Chapter 44
The trail cut steeply upward, less hike, more scramble. Helena was climbing hand over hand, the trail studded with rock and boulder. In one particularly steep section, a chain had been drilled into the rock to help haul oneself upward.
Helena was ravenous. She was craving salty, beige foods—dry-roasted peanuts or sea-salt-and-cider-vinegar crisps or a block of vintage cheddar. She wondered how much she’d pay, right now, for a hunk of cheese.
Thousands, she decided.
Ahead, Joni gripped the gray hide of a boulder, pushing herself up with a grunt. As she stretched, a bulge appeared in the deep pocket of her rust jacket.
Strange, Helena thought. The shape was too large to be a phone or a pack of chewing gum, which were the only items Joni had declared earlier.
“Joni?” she called, blowing hard through her cheeks as she caught up. “What’s that in your pocket?”
Joni’s fingers immediately brushed the shape at her side. “Tissues,” she said without slowing her pace.
Her tone was too breezy, the answer too quick. Helena wondered if she was hiding food.
“Can I use one?”
A hesitation. “What for?”
“I need a piss.”
“We should save them,” Joni said, not slowing.
As Joni continued to climb, Helena kept her gaze on the shape in her pocket. It was too large, too solid, to be tissues.
“Seriously,” Helena called again, trying to keep pace. “What is in your pocket?”
Joni pretended not to hear.
Helena had to scramble to reach her side, panting hard. She put a hand on Joni’s arm.
Joni snapped around, eyes narrowed. “What?”
Helena snatched a breath. “What have you got in there?”
Joni shook her off and tried to rejoin the trail.
Helena followed, fury making her fast. Then, just as suddenly, she stopped. She blinked, staring at the back of Joni as she realized. “Oh God! You didn’t!”
Ahead of her, Joni hesitated.
Maggie and Liz, catching up, asked, “What’s going on?”
Slowly, Joni turned and faced her friends. Her tanned skin had blanched.
Helena glared at her. “You stole the fucking coke!”
Joni’s expression was strange, eyes hard but glistening. “The bag was already ripped. What were they gonna do with it?”
“You went back for it?” Liz asked, aghast.
“So?”
Joni had been the last to leave the cave. She must have grabbed the bag and stuffed it in her jacket pocket.
“Why would you take it?” Liz asked. Her voice came out small, bewildered.
She shrugged. “If our energy flags, it’ll help us get through.”
Helena balked. “You want us to snort cocaine halfway up a bloody mountain? Are you insane? We’re not at a music festival! We’re on a remote mountain face! If we don’t keep our shit together, don’t make it off the mountain, we will die out here!”
Maggie’s voice was thin. “You’ve put us all in danger!”
Joni was glaring at them like a cornered animal. When she was in the wrong, Joni fought.
“I’ve put us in danger? It wasn’t my idea to peg our tents at the bottom of the mountain—”
Maggie looked mortified. “I’m sorry. I never thought—”
“—and it wasn’t my idea to hike out into the wilderness despite the storm warnings!”
It was Liz’s turn to flush.
“If you’re so worried about the cocaine,” Joni said, yanking the package free of her pocket and tossing it on a rock between them, “then we ditch it.”
Helena stared at the package. Joni had managed to patch the split using a section of tape from the seal of the bag.
“We can’t get rid of it! Someone is coming to collect the drugs—and when they find a bag is missing, they’re not going to be happy.
” She shook her head. “You never think! That’s your problem, Joni! ”
“That’s my problem?” Joni retorted, folding her arms.
“One of them.”
“When did you become so uptight?” Joni said, challenging her. “You used to be the first to step forward for a line.”
“Yeah. In a club. On a big weekend. In my twenties. Not during a hiking trip! I’m not in Norway to get high—I came out here to spend time with my friends and to spread my mother’s ashes.
” She felt the sharp ache of loss, thinking again of the ashes lost beneath thousands of tons of earth.
Irretrievable. She looked at Joni, eyes narrowing.
“Not that you would give a shit about that.”
Joni blinked at the quicksilver switch of the argument. “What does that mean?”
Maggie lifted her palms. “Let’s not—”
“You know exactly what it means!” Helena snapped. “You weren’t there when Mum was dying. You weren’t there at her funeral. And you haven’t been there since.”
Joni looked like she’d been slapped. She stood very still, just the shallow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
“Do you know what song Mum requested to open the funeral service?”
Joni swallowed.
“One of yours. ‘Rainbows.’ Mum wrote down her final wishes: ‘Rainbows’ sung by Joni. Then, in brackets afterward, she put, Or on CD if Joni can’t be there.” Helena sucked in a breath. “Broke my heart seeing that, because even Mum knew you wouldn’t show up.”
Joni was blinking rapidly. “I couldn’t be there. I was on tour. I had a gig.”
“I checked your schedule,” Helena said, gaze still pinned to her. “There was no gig.”