And then there is her fear. What she’d felt must have been a fraction of what real photojournalists must feel, and yet never could she have pulled out a camera—even long after the man had gone into his house, even after the door had safely shut. Somehow she thought she’d rise to whatever occasion occurred, the drive to make a difference lifting her arms, focusing her lens, calming her heart. Now she’s thinking of her favorite photographers and what they’ve gone through, and the feeling of being slight in their shadows is overwhelming. Nick Ut and his Pulitzer Prize photo: the napalm attack and the naked girl running. Ut said that the moment he pressed the button, he’d known the photo would stop the war. And her idols, Catherine Leroy and Dickey Chapelle, female photographers who wore fatigues and trudged through rice paddies right alongside troops, who crouched beside men in combat not only to capture the human side of war but to prove themselves in the face of military and male resistance. Sexy rebels, articles painted them as, even though these women had been captured, had been jailed, had taken risks right alongside the men, and—in the case of Dickey Chapelle, who’d covered seven wars—had died right alongside the men. It is not a woman’s place, she once said about a war zone. There’s no question about it. There’s only one other species on Earth for whom a war zone is no place, and that’s men. Never did Olivia want to work the front lines of any war, but she thought she’d take photos that mattered. She thought that if in the right place at the right time, she’d seize the moment, but this is now in question.
Mountains rise craggy and broken before them, everything smothered in green, fields punctuated with patches of yellow mustard flowers. Putting her head against the window, she closes her eyes, letting the vibration of the road sift within her, edging out thought.
“The Grand Canyon,” Delan says after a while. “You gotta look.”
Now, on all sides of the car are massive rock walls, a former river’s carve through stone and time. Striated layers packed with history. Some spots are marked with what looks like spills of dried oil, while other places gleam from seeping water. Where it can, grass grows like velvet, plush and forgiving.
“You’re right,” she says. “It is like the Grand Canyon.”
“I keep hearing surprise in your voice. Makes me think you doubted me.”
A small smile. “I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon. You shouldn’t take my word.”
They fall to silence, the river below them raging white. When they emerge in a clearing, violet flowers grow alongside the road beside fat, spiked pods. “Thistles,” he says.
Land spreads wider, lazy in fields, though still the mountains brace all sides. Without the shadows from the peaks, wildflowers relish in access to the sun, boasting from the green in purples, reds, and yellows, an impression that strikes her like music. They pass a tree, brilliant in white blooms. “And that?”
“Almond. There, a hawthorn.”
“You can’t put me into something like that. I didn’t know; I didn’t have a say. I get that I don’t know the language and decisions are split second—”
“Stop. Please—it’s done.” He faces his view, a small hill with a fig tree that leans crooked in the midst, leaves wilted in the sun like broken hands.
“It’s not done. You don’t do that.”
“There used to be lions here. They’re extinct now. Lions and tigers and bears.”
“I’m not over it. You can’t do that.”
“Oh my?” He flashes her a smile—an offer of charm she refuses to take. “Okay, okay. I hear you.”
Another pass through mountains, the river below fed and angry, roiling and muddy. The rain was recent and the streets still dark with water. Minutes pass. Now and then, she catches sight of storm clouds that appear on the move and in a hurry, and every so often their car swerves to avoid hazards in the road, rocks and spills of dirt.
When they emerge through a vee in the mountains, the sky stretches open. Half pigeon gray and white, the other half faded blue. Below them is a valley in new-growth green, surrounded by mountains that rise gradually in some places like legs stirring under bedsheets, while elsewhere they jut up sharply, all cliff face and drops, varied-hued striations packed one on top of the other, a geologist’s dream. Splotches of grass give off an aura, a feeling from the mountain. Ancient. Wise. The whole land feels old and tested and solemn. The sight is a salve on her anger and worry, and for a moment she forgets everything but that she knows nothing and that these mountains are in part an answer. Beside her, Delan grasps the door, and in the white press of his fingers and the way he sits forward, she knows—even without a map or signs in a language she can read—that this is where his hometown is. Because he’s braced. Excited and yet nervous. Sitting forward, he’s ready for the approach of a world left behind, and with this, she understands that place can build or break a heart just like a person.
Wildflowers dot the field. Purple and white irises. Pink, white, red, and purple anemones. Long-legged scarlet poppies. It’s stunning and almost surreal.
Her father should be here. Though he himself couldn’t grow a cactus, his multiple attempts at gardening left him awed and with an appreciation that never faded. A slight obsession, really, with what he couldn’t have. Research for his writing, he liked to claim, as he did with all the subjects he threw himself into: gardening, sailing, Spain and Portugal, locomotives, South America. His studies took him far and deep while he himself stayed anchored to his island and his day job—in part because he’d had to raise her. Gardens, though, those he could experience in his own limited
