“Do what?”

“That push-and-pull thing. It’s mad. One day she’s hurt that I didn’t tell her about my childhood in Romania, the next day she’s telling me that I need to assimilate into America. That I had a chip on my shoulder.” He shuddered. “I always thought she was cheating on me, but I couldn’t prove it.”

“Did you see her…?”

“No, it was just a hunch. All those musicians and actors and writers—I couldn’t tell if they were actually her friends or people she’d picked up on the street. Sometimes I thought Sylvia was conning me.”

“For what?”

Roux shrugged. “I don’t know. Money. It’s always about money in the end.”

“But say Gideon did forgive me,” Ivy repeated, shivering with the wind. “What would you do?”

“We don’t live in that kind of world,” he said coldly. He handed her the flask but she shook her head. “If we did,” he continued, “I wouldn’t have had to corner you like this. We’d be together already. Instead of on this frozen mountain, we’d be in my bed. Soaking in the tub. You’d be redecorating my apartment.”

Ivy saw it just as he described. The bed. The tub. The fresh start. Children. Asia. The ease she’d felt with him their first night together, on Poppy’s four-poster bed in Cattahasset, returned to her now, singing its haunting, irresistible tune.

“Tell me the truth,” he said, guiding her chin up to meet his eyes. “Have you told him yet? Because if you haven’t, this grandiose gesture isn’t going to change my mind.”

“I told him about us,” she said. “We broke up.”

He flinched. “I don’t believe you.”

“I love you.” She smiled gently, the gentleness of a mother.

Roux lowered his head. He kissed the hollow of her neck where the skin jumped with her heartbeat. She understood by the aching pain in her throat and her dry, hot eyes that her words were not a lie. He was Roux, and she was Ivy. Who else in the entire world would ever understand what that meant?

She thought he, too, might be overcome by emotion, but when he looked up, she realized the slight tremors she felt from his body were laughter. His eyes were the clear glittering gray of a frozen lake in which drops of dew hung in eternal suspended beauty; she felt she could see down the depths of a subterranean world, just by peering at those hard, gray eyes.

“Let’s get going,” he said, jumping to his feet.

She didn’t move. Something like grief was clawing at her temples. “Are we sure we want to go on? The temperature’s dropping. And it’s supposed to snow soon.”

“What are you talking about? We came all this way.”

“Let’s just go back, Roux. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“You lazy cat.” He pulled her up. “I’m getting my second wind. Come on, I’ll carry the bag.” He began to whistle as he brushed snow off his pants.

“Please let’s go back!”

He broke off in astonishment. Staring at her stiff, frightened face, he said gently, “It was so important to you earlier that we see your special spot. I’ve never believed in omens, but I think we were meant to be here today. I can’t explain it. I want to be here with you. So we’ll always remember today. Do you understand?”

She could only nod, exhausted by her outbreak to the point of dumbness. He squeezed her hand.

Ivy slowly shook out their picnic blanket and folded everything back in her backpack. It was just as Roux said, she told herself. They were only going to see her special spot. Reality was how you framed it. Gideon had taught her that. “We’re going to be climbing down,” she said, leading him to the edge of the rock. “Watch your step.”

* * *

ALL HER LIFE, she had sought something she couldn’t name. Love? Wealth? Beauty? But none of those things were exactly right. What she sought was peace. The peace of having something no one could take away from you. Had she ever been at peace for a single minute in her life? She was tired of the struggle to achieve that innocent simplicity she admired in old-fashioned people like the Speyers, or the effortless, entitled elegance of Sunrin, traits that appeared so natural in others but which she could only emulate through cunning calculation. She was tired of trying. More than anything, she longed to rest.

“Rest how?” said Roux.

They wove their way down the narrow path between the boulders, gripping their shoes in the slim crevices where the snow was frozen.

“Rest knowing I’ve reached the top,” said Ivy. She could feel the heat of Roux’s irritation warming her back as his sharp voice echoed between the large stones.

“Ivy. There. Is. No. Top. We’re all in this hellhole together. What you’re looking for—that peace?—it doesn’t exist.”

They dropped onto the two-foot-wide ledge on the side of the mountain, the cliffside boulders blocking out the sky. The temperature here was even colder than the open expanse above. In identical gestures—a step forward, necks stretching outward—they stared down at the narrow gulf. The motion made Ivy so dizzy that she quickly leaned back against the wall to steady her quaking legs. She had a fear of heights. How absurd, considering. Her arms shook beside her body.

“It looks man-made, doesn’t it?”

“Divine nature,” said Roux. “What is it?”

“Frozen sediment, I guess. The overhang from where we had lunch protects it from the weather. It’s sort of this secret hole I discovered once.”

“How’d you find it?”

“An ex-boyfriend—he fancied himself a woodsman. He slipped on the rock above us and luckily there was this platform here.”

Roux whistled. “Lucky dude. If you fell down from here, there’s no way to climb back up.”

“And no one would ever find you either,” Ivy whispered. “This isn’t close to any of the other hiking trails.” She looked at the thin sliver of dirt two hundred meters down at the bottom of the conical valley. The walls were smooth and silver and covered in ice. Sharp spires made intricate shapes, like frozen snowflakes, their jagged points rising toward a sky they would never reach.

“I don’t understand,” she cried suddenly, spinning to face Roux with anguished eyes, “why you love me. We’d be miserable together. We’d fight constantly. You’d cheat on me. I’d steal from you. We’d be horrible parents. We’d die some horrible, pointless death. You said people don’t change. That’s who we are together.” If he had painted one version of their future, she was painting its underbelly. She was begging him to see, to agree with her, because she could think of no other way to save them both. Yet even through her anguish, a tiny voice continued to jeer at her own theatrics: you know you don’t mean a single word, you’re just trying to get out of a tight spot, same as always, you feel nothing, you’re a selfish monster…

“You’re just scared,” Roux said hoarsely. “When I was a kid, I thought I could control my destiny. Do whatever I wanted once I had some money. But now I think our lives were decided for us a long time ago. Everything that’s happened so far, the way we met again—doesn’t it feel inevitable?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know anything anymore!” Ivy shook her head violently and began to cry, a hiccupping, choking cry, but for once there was no shame in it. The vastness of the mountain, the oppressive silence, the whistling of the wind made everything feel as though it were happening from very far away, as if she were watching herself from an airplane window, thousands of feet off the ground. She was simultaneously in the airplane and on that ledge, both the participant and the observer of her small life.

But she did know! It was her life! Who cared if it was small or insignificant, it was hers!

Roux was petting the back of her head, which was resting on his chest, murmuring words of comfort. She could feel the vibrations from his voice going straight into her bones; the sensation calmed her. As quickly as they came, her tears receded; her mind went to that quiet place. Lives are like rivers. Eventually they go where they must.

She looked up. He cupped her face with one hand. Wiped her eyes with his thumb. Roux—!

“If you stand at the edge,” she said, “close your eyes, and shout your wish—maybe it’ll come true.”

“I doubt it,” he said.

“Here, I’ll go first.” She inched out steadily.

“Careful.”

She took another step forward… her toes had reached the edge of the ledge. One step farther and she’d fall.

Ivy opened her mouth. She shouted the first thing that came to mind. “I wish I was an angel!” Her voice bounced off the walls, boomeranging back toward her: annnggelll-ggelll-lll.

She heard Roux’s laughter behind her, mixing with the echo. “That one’s going to take a miracle,” he said.

“Your turn.” She stepped back and pressed her back against the safe surface of the cliff. Her heart was pounding so hard she felt she was being swallowed by its rushing beat. But her mind was absolutely clear.

Roux stepped forward. He looked down at the gulf. Time slowed.

“Wait—Roux.”

He turned around. “What?”

“I never thanked you.”