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  “So, let’s do it. What do you need to assess?”

  Seema raised her hand like a young girl in classroom wanting to ask a question. Robert’s hands opened up.

  “What?”

  “Robert? Hello!”

  Robert snorted impatiently, “Oh, God! Yeah, whatever—Hello! Is that what you are assessing...if I say hello or not?”

  “Well, not really, Robert. It’s just...No, actually—I’m sorry about that. I changed my mind. Yes, it is part of the assessment.”

  “So the insurance will stop paying if I don’t say hello?”

  “Let me ask you a question, Robert. It’s a fairly straightforward question. Before you came here, before this happened, did you usually say ‘hello,’ to people when you met them?”

  Robert rubbed his face and exhaled with a low, exasperated sound. “Yeah, probably—I always said ‘hello.’ So?”

  “And now you choose not to say, ‘hello’?”

  “Look, lady! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through, or what it’s like for me now?”

  “No, Robert, I don’t. I absolutely have no idea. And that’s why you’re here, so I can find out. So I can assess how much time, resources and care you will need.”

  Robert arched his head back and ran his hands through his hair. He looked up at the ceiling and muttered, “Okay, okay, okay! Please! Can we just get this done so I can get out of here?”

  Robert stared at the ceiling, his hands supporting his head and waited for her questions, but Seema stayed silent. Then he heard her open a drawer, pull out a piece of paper and start to write. He lowered his hands and looked at Seema, who was now intently focused on what she was writing.

  Robert waited for her to stop, thinking that she was going to ask him the assessment questions, but Seema just kept on writing. Robert lifted his head slightly to look, but he was too far away to make out what she was writing. Seema stopped for a second, put the pen to her lips, thought for a moment, then went back to her paper and wrote something more.

  Robert started to feel a little anxious about what she could be putting down about him, so he finally blurted out, “All right already! What are you writing?”

  Without looking up, Seema gave him a wait-a-second signal with her hand and kept on writing. He waited a couple of beats, watching her pen furiously scratch down word after word. Robert couldn’t take it any longer and he slammed his hands down on the arms of his chair.

  “What the hell are you saying about me there? What...just ‘cause I didn’t say hello?”

  Seema wrote for a few seconds more, then stopped. She looked up at Robert and smiled slightly. “I’m so sorry Robert. I didn’t mean for you to get upset. It’s just...well, I had to write that down before I forgot it. Otherwise it would bother me all day.”

  “What? That I didn’t say, ‘hello’? Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt or bother you.”

  “Oh no, Robert. No, you didn’t hurt me, not at all! But I must confess that it did bother me, you choosing not to say hello...but we’ll speak of that later. No, I was writing about something I heard last night. I saw that film Les Miserables. Have you seen it?”

  Robert shook his head.

  “It is just this one line that got me wondering. It’s near the end and all the characters are singing together and they sing—”

  Seema stopped and raised her hand. “Oh, please don’t worry, I won’t sing it. But it goes something like ‘to love another person is to see the face of God.’ It’s a curious line, isn’t it? I mean, at face value, its literal meaning seems obvious, but is it?”

  Robert looked annoyed and said nothing as Seema continued, “Anyway, I just needed to jot down some ideas I had about that line because, in one way, I’m wondering, is it when we love someone that we...that we can see the face of God? So, if we love many different ways and many different people, does that mean God’s face also changes? Or is it saying that only when we love do we get closer to actually facing God and then realize all that God means to us?”

  Seema saw Robert look away. “Oh, don’t worry, Robert, I’m not expecting you to answer, it’s just that it really made me think. Because it could even be this: when we stop loving someone, does God’s face then suddenly vanish from us? It’s quite interesting, don’t you think? One simple line and so many questions! Don’t worry; I’m not a religious fanatic, but don’t you just find it incredible when one thing can have so many meanings? Anyway, forgive me, but if I didn’t write that thought down, I just know my focus would have been off. So, thank you for giving me time, Mr. Sanchez.”

  Robert squinted and felt a bit uneasy. “That’s good—Ah, whatever. Good, you got that down. So, um...can we just start this assessment you have to do?”

  Seema’s blue eyes smiled. “Thanks for being so understanding, Robert.”

  She opened the drawer, pulled out a file and put it on the desk. “Well, Robert, I already have quite a bit of an assessment from Benny and your doctors. But one of the things I need is your assessment of yourself.”

  “Well, that’s not too hard. Look at me!” Robert held his hands up to display himself. “There’s my assessment. I can’t do anything I used to do.”

  Seema looked at Robert and smiled. Today she was wearing a blue patterned scarf that somehow made her look much younger than her forty years. “Yes, Robert, let’s talk about that: what you used to do.”

  Robert started to nervously tug at his eyebrows and shift in his chair as Seema spoke. “So I see here that you are self-employed. What is it you do?”

  “Used to do,” Robert quickly corrected her.

  Seema waited for Robert to continue, but it seemed he had said all he was going to say on the matter. He found it difficult to look at her, so he turned his head to look out the window. Robert could see kids running and playing in the schoolyard behind the centre. Seema turned and looked out the window.

  “I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to have that school outside my office,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, if you want to know...that’s one of the things I used to do. I worked in schools.” Robert turned away from the window and looked at the floor.

  Seema looked back in the file and read aloud, “Leadership and safe school programs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It says here you are—I mean, were a speaker as well?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you spoke about what?”

  “Different things.”

  “And it says you led leadership adventure treks.”

  Still staring at the floor and playing with his eyebrows, Robert nodded.

  “And where did you do these leadership adventure treks?”

  Robert sighed. “Mountains.”

  Seema tried not to comment on anything he said in hopes of encouraging him to continue speaking.

  “And you would lead students on these treks?”

  Robert whispered, “Yeah.”

  “And it says here—it was on one of these student treks that the accident happened?”

  Robert’s head jumped up. “Accident? Is that what you call it?”

  “No, Robert, I’m just reading what is written here.”

  Robert raised his voice. “Well, an accident is usually something you can avoid or you caused. This wasn’t any goddamn accident. No, wait, I take that back...it was exactly that! It’s exactly like that...that thing you were talking about...”

  Seema’s whole body perked up as she felt him opening up. In a soothing voice to encourage more, she asked, “What thing was I talking about, Robert?”

  “Seeing the face of God. What happened to us wasn’t an accident...it was God showing His face to us that day and believe me, when we saw the face of God it sure as hell didn’t have anything to do with love.”

  Robert looked directly at Seema now. Though she could feel the violence of his stare, she didn’t look away for fear it might defuse the energy he now displayed.

  “Okay, so what did it have to do with then?
”

  “Those kids...Those poor kids, they had already gone through so much in their lives. Why the hell did I take them there?”

  “And this was on Mount Ever—”

  “Don’t! Don’t dare say it. Okay? Just...look...Just don’t say it!” Robert then remained quiet.

  Seema silently cursed herself. She knew not to say anything. Just let the volcano erupt! Just let it explode if you want to see what’s inside.

  She watched him stare out at the kids in the schoolyard. She stood up and took a step towards the window.

  “Would you like me to open the window so you can hear them?”

  Robert ignored her question but then it came—the very volcano Seema had anticipated slowly erupted with a forceful quiet intensity. “The school board had organized this whole trek. I was taking three, what they called ‘at risk kids’...teenagers—the ones most think are beyond saving. We weren’t going to climb all the way up, just getting to base camp is quite a feat in itself. Every day, we filmed our journey and we put it on this...this website for all these kids in schools back home to watch—kids around the same age as those kids outside there...‘The Living School Project’ they called it. It was supposed to be...it was supposed to be...”

  Robert paused.

  “It was our last day. We were supposed to leave late that morning. Yeah...right after um, we visited the Khumbu Icefall we were supposed to pack up and go home. The four of us went with three Sherpas. Phi...”

  He paused again and started rubbing his knuckles as he continued, “Every day they were filming to show all the kids back home so they could, you know...follow our story. But that day was different ‘cause—That day we were...what they call a ‘live feed.’ You know—It was amazing...we were up there in the middle of nowhere, eighteen thousand feet up in the air and we had all these little kids in gyms and classrooms actually all watching us live that day.”

  Like a switch inside him had suddenly turned off, Robert stopped. His whole body just froze and he stared off into space. Seema waited for a few moments, walked back and sat down, but Robert still didn’t move. She picked up a pen and opened the file and just as she put the pen to paper, Robert spoke again.

  “How many floors are there in this building?” he asked.

  Seema cocked her head in reaction to the unusual question. “Five, I think. No—wait. There are six if you count the basement.”

  Robert looked at the only framed picture Seema had on her wall. He pointed at the horse that was flying through the clouds. “Imagine this building—and this whole building is up there—up on one of those clouds,” Robert then looked towards the schoolyard, “and that cloud is right above that schoolyard out there. And then out of nowhere, suddenly that building—this six-storey building—just fell off that cloud and came crashing down on top of that schoolyard.”

  Seema’s eyes opened wide in fearful wonder, unsure of what Robert was getting at. He then looked directly at her as he pointed out the window. “And imagine all those kids out there—every single one of them—they are all watching it. They’re all watching this huge, white, six-storey building fall off that cloud. It’s coming so fast...it’s crashing down on them so fast that they don’t have a chance to move.”

  “What do you mean by saying all those kids are watching a building coming down off a cloud?” Seema asked.

  Robert looked at her and shook his head. “Did you not listen? We were filming it and all these students back home—hundreds and hundreds of kids were watching us. For six weeks they had been following us online. They were getting to know who we were. My three leader students spoke to them daily. It was almost like we were talking to our families back home...and these kids who were really getting to know us, care for us, and then in one second—in one split second, they saw that goddamn avalanche come crashing down on us.”

  Seema waited for him to continue, but Robert was silent.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I...I guess I didn’t understand.” Seema paused, hoping Robert might add something more, but he just looked back out the window. A school bell could be heard faintly in the distance and the kids were now forming lines to go back into the school.

  “So all those young kids watching the live feed saw this happen to you?” she asked. Robert barely nodded his head.

  “That must have been quite devastating for them.” She looked at Robert, but he was still staring out the window, watching the children file into the school.

  “And your three leadership stud—”

  Robert quickly cut her off. “—Can we please get this damn assessment over with?”

  4. PRESENT DAY – JENNY’S RESIDENCE

  Three hundred kilometres away, Robert and Monique’s daughter, Jenny, was in her kitchen, warming up her voice for an audition she had that afternoon. A cover band called Simply Yours was looking for a lead singer.

  Dressed in a comfy purple housecoat, Jenny had just finished pouring her coffee and, after blowing the steam away, she took a sip. With her head bouncing from side to side, she loudly belted out a song about exploding like fireworks and showing off what you’re worth.

  Jenny loved to sing. Her dad said it was her passion, the same way mountain climbing was his. Jenny, although two inches taller than her mother’s five-foot-two, was a carbon copy of her mother. She had a full, dark wavy mane of hair and beautiful round pouting lips that could blossom into a crazy happy smile that her father simply adored. He always told her that it was that same crazy happy smile that made him fall in love with her mother.

  Jenny left home at twenty-one. A couple of years earlier, she’d sung in a band called Out on a Ledge. Two months after the band was formed, they had landed on one of those TV talent shows that was searching for the country’s newest talent. Although Out on a Ledge came in second, they quickly became an overnight sensation. Being on a national television program had helped them line up gigs for the entire upcoming year, but it all came to a sudden end two weeks after the TV show finished.

  Jade Sinclair, lead guitarist and the composer of all of the band’s songs, along with Bud Light, the band’s drummer, had driven their car off the road after a drunken celebration at a friend’s house. The car went through a fence and both men fell two hundred metres to their death. The media was cruelly creative in using “Out on a Ledge” and its members’ deaths in their headlines.

  The band was formed during Jenny’s last year of high school and most of the band members had grown up and gone to school together. Bud Light, whose real name was Brian Light, lived two doors from the Sanchez family. Although Bud’s late night drumming had caused much neighbourhood grief and frequent calls to the local police station, he had also endeared himself to the community by raising twenty-three thousand dollars playing his drums for nineteen hours straight on a makeshift stage in the front of his house. It was difficult this time for Bud’s neighbours to have the heart to stop him or call the police, since everyone knew that Bud was trying to raise money to help his sixteen-year-old little brother, Gary, who had just been diagnosed with leukemia. Jenny and some of Bud’s friends used their home phones as a call centre. It was never mentioned in the papers, nor spoken about in the neighbourhood, that the majority of the money was raised between two a.m. and three a.m. but among friends, they joked that Bud’s neighbours had paid him to stop. In reality, the whole street was quite proud of what Bud did and some believed the massive media coverage of Bud’s efforts probably raised the real estate value of houses on Ellington Court. After all, who wouldn’t want to live on that famous street where the drummer kid played to save his little brother, Gary?

  Jenny was supposed to have been in the car the night of the accident, but had decided to leave early and walk home. Though her life was spared, she was devastated by her friends’ deaths. She stopped singing completely and abandoned the idea of pursuing a singing career. Instead, she got a job as a store clerk at a game and puzzle store.

  In many ways, Monique was secretly happy to have her daughter home
, out of the limelight and not a part of the ‘dark’ world of bars and bands anymore. She made sure not to tempt Jenny back into the song world—no longer singing any of those song rhymes in the house and always found reasons not to have any music playing at home. Robert and Monique quietly fought about this.

  “Mon, you can’t hide her passion from her. Jen was born to sing.”

  Monique would respond with a protective instinct, saying, “And sometimes people change, and their passions change.”

  Robert knew his wife’s hidden message was more pointed towards him, for as much as she loved him and tried to show her support of his mountain climbing passion, she hated wondering if he would come home alive. So, secretly, she wished his passion would change as well.

  “Don’t you miss her singing, Mon?”

  “Of course, I do, Bobby, but at what cost?”

  “Cost? Look at her...she’s hiding from the world. We need to do something to help her get back out there.”

  “Give her time. Don’t you like having your daughter home?”

  “Truthfully? Not like this, Monique.”

  “Like what then, Bobby? You want her running around in those dark smoky bars, singing to all those drunk—” Monique stopped herself from saying what she always said about the accident: “If those kids weren’t around all that alcohol...all the time, those boys would still be alive.”

  “Monique, you think this is Jen’s big ambition, selling puzzles?”

  “Well, she seems happy doing that.”

  “Happy? Happy, Mon?” Robert’s voice almost cracked as he questioned his wife.

  “For God’s sake, Robert, it’s safer than where she was headed. You know...you know, Robert, she was supposed to be in that car that night.”

  “But she wasn’t. Monique, she wasn’t! Come on, love, we can never know what unexpected accidents await us when we walk out that door each day.”

  “But it’s a lot safer going to that store everyday than having her coming home in the middle of the night from some bar.”

  “Safer for who? Jenny or you?”

  Monique’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Is that what you want, to have your daughter drunk and driving off some cliff?”