The Rom-Commers(31)

Not to mention why it was extra-douchey for Charlie to refer lightly to my “failed career” as if his hot take was the only possible read on it. As if a cursory glance at anything could ever be the whole story. As if my life—my sorrow, my grief, my sacrifices—was something some ill-informed casual observer had any right to judge.

I have to tell you the thing I’ve been putting off telling you.

Stick with me. We’ll get through it—and we’ll be stronger on the other side, as all of us always are, for facing hard things and finding ways to keep going.

Plus: Bearing witness to the suffering of others? I don’t know if there’s anything kinder than that. And kindness is a form of emotional courage. And I’m not sure if this is common knowledge, but emotional courage is its own reward.

Lastly, I promise: everybody was okay now. Sort of. Mostly.

With obvious exceptions.

I was okay now, at least. Really. Honestly. Truly.

Okay enough, at least.

I’d had almost ten years to recover, after all.

Wow—had it really been that long?

Ten years since we took a family camping trip to Yosemite to celebrate my graduation from high school—and the writing scholarship I’d won to Smith College.

Ten years since the rockfall that ended our family as we knew it.

Ten years since I was sitting on an outcropping of rock while my dad belayed my mom, keeping the ropes on her harness tight while she worked her way up the rock face, and my sister, Sylvie, and I sunbathed—smacking on strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups as she begged me to tell her that seventh grade would be better than sixth.

But how stingy I was. “I can’t promise that,” I said. “Middle school is supposed to suck.”

“Emma,” Sylvie said, pouting. “Come on.”

But I didn’t give in. “Lean into the misery,” I told her, feeling wise and grown-up and cocky. “It’s good for you. It bolsters your emotional immune system.”

So smug. So foolish.

That morning—the last morning of our normal lives—is weirdly vivid in my mind to this day. I can see the honeyed yellow sunlight falling across our legs. I can see the mismatched purple and pink socks poking out of Sylvie’s hiking boots. I can see the frayed Band-Aid on her knee, and the Hello Kitty earrings I kept teasing her about, and the half-scratched-off hot-pink polish on her nails as she took a swig from her water bottle.

Such a goofy little kid.

I remember myself, too—that stranger I used to be. How the breeze was tickling my neck with escaped wisps from my ponytail. How I couldn’t wait for summer to end and college to start. How my high school boyfriend—Logan—had suggested we stay together even after leaving for opposite sides of the country for school, and I told him I’d “think about it.” How eager I was to grow up.

More than anything, I remember that feeling I kept carrying like a sunrise in my body that my life was really, genuinely, at last, about to begin.

I can place myself in the moment of that morning in vivid 3-D, as if it’s still happening somehow, over and over, on an endless loop—my dad still holding the belay rope, and my mom working her way ever higher on the rock face, the sound of the wind high above in the background like a rushing river nearby.

All of us totally fine. Better than fine. Happy.

If my life were a screenplay, I’d end the story right there and roll credits—and then maybe rewind and watch it again.

But real life’s not a loop, is it? There’s always another moment that follows.

What I remember best after that is sounds.

A series of clacks coming from high on the rock face almost like fireworks.

Then an unearthly clump sound right at the base of the rocks.

I didn’t see her fall.

I didn’t see the rock that hit my dad, either.

The rest of the memory is built only with the scaffolding we pieced together afterward: A patch of rocks came loose—like a mini-avalanche. One of those rocks hit my father on the head before he even knew anything was happening, knocking him unconscious. As he dropped to the ground, of course the belay rope swished upward, out of his hands. And how high up was my mother then? A hundred feet, maybe? Sometimes I look up at the rooflines of buildings and try to re-create it. Was it three stories she fell from? Four? Five?

I’m sure my dad knows. But I’ll never ask.

I didn’t see it in slow-mo, the way you might in a movie, even though I was right there. It was over before I knew what had happened. And then there was nothing to do but run to the spot where they both lay, bleeding, unconscious, twisted like no bodies should ever twist.

I was back at the rock where Sylvie was sitting before she’d even moved. “Don’t go over,” I said. “Stay right here.” We were too high for cell service, so I said, “I’m going for help.”

But she wasn’t listening. “Mom?” Sylvie whispered, staring in that direction.

I took Sylvie’s face between my hands and turned it to mine. “Don’t move from this rock. Don’t go over there. And don’t touch them, okay? That could hurt them worse.”

“Okay,” Sylvie said, still whispering, her eyes glassy.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

Then it hit her I was leaving. Her voice wavered with panic. “But what do I do?”