The Sanatorium(6)

Bella Tolla.

Adele can see it now. Through the vast windows, its jagged summit punctures the sky. The sight burns. It was one of the last climbs she did before she became pregnant with Gabriel. August 2015.

She remembers it all: sun, a cloudless sky. Neon-framed sunglasses. The scrape of the harness against her thighs. The gray rock, cool beneath her fingers. Estelle’s tanned legs high above her, contorted into an impossible position.

Gabriel, her son, now age three, was born the following June, the result of a short-lived fling with Stephane, a fellow student and mountain lover, during a weekend in Chamonix. Everything stopped then—climbing, hiking, studying for her business degree, pissed-up nights with her friends.

Adele loves her son wholly, absolutely, but sometimes she struggles to remember who she was before. What her world was like before it had been deconstructed, reassembled into something else entirely.

Responsibilities. Worry. Collection letters stacking up on her desk. This job; the mundane rhythm of her days—changing sheets, wiping surfaces, the sucking up of other people’s debris.

Adele swallows hard, bending down to plug the vacuum into the wall. Straightening, she looks around. It won’t take long, she thinks, assessing the damage.

Adele likes this bit, the calculation of time and effort required. It’s an art, the one part of the process that requires her to engage her brain.

Her eyes slide across the minimalist setup: the bed, the low-slung chairs, the abstract swirls that count as paintings on the left-hand wall, the cashmere throws in muted shades.

Not bad, she thinks.

These people were neat. Careful. The bed is barely rumpled; the complex arrangement of throws arranged across the bottom still undisturbed.

The only visible mess is the half-empty cups on the bedside tables, a black jacket slung on the chair in the corner. She studies the woven badge on the upper arm. Moncler. Probably three thousand francs for that.

Adele always thought that kind of carelessness—flinging the jacket on the chair—only came with wealth. It was the same with the rooms. Most of the guests seemed oblivious to the intricacies and detail that elevated these rooms—the bespoke furniture, marble bathrooms, the tufted, handwoven rugs.

She was always dealing with somebody’s thoughtless filth—stained bedsheets, sticky food trodden into rugs. Adele pictures the slimy, wrinkled sack of the condom she’d fished out of the toilet last week.

The thought stings, like a graze. Adele pushes it away, plugs her headphones into her ears. She always listens to music when she works, fixes her tasks to the beat.

Her favorite playlist is old-school rock, heavy metal. Guns N’ Roses, Slash, Metallica.

She’s about to switch it on, then stops, noticing a change outside, a subtle darkening to the sky, the very particular leaden gray that precedes heavy snowfall—ominous in its uniformity. Snow is already falling relentlessly, drifts forming around the hotel signage, the cars parked out front.

Tiny darts of anxiety flicker in her chest. If the storm gets any worse, she might have problems getting home. Any other night, it wouldn’t matter—her childcare was flexible, but today Gabriel leaves for his week with his father.

She needs to be back in time to say good-bye, a good-bye that always sticks in her throat as Stephane watches, face impassive, his hand already enclosing Gabriel’s.

A dark, irrational fear engulfs her each and every time he leaves—that he might not come back, might not want to come back, that he might choose, after all, to live with Stephane.

Adele can see that fear now, reflected in the glass. Her dark hair is scraped back into a high ponytail, revealing a pinched face, her almond-shaped eyes narrowed with worry. She turns away quickly. Seeing yourself like that, shadowy, distorted, it’s like looking into the darkest parts of your soul.

Glancing back at her phone, she’s about to press play when, from the corner of her eye, she notices something on the balustrade.

A sliver of something shiny among the snow.

Adele pushes open the door, curious. Freezing air fills the room along with tiny flakes of windblown snow. Walking over to the balustrade, she picks it up.

A bracelet.

As she turns it between her fingers, she can see it’s made of copper, similar to the ones people wear for arthritis. Tiny numbers loop the interior. An engraving.

It must be one of the guests’, she decides. She’ll put it on one of the bedside tables so they’ll see it when they come in.

Adele goes back into the room, closing the door behind her. Putting the bracelet on the nearest table, she steals another glance at the heavy snowfall, the growing drifts circling the balcony.

If she’s late, Stephane won’t wait for her. All she’ll find is a silent apartment and an emptiness that will consume her until Gabriel is home.





4





Elin, are you going to come . . . ?” Will’s last word is lost against the sound of the flag above, flapping in the gusting wind.

Thick flakes of snow plummet from the sky, settling on her face.

Her stomach clenches. Despite Will’s presence, and the hotel in front of her, she can’t help but be struck by their isolation—the absolute remoteness of the location. The drive from town had taken more than an hour and a half. With each minute ticking by, the winding roads drawing them farther up the mountain, Elin couldn’t shake her growing sense of unease.