Five Years Earlier
The last thing Natasha said to Reuben Fernandez before she disappeared was something she would never have said if she’d known it might become the last thing he ever heard from her.
“I can’t do this with you anymore.”
Rain battered the windows.
Reuben stood on the opposite side of their London flat, his jaw tight.
He had been born and raised in Texas, the son of a Hispanic American family he still called home even after years away. Work had brought him to London.
Natasha had made him stay.
She was British, born and raised in London, and knew the city in a way Reuben suspected he never would.
They had built a life here together.
An imperfect one, perhaps.
But until tonight, he had believed it was a permanent one.
There were arguments that began with something important and arguments that became important only because two people were too angry to stop.
This had been the second kind.
It had started with dinner.
Reuben had cancelled.
Again.
Then he’d arrived nearly three hours late with an apology Natasha had heard too many times.
Work.
A problem.
Something he couldn’t avoid.
There was always something.
“I waited for you.”
“I told you I was sorry.”
“That’s becoming your answer to everything.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“That I matter!”
Reuben went still.
“You know you matter.”
“Do I?”
“Natasha.”
“No. I’m tired of knowing things you never actually show me.”
Lightning flashed outside.
Reuben dragged a hand through his hair.
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then stop.”
She stared at him.
Something inside her snapped.
“Stop?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Of course. You never mean anything.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. What’s not fair is constantly coming second and being expected to smile because apparently I’m supposed to understand.”
“Second to what?”
“Everything!”
Reuben’s expression hardened.
“You’re angry.”
“Brilliant observation.”
“Maybe we should talk tomorrow.”
Natasha laughed bitterly.
“That’s your solution? Tomorrow?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I need some air.”
“It’s pouring.”
“I noticed.”
She grabbed her jacket.
Reuben stepped toward her.
“Natasha.”
“Don’t.”
“Where are you going?”
“Walking.”
“In this?”
“I need to get away from you for five minutes.”
The hurt on his face should have stopped her.
It didn’t.
She opened the door.
“Natasha.”
She looked back.
For one second, neither spoke.
Reuben’s anger was already fading.
So was hers.
If either had crossed the room, perhaps everything would have changed.
Instead Natasha said quietly, “I can’t do this with you anymore.”
Then she left.
She came back forty-three minutes later.
Reuben was still sitting at the kitchen table.
Neither apologized.
Natasha went into the bedroom.
Reuben slept on the sofa.
And the next morning, she left for India.
The Himalayan trek had been planned for months.
It was supposed to be twelve days away from London, work, responsibilities and everything else that had begun to feel too loud.
Reuben had originally been invited.
He couldn’t get the time off.
Another disappointment neither of them had discussed properly.
When Natasha appeared that morning with her backpack, Reuben stood from the sofa.
“So you’re still going?”
“Yes.”
“After last night?”
“Especially after last night.”
His face changed.
Natasha immediately regretted it.
But neither of them seemed capable of saying the right thing anymore.
Reuben looked at the backpack.
“When do you come back?”
“Twelve days.”
He nodded.
“Right.”
She waited.
For what, she wasn’t certain.
An apology.
A request to stay.
Maybe simplyI love you.
Reuben shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Be careful.”
Natasha swallowed.
“I always am.”
She picked up her bag.
At the door, she hesitated.
“Reuben?”
He looked at her.
There were a hundred things she could have said.
Instead she said nothing.
Then she left.
Four days later, Natasha stood beneath the Himalayas.
The world was impossibly large there.
Snow-covered peaks rose against a brilliant sky. Clouds moved through valleys far below the trail, and prayer flags fluttered in the cold mountain wind.
For the first time in months, Natasha felt small in a way that was comforting rather than frightening.
London seemed very far away.
So did the argument.
She had checked her phone more times than she wanted to admit.
Reuben had messaged her.
Landed safely?
She had answered.
Yes.
Later:
How’s the trek?
Beautiful.
Then:
Can we talk when you get back? Properly this time.
Natasha had stared at that message for a long time.
She hadn’t answered.
Not because she didn’t want to.
Because she didn’t know what to say.
By the sixth day, the group had climbed high enough that phone reception became unreliable.
Their guide warned them that the next section would be more isolated.
Weather changed quickly in the mountains.
Stay together.
Do not leave the marked trail.
And if conditions worsened, they would turn back.
Natasha listened.
Everyone did.
That afternoon, clouds rolled across the mountains.
By evening, snow had begun to fall.
Reuben was at work in London when the call came.
He almost didn’t answer.
Unknown international number.
He stared at it for two rings before picking up.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Fernandez?”
“Yes.”
“Are you the emergency contact for Natasha?”
Something inside him went cold.
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“We have a situation.”
Reuben stood.
“What situation?”
“Her trekking group encountered severe weather yesterday.”
Reuben gripped the phone.
“Where’s Natasha?”
Another pause.
Too long.
“She is missing.”
The office disappeared around him.
“What?”
“The group became separated during the storm. Most members were located this morning.”
“Most?”
“Natasha has not been found.”
Reuben couldn’t breathe.
“No.”
“Search teams are already—”
“No. She was with a guide.”
“Yes.”
“Then how did you lose her?”
“Mr. Fernandez—”
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know.”
His knees nearly gave way.
Then he remembered the last real conversation they’d had.
I can’t do this with you anymore.
And his own words.
Then don’t.
By that evening, Reuben was on a flight to India.
The Himalayas looked nothing like Natasha’s photographs.
Not to him.
They were enormous.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
Search parties had already been looking for more than twenty-four hours when he arrived.
Reuben joined them despite being told repeatedly to rest.
They found footprints.
Several belonged to the trekking group.
Then the storm erased most of them.
Dogs were brought in.
Volunteers searched the slopes.
Ravines were checked.
Every hour without Natasha made the possibility no one wanted to say aloud more difficult to ignore.
Three days.
Nothing.
On the fourth morning, a rescuer called Reuben over.
“We found something.”
His heart stopped.
“What?”
“You need to come with me.”
They climbed for nearly an hour.
The trail narrowed as it rose between steep walls of rock.
Eventually, they reached a cave.
The entrance was partly concealed behind stone and snow.
“Here?”
The rescuer nodded.
“We found tracks nearby.”
“Natasha’s?”
“We can’t confirm that.”
Reuben didn’t wait.
The cave was narrow and difficult to access.
He crawled inside.
Twenty metres in, the passage ended.
Solid rock.
“There.”
The rescuer pointed.
Something glittered beside the wall.
Reuben crouched.
His stomach dropped.
A delicate chain.
A small pendant.
He knew it.
He had fastened it around Natasha’s neck himself on her birthday.
He remembered her laughing because it had taken him three attempts to close the tiny clasp.
He remembered kissing the back of her neck afterward.
He remembered her wearing it when she left London.
Reuben picked it up with shaking fingers.
“No.”
The rescuer touched his shoulder.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“Reuben—”
“She was here.”
“Apparently.”
“Then where did she go?”
The man looked toward the stone wall.
There was nowhere.
No second passage.
No crevice large enough for a person.
Nothing.
Reuben stepped closer to the wall.
“She couldn’t have just disappeared.”
The rescuer said nothing.
“People don’t disappear.”
His voice cracked on the final word.
Reuben stared at the necklace lying in his palm.
Then noticed the carving behind where it had been found.
Two circles.
Side by side.
Touching.
He frowned.
The markings were strange.
Weathered.
Ancient.
Almost hidden beneath mineral stains covering the rock.
He moved closer.
There were other carvings too.
Faint lines.
Symbols he couldn’t understand.
But the circles were unmistakable.
Two perfect shapes touching at a single point.
Reuben reached toward them.
“Mr. Fernandez.”
He stopped.
The rescuer was staring toward the entrance.
“We should go. The weather’s turning.”
Reuben looked back at the wall.
For one impossible second, he could have sworn there was something between the circles.
A shimmer.
Blue.
So faint it might have been reflected light.
Then it vanished.
Reuben blinked.
Nothing.
Only stone.
He closed his fingers around Natasha’s necklace.
He didn’t know what the circles meant.
He didn’t know why Natasha had entered the cave.
He didn’t know how a woman could walk into a passage with no other exit and simply cease to exist.
And he didn’t know that somewhere beyond everything he understood, another world existed.
Or that five years later, another woman would find her way to those same mountains.
Another Natasha.
Natasha Thomas.
A woman from New York.
A woman with the same face.
But an entirely different life.
For now, Reuben Fernandez knew only one thing.
Natasha had entered the cave.
And somehow—
she had never come out.
