He fell silent and angled away from me. I didn’t blame him for that. What words could have exonerated me from this crushing guilt?
“God, I’m such an idiot,” I blathered, needing to fill the silence between us. Needing him to know how terrible I felt. Softly, I said, “I know how important this was for you.”
No response.
“I’m really sorry,” I whispered.
More silence. I had ruined everything for him. It was a long time before Quattro managed to eke out “It was an accident.” He shoved the backpack away and leaned against a rock across the narrow trail from me. Then he dropped his forehead on his knees.
In the private fantasyland in my head, I had pictured the two of us, the Bonnie and Clyde of World Heritage Sites, breaking and entering into Machu Picchu. I had constructed this whole image of us ducking under the turnstiles, hopping the fence, running into the sanctuary. But Quattro had lost so much more than an adventure; he’d lost his entire purpose in flying thousands of miles and trekking up narrow trails on rocky peaks.
“All I do is screw up, you know that?” he said, his eyes hot. “Why didn’t I just force Dad to do this when we were right up there at the Sun Gate? We just thought we’d have another chance. A better day and more time and fewer people…”
And still, Quattro had allowed me to join him in what was an intensely private moment. I sniffled at that thought.
“This,” I said, gesturing to my throbbing ankle, not that he could see, his head hanging low, “isn’t your fault.”
“I should have known this would fall apart. Everything does.”
This Eeyore attitude reminded me of my father, who had been the farthest thing from a pessimist until his diagnosis. I frowned. “How could you have known that the road would have been washed out like this? You had nothing to do with me falling. I was the idiot who couldn’t stay on my feet, not you. You just saved me from falling over the edge.”
“But why did you have to fall now?” Immediately, he shook his head, frowning. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”
“No, you’re right,” I said, pausing. “The timing sucks.”
Then it hit me, sitting here at the foot of Machu Picchu, which itself was a mystery. No one could tell Dad why he was suffering from a disease that typically struck men half his age. Or why I had to fall now. There was no explanation: It just happened.
After a moment of waffling, I scrambled for the camera in my jacket pocket, hesitating another second before pulling up the panoramic view of Machu Picchu on the morning we’d stepped through the Sun Gate.
“How’d the Incas make this?” I asked, leaning forward to hand him the camera. Huge rocks had been hauled up the mountain, then hand hewn into interlocking rectangles that fit so tightly against each other a knife blade couldn’t slide through the joints. “I mean, these people didn’t even have the wheel! If we can’t answer that, how can we possibly know the real purpose they had for Machu Picchu?” Quattro’s silence had grown icier with my every word, but I forged stubbornly ahead, wanting so badly for him to see the truth. “So maybe there’s a reason why you can’t leave your mom’s ashes here right now, and we just don’t know it yet.”
“You don’t get it,” he said quietly, too quietly.
I gulped, wishing that I could reel back time. I had overstepped. And what did I know anyway?
“You know how my mom died?” he asked, his jaw jutting out.
“You said it was a car accident.”
His snort was derisive and self-punishing. He wrapped his arms around his bent legs, hands grasping each other so tightly his knuckles went white. I wanted to tell him to stop; he was hurting himself, but this time, I knew to be quiet. To listen.
“We had had an argument that morning. Door-slamming, I-hate-you kind of fight. You know, she had texted me. Apologized to me. Apologized. And I responded.” He lifted his head to look me in the eye as though I were the judge and executioner. “You know what I said?”
I shook my head.
“Fuck off.” His voice was pure anguish, but he forced himself to continue: “And she was answering my text when the truck slammed into her. She was telling me she loved me.…”
“Quattro.”
“I’m the reason she died.”
What words could possibly console him? Not any of mine. When I reached out for Quattro, his answer was to stand abruptly. In a voice gone flat, devoid of emotion, he told me, “We should head down if you’re ready.”
Anybody eavesdropping on us would have thought I was a stranger, not the woman he had kissed just minutes ago as if his future depended on me being in it.
I managed a fighting smile, gritted my teeth, and told him, “I’ll hop all the way back to town if I have to.”
“That’s my girl,” he said before his face stiffened at those inadvertent words, regretting them. And me.
Chapter Twenty-Five