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5

KIT

DAY 2: MTI MKUBA TO SHIRA ONE

9200 feet to 11,500 feet

J oseph wakes me at six with a gentle tapping on my tent poles. “Good morning, Miss Kit. Would you like some coffee?”

I thank him and groggily reach for my headlamp. I fell asleep last night about twenty minutes into reading The Future of Publishing , woke a few hours later, and proceeded to remain awake for most of the night. It also feels as if elves took tiny hammers to every bone in my body while I slept, and I’m not sure who in the Smythson Explorers marketing department thought it was acceptable to describe the sleeping pad as “luxurious,” but I’m fairly certain I can sue.

I religiously apply sunscreen, pull on clothes, and head to the dining tent. The table is laid out with a platter of eggs and some kind of fried bread that looks a bit like French toast. Miller, disgustingly well-rested and handsome, is the only one here.

I slide onto the bench across from him unwillingly and pour myself a cup of coffee. “Why did you say that yesterday?” I blurt. “That I was stalking you?”

I’m trying to be casual, but I don’t think I’ve succeeded. There isn’t enough oxygen in this tent suddenly. My chest constricts.

“Because I told your dad two months ago that I was going on this climb, and here you are,” Miller says.

I blink. That’s impossible. My father seemed as surprised as I was to discover Miller was on the trip. More to the point, my dad wouldn’t talk to Miller in the first place. “When the hell did you talk to my father? He hates you.”

He gives me a smug smile. “ Au contraire , squirt. Your father adores me. We have lunch once a month at Il Buco.”

Il Buco is my dad’s favorite restaurant. If Miller’s fucking with me right now, he’s doing a really good job of it.

“Why the hell did my dad go from hating you to having lunch with you every month?” I demand, scooping eggs onto my plate. “After the way you treated Maren, he should be on the dark web finding someone to put you down, not asking you to lunch.”

There’s the tiniest pulse of a muscle in his jaw. I wouldn’t even notice it if I hadn’t been watching so closely, but there’s something in his face that tells me he doesn’t want me to know why my dad forgave him.

“That was a long time ago, Kitten,” he says, regaining his equilibrium. “Most people don’t hold a grudge for over a decade. You, apparently, are the exception.”

“Do not call me Kitten ,” I hiss as the Arnaults enter.

I’m glad they’ve arrived. I need a little time to process the fact that my father—the most loyal, intelligent man I know—has behaved in a way I can only deem intensely disloyal and really fucking stupid. I can’t believe he’s been lunching with our family’s enemy and never said a word.

“I need a new tentmate,” Alex says, taking the seat beside mine, nodding toward his sister. “This one snores.”

“I don’t snore,” Maddie argues. “Mom, tell him to stop saying that.”

“Alex, stop saying that,” his mother commands. “She just has allergies.”

“Great,” he says, handing me the platter of sausages, “since it’s just allergies, you sleep with her.”

“Oh God no,” Stacy says with a grin. “Those allergies would keep me up all night.”

I pour myself a second cup of coffee. When Alex asks if I’d like the sugar, I shake my head. “I’m trying to keep this trip healthy.”

“You sure?” Miller asks. “You could use some sweetening up. And you’ve barely eaten. Finish your food.”

It’s unfortunate that he’s being so abrasive and bossy publicly. No one’s ever going to believe his death was an accident now. Very deliberately, I throw my napkin atop my plate. He’s not going to say ‘finish your food’ like I’m a toddler and watch me obey.

Instead, I’m going to refuse to eat just to show him who’s boss.

Which is very adult.

After breakfast, we each fill our water bottles and grab our daypacks for the six-hour climb ahead. As miserable as the sleeping situation was, I guarantee I could nap for a couple of hours right now if only the porters would leave me behind.

Alas. They will not.

We set out through the rainforest, with Miller just ahead of me, speaking Swahili to his porter and Joseph. It’s irritating, the way he charms them. Hopefully they don’t take it too seriously because he will definitely make them all fall in love with him and then dump them by text. I have a mental image of all these lovely porters staring at their phones, waiting for him to change his mind. Possibly followed by a little light stalking of him on social media the way Maren did and perhaps still does.

Rob, my ex-boyfriend, charmed people, too. We’d met during the single year we’d overlapped at the University of Virginia: my first year of medical school, his final year of his master’s program. It was a year when I shouldn’t have had a spare minute to think about dating, but I couldn’t resist him. He was handsome, sure, but it was quiet strength I liked most. He was friendly to everyone, but he was also the person you’d look to if shit went downhill. If he was a character in a movie, he’d be the general, the captain—the leader who’d inspire you to go out swinging.

Miller’s a lot like that too. How strange that the guy I loathe and one I loved have so much overlap.

I talk to Stacy and Maddie for the first hour of the walk. Twice a year, the Arnaults take a family vacation—usually somewhere sunny and warm. As they describe past family trips, I fight a burst of envy. Not at the trips themselves—I’ve been to most of the places I’d like to see. I envy their cohesion. My parents split when I was small and though they still get along—my mother’s current husband is now best friends with my dad—we never had that traditional family feel. For the most part, when my mother was traveling, she dumped us with my dad, and my father would attempt to take us on a trip and wind up working the whole time while we sat in the kids’ club. One of the things that appealed to me about Blake, right from the start, is how much he wanted to be a hands-on father. Of course, Blake says a lot of things he doesn’t entirely mean, but I’m hoping that wasn’t one of them.

Stacy is telling me about a disastrous cruise they went on when Gerald charges past us. “Chat a little less,” he says, “and walk a little faster.”

“Is it wrong that I’m praying he falls?” Stacy asks.

I laugh. “Not as wrong as me actively planning to make it happen.”

After several hours, we emerge from the rainforest onto the beginning of the Shira Plateau, a distinct dividing line between the rainforest and the drier, more barren moorlands, where Gideon announces we will be taking a break.

I climb onto a boulder and stretch my arms overhead, looking over the grassy plains and the dense treetops below.

There is so much land , so much green . That this is just a tiny piece of a single country, surrounded by other countries, is a realization that hits me anew.

I’m an ant, one of a million ants, and my contributions will mean very little, if anything. For me, that’s a relief.

For a long time I’ve felt as if I needed to have a very big life—that I needed to have the best clothes and go to the best parties and get a better seat at Fashion Week than other people; that I needed to have a job like my father’s, one that has everyone stopping by our table at Le Cirque to pay homage even though I loathe the way people stop by our table.

Standing here, I can almost believe it doesn’t matter— that whether I’ve got the best seat at Fashion Week or never attend again won’t make a difference to anyone in a hundred years and probably makes little difference to anyone now. My father is powerful and important, but in fifty years, he’ll be a footnote at best. And if it doesn’t matter...who do I decide to become? Because I doubt I’d remain on the path I’m taking now.

I sit on the boulder, laughing to myself as I recognize these thoughts. Am I about to grow as a person? I really hope not. I don’t want my father to be right about the need for this trip.

“We’re in fucking Africa, man,” says Alex, climbing up beside me. “It’s wild, you know?”

I smile. “Yeah. It’s pretty wild. It’s so…vast.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, but Alex won’t judge me, mostly because he’s not an asshole like Miller. But it’s actually pretty cool that I’m doing this. I’m excited to see the terrain in the days ahead and I can almost picture eventually forgiving my dad.

Alex pulls out a bag of gummy worms and shakes some into my lap. “I know you said you’re not doing sugar, but come on.”

“It was not my best plan,” I reply as I throw a few in my mouth.

I glance over my shoulder to make sure we can’t be overheard. “So, which of you two doesn’t want to go into the cabinetry business with your dad?” I ask, nodding back toward his sister.

He laughs and sighs at once. “Neither of us. Maddie just got into a masters program for social work and I want to get my real estate license, and we’re in a standoff about who tells him we’re jumping ship first.”

Legs appear on the boulder beside mine. Muscular, olive-toned legs. I follow them up to Miller’s scowling face.

“Are you drinking enough?” he demands.

“Miller, I’m twenty-eight, not twelve. You fret over me more than my mother does.”

“That’s setting the bar pretty low,” he grunts in response. “You probably learned to crawl because she kept forgetting to feed you.”

“Shows how much you know,” I reply. “I probably learned to crawl because she was refusing to give me anything but skim milk.”

Alex waits until Miller’s walked away before he raises a brow. “So the two of you really never dated?”

My laughter is equal parts shocked and amused. “ What ? No. He dated my sister. ”

He glances back toward Miller. “Not necessarily a deal breaker for a lot of guys.”

“Well, it’s one for me,” I say firmly. “Especially when the guy in question is him .”

It’s only later, as we set out again, that I remember the most relevant point wasn’t that Miller dated Maren. It’s that I’m about to marry someone else.

I’d sort of forgotten.

My father would say it’s a bad sign, the way I forget about Blake for long periods of time and don’t really need to talk to him, but my dad’s also on his third marriage. It’s not as if he can claim he’s got the recipe for success. And it’s not as if I haven’t thought this through.

It took me a while to start dating after Rob, and it took me a long while to meet anyone I could picture staying with. And I really tried. I dated rich men, and I dated poor men. I dated men who barely spoke and men who wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise. I dated men who couldn’t accept that I wasn’t dumb, and men who were hell-bent on proving to me that I was .

I dated men who were saving themselves for marriage and on one especially memorable occasion, I went out with a guy who asked to use my bathroom and then walked out nude…at the start of the date.

And at last, there was Blake. We went to the same parties and knew the same people. He had a real job and waited until a reasonable point in our relationship to walk out of the bathroom naked. He had interests beyond drinking and football...he ran marathons, he’d just taken up jujitsu. He understood the demands of my job.

I know it’s not perfect. He isn’t Rob. But I don’t need perfect, and I’m not sure I can handle another Rob because I doubt I’d survive losing one.

Blake is sort of the perfect compromise.

This is perhaps the one area of your life where you shouldn’t compromise, Kitty Cat , my father says in my head.

“Shut up, Dad,” I say aloud.

If he’s befriended Miller, he’s got no right to judge me for anything.

* * *

The second half of the climb is harder now that we’ve ascended two thousand feet. Gerald, who went straight to the front of the group, shouts at us to keep up, earning him annoyed looks from Gideon and the porters, who continue counseling us to “ pole, pole .”

My quads ache. I need to pee but don’t want to call attention to it lest Miller notice. Leah is behind me, telling Maddie’s mom that pasteurized cow’s milk has killed more people than the bubonic plague.

It’s no longer cool that I’m doing this. I don’t care about the terrain. I’m definitely not going to grow as a person, nor will I ever forgive my father.

“I’d like to get there before next winter,” bellows Gerald at the lot of us.

I hope Gideon pushes him off a cliff. None of us will say a word.

After a few more hours, we reach Shira Camp One, where we will stay for the night. We are now in the moorlands, not the rainforest. It’s dry and entirely unprotected from the wind, and a fine dust has settled over the tents, the latrine and even Gerald, who despite his whining about our speed, looks suspiciously exhausted.

I climb inside my dust-coated tent and divest myself of my filthy outer layer, then remove my sweat-soaked T-shirt and bra and panties. I wipe myself down with one of my precious wipes, dry myself off, and climb into the woolen base layer I’ll sleep in later. Already, it’s getting chilly, so by the time the sun is down, I won’t be willing to strip out of this stuff again.

Though it’s still light and dinner’s coming, I pull my sleeping bag out and slide inside it, relishing being dry and warm and inert…things I’d barely notice, much less appreciate, at home.

We only hiked for six hours. It seems as if I shouldn’t be as exhausted as I am.

It’s probably the altitude, the stress, the shitty night’s sleep…but what if it isn’t? What if I can’t hack it on this trip and Miller’s got to carry me all the way back down the mountain?

As much as I despise him, as much as I resent the way he’s treating me like a child…there’s a despicable piece of me that’s slightly relieved he’s here.

I don’t know the porters. Who’s to say they won’t leave me for dead if I break an ankle five days into the trip? But even though I hate Miller and he hates me, I know he wouldn’t. No, he’d dump his backpack and climb down with me on his back if necessary. He’d probably bitch at me the entire way, but he wouldn’t stop until I was safe.

I guess he’d have made a really good husband for Maren. I went out of my way to run him off, and I succeeded. Maybe I wouldn’t have, if I’d known how much worse Maren would end up doing.

These thoughts fade as I sink into one of those deep, sudden afternoon sleeps, the delicious kind you wake from without a clue where you are or what month it is.

It’s Miller I dream about. He’s back in our cottage in the Hamptons and he’s brought me a popsicle just because I love them.

“ Why did he bring you one but not me? ” Maren asks.

I insist it didn’t mean anything, but it’s a lie. It does mean something. It feels like a diamond ring, a bouquet of roses. And I want it to mean something, even if I shouldn’t.

“Kit,” says Miller. “Kit.”

My eyes fly open. It’s dusk, and Miller, who’s apparently been outside my tent saying my name, is warning me that I need to answer or he’s coming in.

What a weird thing to dream. Nothing like that ever happened.

“You’d better be clothed,” he says.

“What?” I ask, just as the zipper slides up and his head peeks in, a mountain of dust blowing in with it.

He frowns, relief and irritation stirring in his eyes. “Jesus,” he says. “Answer when I call your name next time. You scared the piss out of me. It’s dinner. You slept right through the bell.”

I’m so tired, and I’m not especially hungry. Both of these are signs of oxygen depletion, but I’m too exhausted to care.

“I’m gonna skip it,” I mumble, rolling over, tucking myself into fetal position as I bury my face in my pillow.

The pillow is snatched out from under me. My cheekbone smashes into the sleeping pad.

“Hey!” I shout.

“Get the fuck up or I destroy it.”

My jaw falls open. “You wouldn’t.”

His eyes are flat and calm and definitely not those of a man who’s bluffing. “Won’t I?”

“Fuck you, Miller,” I growl, flinging the sleeping bag off me and reaching for my pants.

“Fuck you, Kit,” he replies, removing his head from my tent…but not returning my pillow. When I stumble outside, he’s waiting with narrowed eyes. He hands the pillow back, and I’ve got half a mind to climb inside my tent and make him fight me for it—there’s a strange charge in my stomach at the idea—except he would fight me for it and now that I’m out, I’m actually a little hungry. I throw the pillow inside and stalk toward the dining tent.

“You can’t just start blowing off meals,” he says. He is beside me effortlessly, though I’m walking as fast as I can.

“I know,” I growl. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Because you realized this was a terrible fucking idea?”

“Because I was trying to figure out how to make your death look like an accident and couldn’t remember which local plants were poisonous,” I reply. His mouth twitches. I’m fighting a twitch of my own.

And then I realize this moment has occurred just as we’ve reached the entrance to the dining tent, where six pairs of eyes have witnessed the exchange, this half second of accidental truce, and I feel as if I’ve been caught at something.

As if it’s suspicious somehow that Miller and I are here together, arriving late, almost smiling at each other. I flush and take the nearest seat that isn’t beside Gerald. Miller follows, taking the seat across from mine.

“We must check you,” says Gideon, holding a pulse oximeter in the air.

“It’s to test your oxygen levels,” says Gerald. “It?—”

“She knows what it is,” growls Miller, and our gazes meet again.

He knows far more about what I’ve been up to the past few years than I do him. And I wonder what else, exactly, he knows.

I really hope it’s not everything.