Back on the trail, I was aware of my every footstep, where I planted my feet, where I shifted my weight. Every minute, I half-expected a second avalanche of mud and trees, boulders and debris to sweep us away. So I didn’t protest when my parents insisted on taking the rear position, no doubt to guard me with the same eagle-eyed attentiveness I paid to Grace, who was sandwiched safely between Helen and me.
Our first rest break only ratcheted up my anxiety. By the time we reached the porters, Ruben and Hank had gone ahead, scouting the next section of the trail. Before I sat, I made an effort to talk to our porters, stitching together my broken Spanish and hoping my smile would fill in the grammatical gaps: “Gracias para tu ayuda.” Why had I been too embarrassed about sounding stupid to talk to them? Their answering grins and pats on my back communicated their relief that all of us were okay.
Afterward, I peered up the mountain. No sign of Quattro, which was unsurprising. All along, his group had trekked faster than we did, taking side trips and still managing to establish their campsite before us. Every time I thought about Quattro, my heart felt like it was tripping. I hadn’t known how scared I would be to trust my heart to another boy. Or how much it would hurt to be rejected again.
At our next break, Stesha kept casting worried glances at Grace, as though wondering whether she would make it through the next day and a half. From our meager supplies, we divided three PowerBars among all of us for lunch, one sticky bite a person. Improbably, Grace smiled as she considered her puny segment. “Sort of makes you miss the round-the-clock quinoa diet we’ve been on, doesn’t it?”
“Here,” Mom said, holding out her piece to me.
“Mom.” I shook my head and almost didn’t hear her soft request: “Do you mind walking with your dad? He’s all twitchy, like I might slip any second.”
“Don’t say that!” I protested, shivering. “But I suppose now you know how he feels with both of us hovering.”
“Well, it’s making me nervous! I’ll walk with Grace, okay?”
Whatever Grace had said to Helen in the morning must have been encouraging. She lost the forlorn look of the recently widowed, and she didn’t gaze at Hank with na?ve puppy dog adoration anymore. Instead, she scrutinized him when he spoke, as though she were weighing his every word and action against some mental checklist. I got the feeling I needed to do a bit more of that in my own love life.
“Hey, Mom,” I said before I joined Dad as she had begged, “ask Helen to walk with you guys, will you?”
After two days of trudging at Grace’s pace and being weighed down by my heavy backpack, I felt like Dad and I were sprinting when we set off on the trail together. But I knew he wasn’t going at his full race pace. Neither was I. Both of us wanted to play it safe.
“You seem unhappy,” Dad called up to me. Even without looking at him, I could hear the concern in his voice. “Does it have anything to do with a certain boy?”
“Maybe,” I admitted to my surprise.
“I liked how he came to find you.”
“Me, too.”
And that was the problem. The pause in our conversation had less to do with the altitude or the arduous climb and more with processing what both Dad and I had noticed: Quattro’s first instinct was to ensure that I was safe. Just look at Hank and how he’d done in the same crisis: a big, fat selfish F.
I glanced back over my shoulder at Dad, who had his eyes trained on my feet, ready for the slightest hint that I was losing my footing. That’s where I’d learned how to be vigilant for Grace. Dad had always been there for us, always putting us ahead of himself. He hadn’t run to save his own life, but he’d reached back to save ours.
“Dad, you were amazing this morning,” I told my father, wanting so badly for him to see himself clearly.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Are you kidding?” I stopped on a wide stone step to face him. “If you weren’t with us this morning, Mom and I wouldn’t be here.”
“If I weren’t going blind, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.”
“Dad.”
“If I had made more money, we would have visited here earlier.”
What I now knew for a fact was that money, ambition, and big plans mean nothing at all when you’re staring down death. So I said, “You saved us this morning, Dad. You did.”