Even Quattro with his lightning-fast reflexes couldn’t arrest me as I skidded along the muddy asphalt. I slid fast. The sky became a blur of eye-poking branches and cheek-scratching bramble. I knew what waited for me below: a ravine with a straight shot down the steep slope. Drop over the cliff and some jungle plant would probably spear me. Adrenaline spiked as I grasped anything, clawed at everything to stop my flight. My torso torqued one way, my right leg the other. A painful jolt traveled the length of my left leg. Quattro grabbed my shoulders, jerking me to a stop before I sailed feetfirst over the ledge.
Sharp pain. Everywhere.
I was too afraid to open my eyes, too afraid to assess the damage, too afraid to feel the pain.
“You’re okay,” Quattro said reassuringly, his hands gentle on my shoulders now, his legs around me. He must have flung himself downhill to rescue me. More firmly, willing it to be true, he repeated, “You’re okay.”
My eyes dared to crack open. He wasn’t on the other side of the river, abandoning me. He was hovering right over me, here, now.
“What hurts?” he asked, steady gaze fixed on me.
What didn’t? Pain radiated from everywhere. Dull throbbing from landing hard on my tailbone. Sharp pangs at the back of my head from bouncing on the dirt. Knife stabs at my ankle.
“My pride,” I answered, and flushed, hearing myself echo Stesha after her fall.
“Can you stand up?”
“I think so.” But when Quattro placed his hands under my armpits, my ankle still gave out. Even with his arm wrapped around my waist, mine around his shoulders, I couldn’t place much weight on my left leg. I gasped. My eyes watered. He tightened his hold. “My parents are going to kill me.”
“Only after they’re through with me,” Quattro said, “and that might take them a while.”
As lightly as I laughed at that, the movement jarred my body. I winced. “I think I need to rest for a second.”
Leaning on Quattro, I hopped on my right foot, gingerly using my left big toe for balance. After a moment of that nonstarter, Quattro swept me up into his arms, glanced around briefly for a resting spot, and lowered me onto a boulder.
“We need to elevate your ankle,” he said, gently propping my leg on the rock. After dropping his backpack to the ground, Quattro crouched down to unzip it, rummaged inside, and pulled out a first aid kit, then handed me an Advil and a water bottle. As I swallowed the pill, he probed my ankle. As hard as I tried not to flinch, I failed.
“Sorry,” Quattro said, kneeling next to me. He met my eyes. “It’s starting to swell. We need to get a brace on this. It might hurt.”
“I’m fine,” I assured him.
Only then did he unroll an Ace bandage and begin loosening my hiking boot. Quickly, he wrapped my ankle, then replaced the boot. I winced as it slipped over my heel; he grimaced.
“I’m fine,” I told him again.
Without another word, Quattro stood with his back to me, head bowed, back hunched. He could have been mistaken for praying except his arms were crossed over his chest, and his fingers were clenched in punishing grips around his sleeves, as though he were the one in pain. I’d have traded ten times more pain, a hundred times, to not be the one responsible for derailing his plans.
“You should go on,” I told him. “You have to go on. I’ll wait here for you.”
What was I saying? It wasn’t safe for him to set off alone. The trail was even darker up ahead. How was he going to see? Hadn’t I just reminded Quattro earlier about the cardinal rule of hiking: Honor the buddy system. His own father had nearly dwindled away after one loss. What would Christopher do if anything happened to Quattro? What would I do?
“I’m not leaving you,” Quattro said finally, turning back to me. His face was tired, defeated.
I teared up at that. “I’m so sorry.”
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.