He saw that her eyes glistened, that she was almost imperceptibly shaking her head. “There’s no easy answer,” he replied. “But Kate was very focused at the end. I reckon all she thought about was Mattie and me. Day and night. She planned this walkabout. She did a thousand other things. She knew she didn’t have long, and she just . . . just focused on us. Not her mates. Not her relatives. She told me once or twice to make peace with my mum and dad, but that was all.”
A tear fell from Georgia’s lashes. She rubbed her eye, smearing her mascara. “Kate was there for me. When Frank . . . did that, she was there. Every day. I needed her so much . . . and she was there. But I wasn’t there for her. Even though I wanted to be. And that makes me feel empty inside.”
Ian reached into his day pack and handed her a tissue. “You wouldn’t have wanted Holly there,” he said, lowering his voice. “Believe me, it’s better that you didn’t come. Sometimes Mattie has nightmares about the tubes . . . about the way Kate withered. And I reckon that’s one of the reasons Kate kept you away.”
Dabbing at her eyes with the tissue, Georgia shifted her gaze from him. “You know, I e-mailed you once, about wanting to come. And to tell you the truth, it hurt me when you didn’t write back.”
His thumb moved against his palm. “I . . . I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to say.”
“So you said nothing?”
He waited for her eyes to swing back to his. “I wasn’t myself. I’m still not. But I’m sorry. That was bloody rude of me.”
She nodded, sniffing. “How’s Mattie?”
He apologized again, then watched his little girl climb to the top of a boulder and extend her hand to Holly. “I don’t know. This trip—it’s been good, I reckon. A real change of speed. But I wish she’d laugh more. I wish she didn’t feel so different from her peers, so much older.”
Georgia’s cell phone rang, but she silenced it. “Different isn’t always bad, Ian. Kate was different. You think a lot of girls graduated from college and just hopped on a plane and flew to Japan? She didn’t have a job, couldn’t speak Japanese. And yet she went. And she met you there.”
“Kate’s mum hadn’t died.”
“But Mattie has you. And that’s a lot. You think it didn’t hurt Holly that her father was more concerned about raising money for his precious museum than spending time with her? That he and I split up? Of course it hurt her. It really hurt her. But children are resilient. More so than adults. And though Holly still sometimes cries about her father, I’m the one who never dates, who won’t ever trust another man, who’s afraid. Holly moved on a long time ago. Just like Mattie will move on. She’ll learn to be happy again.”
“She shouldn’t have to learn how to be happy.”
“No, she shouldn’t. But she will.”
“But—”
“The days will turn into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years. And Mattie’s pain . . . most of it . . . will go away. Whatever’s left won’t slow her down in life. It won’t define her. Believe me, Ian. I’ve seen enough of Mattie to know that she’ll laugh again.”
Ian wanted to believe her. He wanted to ask her to repeat each and every word, to write her thoughts down so that he might read them every morning. He thanked her, shifting slightly on the bench to watch his little girl, who was hanging upside down at the top of a slide, preparing to descend toward where Holly waited below.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, IAN, MATTIE, GEORGIA, AND Holly walked toward downtown. Holly was their leader, holding Mattie’s hand as they descended a pedestrian pathway running parallel to a series of escalators that carried businesspeople from downtown to their homes in the hills. The escalators didn’t have steps but were flat and steep. Glass and steel canopies protected the moving walkways from the elements, though the sides were open.
The tiled steps next to the escalators were broad and spaced far apart. Her feet following a long-ago established rhythm, Holly took four paces and then stepped down, repeating the process over and over. “Each day, Mattie, the escalators run down the mountain from six to ten in the morning,” Holly