She nudged him with her shoulder, brushed her hair behind her ear. The diamond on her ring gleamed. “You know, Mama just wanted us to have that same experience.”
Meanwhile, over their side conversation, Stesha finished her mini-lecture: “You can’t walk the Inca Trail without knowing yourself and each other inside out.”
All thoughts of anyone and everything else evaporated the moment I felt Quattro’s gaze land on me as if he wanted to know me inside out, Girl Moratorium or not. What I wanted to know was this: Why had he sworn off dating? Clearly, my Boy Moratorium needed some reinforcement. Flirt now, clean up later, I reminded myself. A flirtation gone bad, and the next couple of days on the Inca Trail could melt down into one awkward disaster. Grace was right. I was bound to bump into him sooner or later on the trail. I stepped to the side of the Gamers, darting out of his sight line.
As Stesha guided everyone forward, Mom walked slightly ahead of Dad, scouting all possible obstacles. She warned him, “There’s a sharp drop here.”
Dad sighed heavily, his frustration obvious. “I can see,” he said before backtracking to a different outcropping of stone. With his arms crossed and hunched shoulders, he couldn’t have been clearer that he wanted to be left alone. Mom wisely joined Stesha and Christopher at the front of our group.
Quattro’s empathetic expression reminded me of how I’d pitied Dom’s little sister when she was lambasted in a public parking lot almost a year ago. This isn’t how my parents usually treat each other, I wanted to tell him. Besides, it wasn’t like his family was all picture perfect either. Over by Stesha, Christopher was obsessively checking his phone. Had he even noticed that Quattro wasn’t walking with him?
I was about to join Mom as she told the others, “I read that this place became a quarry for the Spanish. They pillaged it to make some of the buildings in Cusco.”
“This poor temple,” crooned Grace, and without warning, I stopped midstride, already lifting my camera. My fingertips could feel the impending moment. As I waited, Grace pressed her age-spotted hands on the wall and leaned her forehead against the stones as if this was her private wailing wall, a sacred place to pour out her grief. While Jerusalem was yet one more photo safari that Dad had planned and put off more times than I could count, I would have refused to budge even if aliens and demons rained on us now. Finally, I understood what Dad meant about making a photo, not just taking one. All the thought that went into telling a story. Every ounce of me thrummed with the need to make this photo.
I felt Quattro’s presence near me more than I heard him or saw him. More than anything, I liked how he didn’t distract me the way some boyfriends had, jealous that my photography required my full attention.
Then I tuned everybody out—Quattro, my parents, other tour groups milling around us. I allowed myself to lose all sense of time as I fell under the spell of color and texture and feeling and moment. I waited, waited, waited. At last, Grace tilted her face to the blue-lit sky, her expression beatific.
“Yes,” I breathed as I made my shot. Slowly, I lowered the camera.
“Beautiful,” Quattro said equally softly, his eyes on me.
Chapter Eight
Early the next morning, I woke, excited, before dawn even had a chance to bleach the sky. Today, our trek to Machu Picchu would officially begin, the lifelong dream my parents had spoken about in reverential tones. I turned to check the other double bed, where Mom was miraculously sleeping through Dad’s avalanche snores.
Apparently, the combined effect of altitude and one too many pisco sours last night had knocked Dad out. Even though he’d had so many sleepless nights after his diagnosis—his midnight pacing in his attic office above my bedroom was difficult to miss—I tried waking him, first with a low “Hey, Dad. Dad!” That was followed with an equally useless nudge. He snored loudly. I gave up.
Dad or no Dad, I was heading out for the photo safari we had planned over dinner last night. Quickly, I slipped into the hiking outfit I had laid out the night before, grabbed my camera, and tiptoed out of the hotel room. According to our calculations, we’d have exactly an hour and a half before our group was supposed to meet in the lobby. The grand plan was for me and Dad to photograph the awakening town. But instead of staking out the main plaza, I found myself drawn back toward the cathedral.
I had a pretty good guess where a few women were speed-walking to this early in the morning: the statue of Saint Anthony. As for me, the saint and I were about to have a private chat: Now, I know you meant well and all. And I don’t mean to be ungrateful. However. Could you please retract Quattro and help all these other women instead?