Chapter 4

I didn't go back into the banquet hall.

It was raining outside.

I stood under the eaves of the hotel and asked my mother when she'd found out that Herbert and Rosemary had reconnected.

"Two years ago."

She didn't hide it anymore.

Rosemary had been injured once during a mountain rescue. Herbert went to the hospital to see her, and my mother only learned about it later.

She'd originally said she was going there to tear into her, but when she got to the room and saw more than a dozen stitches in Rosemary's shoulder—and saw that the next day she was still worrying about a missing elderly man the team hadn't found—her heart softened, little by little.

"Sandra, she has paid a price."

"So all of you forgave her."

"It's not about forgiveness," Herbert said at once. "I just don't want everyone stuck forever in what happened five years ago."

He said my condition had gone back and forth over the years, and it was only after he happened to learn that Rosemary had started doing emergency rescue work that it occurred to him—maybe I could learn some real self-rescue skills for enclosed spaces.

The first few training sessions really had helped, so he'd become more and more convinced that if I could just take one more step forward, I could truly recover.

I asked, "So today, tricking me back to this hotel—you agreed to that too?"

Herbert paused. "If I'd told you ahead of time, you wouldn't have come."

"So you decided for me."

My mother grabbed my hand, crying. "But you really did it today. Eighteen minutes! I heard you go quiet afterward, and for the first time I felt like all these years were finally almost behind us."

They were so happy.

Too happy for anyone to admit that the reason I went quiet later was simply that I no longer had the strength to scream.

Rosemary said through tears, "Sandra, I never thought I could cure you. I only wanted to pay back a little of what I owe you. If there's ever a day you're no longer afraid of that door, then everything I've done these years will have been worth it."

"But I said to open the door."

Her face went pale. "That was the hardest part of the training."

"Rosemary, I said to open the door."

Herbert said quietly, "At the time she judged that your body wasn't in real danger."

I turned to look at him. "And you?"

He didn't answer.

Five years ago, after I lost the baby, Herbert held me and said that as long as I didn't want to, I'd never have to see Rosemary again for the rest of my life.

After that, every time I shut a door, he never once pushed me.

So a promise doesn't suddenly change on some single day.

It's just that over the years, they'd started to need me to get better, more and more.

My mother suddenly said, in a low voice, that before my father passed away, she had once brought up Rosemary's rescue-team work over the years.

He was silent for a long time, then said only one thing: "Don't tell Sandra. She can't take it right now."

My grip on the umbrella handle slowly tightened.

Even he had known.

Not forgiveness—maybe he even still hated Rosemary. But in the end everyone made the same choice: keep it from me, decide for me what I should and shouldn't know.

I asked Herbert, "If I asked you to cut off all contact with her from now on, would you agree?"

The rain was loud.

And still he didn't answer right away.

In that moment, I already knew the answer.