her, no matter that the more time she spent with him, the more she wanted to feel him. “I don’t like the circumstances that brought us together,” she said, her heartbeat quickening. “But I’m glad we’re together. There’s no place I’d rather be right now, no people I’d rather be with.”
“Me too,” Holly said, rising to her knees and moving closer to Mattie.
As Holly reached out for Mattie, Georgia asked herself if she had said too much. Can he sense what I want? Is it awful for me to think about him when Mattie’s so close to tears?
When Ian made no reply, she wondered where his thoughts were wandering. She mused over what he’d said, and the silence that now lingered. Unable to bear such silence, she sat up. “Do you want a fire, Mattie?” she asked. “Like those people down there? Let’s build a fire and tell stories.”
Mattie stood up. Ian moved more slowly, but his eyes found Georgia’s in the darkness, and she thought his gaze might have lingered. Why it lingered, she wasn’t certain, but she didn’t turn from him, and for a moment she felt exposed, as if she were lying naked in a bathtub before him. Something seemed to briefly connect them, to draw them together. Then he turned toward the girls and that something was gone.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, THE FOUR TRAVELERS SAT in the rear of the van, watching the Vietnamese mountains pass. As they neared Dalat, the mountains grew—full of towering evergreens, rivers, waterfalls, and wildlife. The air smelled like pine and sap. The road was empty, the forest unblemished. Georgia, who had explored the mountains outside Seattle, felt as if she was in the Pacific Northwest. She had never seen this side of Vietnam and was glad that they’d decided to travel to Dalat, which had long been a summer destination for wealthy Vietnamese.
They’d stopped twice on the way, and Khan had left crutches with someone he trusted on each occasion. Everyone was saddened by the thought of children needing the crutches. They had met two such children—young boys injured by the same bomb. In a way, the boys were lucky. The bomb had taken only a foot from each. With crutches they would be mobile. They could live their lives. As Khan had explained to them how to use the crutches, Mattie had led Holly into a nearby store, where they pooled their money and bought two fishing poles. The boys could hardly have acted more surprised to receive the gifts.
Now, as Khan headed up the mountains, only three sets of crutches remained in the back of his van. Mattie found it hard to believe that bombs existed in the beautiful forest around them. She had asked Khan where the bombs were, and from time to time he squinted and pointed out craters in the landscape. Some of these were old and overrun with foliage. On her own, Mattie would never have noticed the dimples in the earth, most of which were filled with water and looked like small round ponds. But other craters were obviously of a more recent origin. Khan told her that long ago the area around Dalat had been cleared of such ordnance, but that in the wilderness, countless bombs remained.
Mattie knew that the Vietnamese believed in ghosts, and as she looked into the forest, she wondered if the dead might still inhabit the woods. She wasn’t sure what to think. The mountains were so beautiful and lush. She had never seen so much green, and surely the fields and valleys, streams and waterfalls were places where life flourished. Yet these same places had seen a war, and though Mattie didn’t know much about war, she was certain that dying so suddenly and painfully might trap someone between worlds. Her mother, she knew, had time to plan for her death, to understand it. And her mother hadn’t been afraid. She had told Mattie as much many times, and Mattie had believed her. But dying in a forest with explosions and pain and sadness must have been even harder than what her mother had faced.
Taking out her sketch pad, Mattie outlined mountains and pine trees in black pencil and then filled them in with green. She didn’t draw any ghosts but added footprints to the bottom of her image, as if someone had walked through the woods. Though she was unsure why she had included the footprints, it felt right to put them in her drawing. The forest