "I built my whole life around that guilt, Theo. Every risk I took on the mountain. Every time I pushed further. I was trying to prove I was worth the wreckage."

Theo put his hand on her arm. "You were never the wreckage."

She looked at him. At her brother. At the boy who had lied and the man who had come to find her across three closed passes in a storm.

"Neither were you," she said.

They stood there for a long moment, not speaking. Then the door to Luc's room opened, and Luc leaned against the frame, a bandage taped above his temple, one hand pressing a gauze pad to a fresh spot of blood on his neck.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said. His voice was rough but clear. "But I've been lying here with a concussion and too much time to think, and I heard most of that because hospital walls are thin, and I have something to say."

Theo looked at him. Recognized him. "You're Luc."

"I'm Luc." He swayed slightly, caught himself on the doorframe. "I'm the pilot who almost flew off that ridge because I was too busy not telling Élise I still loved her to watch my step. I'm the man who spent ten years pretending a broken heart was a minor injury. And I just got buried alive with her, so I figure I've paid my dues on keeping things to myself."

Élise crossed to him, reaching for his arm to steady him. "Luc, you should be lying down."

"I will." He turned his hand over and caught hers. "But first I want to say it out loud, in front of your brother, in this godawful hospital hallway, so there's no version of this story where I never said it."

He looked at Theo. Then back at Élise.

"I'm not hiding anymore. Not my feelings. Not my past. Not anything." His eyes were dark and steady. "I love you. I have for ten years, and I was a coward for most of them, and when the avalanche covered us I thought—if I die in this snow, she's never going to know. And that was the worst thing I could imagine. Not dying. You not knowing."

Theo cleared his throat. "I'm going to go get a coffee."

"Wait—" Élise said, but Theo was already backing away down the corridor, a small, tired smile on his face.

"I'll be back," he called over his shoulder. "We're not done yet, sis. But I think you two have more pressing things to talk about than my old mistakes."

---

Later—hours or maybe just minutes, time moved strangely in hospitals—Élise sat beside Luc's bed. His hand lay on the blanket, the yellow scarf still tied around his wrist. She touched the edge of it with one finger.

"We should talk about what happens next," she said.

"We should." He didn't open his eyes. "But first—tell me about the diary."

She'd almost forgotten she still carried it. It was in her pack, which had been retrieved from the rescue helicopter. She pulled it out now, the leather warped and stained from snow and water. The pages had frozen together, but the photo inside—the one she'd found—was still clear.

"A man we found dead on the ridge," she said. "He had this. There are photos of someone planting the seismic devices." She hesitated. "Luc—he was a climber. He wasn't with the tour group. He was alone. He had gear from several years ago. And there's a name on the inside cover."

Luc opened his eyes. "Whose?"

"Remy Chevalier."

She watched the color drain from his face.

"Remy," he repeated. "That's not possible. Remy went missing. Ten years ago. He saved my life in an avalanche—he was the one who pulled me out when I was pinned under ice. And then he just… disappeared. No one ever found his body." He looked at the diary. "Remy Chevalier. You found Remy Chevalier."

"Luc." She took his hand. "He was on that ridge. He was carrying evidence. I think he knew what was happening. I think he was trying to stop it."

Luc was staring at the wall. "He saved my life," he said again. "And then he was gone, and I spent years thinking—I thought he must have gotten into trouble, that the avalanche search and rescue work was too dangerous, that he'd found other mountains to climb." He shook his head. "He was dead the whole time. And someone buried him on that ridge with a camera full of the truth."

Élise said nothing. She just held his hand in hers, the scarf between their palms like a bright yellow seam binding them together. Outside the window, the storm had finally broken. The sky was the clear, hard blue of a mountain morning.