38. Now
38
NOW
The last day on the trail was an easy walk through valleys and along long slips of lakes. Brooke scrambled down a rocky outcropping to meet the black rocks ringing the shore alongside a steep mountain. They crossed the washed-out path, hopping along the rocks, and she threw her arms out for balance. She heard the shutter snap and turned to glare at Jack over her shoulder. Brooke was met with his black camera blocking out his face, only his wide smile visible beneath. When she flipped him off, the shutter snapped again.
Ruins dotted the countryside as they went up the pass. Water still trickled down in rivulets from the rain the night before. Mud clumped up on her boots, but even with her heavy pack, she felt light.
As they made it over the pass, a wide valley stretched below them with three peaks standing tall and rounded on the far side. Sheep grazed along the path and tiny white flowers bloomed across the land. In the distance, the white houses of civilization dotted the hills, following the thin gray line of the road into Broadford.
The end of the trail.
A weathered wooden sign, gray and splintering, marked the distance they had left: 2.2 km. Jack took her hand and tugged, pulling her against him and wrapping her up in a hug, mountains and the jewel-toned green of the landscape spreading out in a panorama.
“We made it,” he said, his voice heavy with the double meaning and light with hope.
Against all odds, they had.
Brooke felt like a different person on this side of the trail. Forged by wind and rain, despair and courage, hope and love. And she also felt brave and fearless like she had back then. Like she was getting her happy ending after all.
Jack lifted his camera, but instead of turning it to the gray slope of the mountains and the dusty blue of the sky, he turned it around, looping his arm under her pack. “Let’s mark the occasion, aye?”
She slipped into the crook of his shoulder, taking comfort in his solidness, and tilted her smile to the lens.
They’d found their way back.
The gentle path into Broadford was a flat and grassy walk over what used to be a railway line servicing the marble quarries. They crossed through a gate onto the paved street, and back into town.
The sheer commotion and noise of the cars driving past, even in a relatively small town, was startling. It’d been so quiet lately, just the two of them, that even the street traffic felt intrusive.
Jack held his hands above his head and clapped hers like they’d finished a soccer match. “This is kind of anticlimactic.”
“There should’ve been balloons.”
“Och, should’ve commissioned you a trophy,” he said with a smirk.
She shook her head. “Such an oversight.”
A truck rushed by, drowning out her words and stirring up dried leaves, mixing into the air with the smell of diesel.
Maybe she’d pictured a statue marking the end of the trail, or at the very least a welcoming party. Instead, they were met with a crossroads—one way back to Portree and one way forward, over the Skye Bridge to the mainland.
What lay ahead was exhilarating and terrifying—unknown. It was one thing to put her own story into a notebook. Another to take it seriously. To find the time and the courage to turn it into something real. But she wanted it in a way she’d been scared she’d never feel again.
Mhairi’s book needed so much work in a short amount of time and Brooke could feel the anxiety spinning back up inside her. But also this excitement to call Mhairi, to tell her all about the trail and her ideas. To hear that Mhairi was proud of her for taking this chance, for finally understanding the heart of her story.
And after that, Brooke could share new pages with Mhairi like she had in uni, only this time it wouldn’t be for a grade; it would be one step closer to her dream.
“I should check in at home,” Jack said.
“Okay. I’m going to call Mhairi.” Brooke dropped her pack, rummaging for her phone. She turned it on and tapped Mhairi’s contact while Jack meandered into the small park by the side of the road.
The ringing tone trilled and trilled before Mhairi’s loud voice instructed Brooke to leave a message Mhairi probably wouldn’t return. Brooke hung up.
Jack was across the park, his posture rigid, rubbing one shoulder as he talked. His body seemed to curl in on itself, his arm braced tight across his chest, his head bowed, and she was at his side before she realized she’d moved.
He reached for her, his eyes locked on hers like a lifeline as he nodded at whatever the person on the other end of the phone said. “Alright. Bye, Mum. I love you, too.”
“What’s wrong?” Brooke asked when he hung up.
Jack swallowed hard and wet his lips without saying anything. Her stomach rioted, a pinwheel of flurries she was helpless to dim.
“Mhairi’s sick.” He said the last word with a heaviness. A finality.
“How sick?” Brooke’s mind flashed to the last time she’d seen Mhairi, when she’d wondered at the frail set of her shoulders. She shook off the worry. Surely Jack meant a very bad cold. The flu. A completely treatable autoimmune disease. But as Jack’s expression remained stormy, his mouth in a tight line, Brooke’s heartbeat grew louder in her ears.
“Pancreatic cancer.”
The bottom of the world slipped out from beneath Brooke. “No.” Her knees buckled and Jack reached out to steady her, pulled her against his chest.
“It’s aggressive and late-stage,” he said, his breath ruffling the stray hairs by her temple, as he ran his hands up and down her back. “The doctors gave her six months about nine months ago.” His voice was low and soothing but did little to calm the heartache spreading out in waves inside her.
“That was when we started this project.” Brooke’s mind hooked onto the completely inconsequential detail to avoid thinking of the biggest one. Mhairi was sick .
Grief scrunched down around Brooke, suffocating.
Mhairi wasn’t going to be here anymore. She wouldn’t blow into the yellow coffee shop on Buccleuch Street, a colorful butterfly drinking an endless stream of tea and shredding the paper tag on the string.
She wouldn’t regale Brooke with stories of her students or her childhood on Skye. Wouldn’t detail every second of the Fringe, acting out the stand-up comedy routines with animated hand gestures.
They wouldn’t spend sunny days hiking the hills around the city, inventing stories about the locks left by couples on a chain near the summit.
This was so fucking unfair. Tears spilled down Brooke’s cheeks but she didn’t bother wiping them away. They leaked into Jack’s shirt as he stroked her hair.
This shouldn’t happen to anyone, but especially not to Mhairi. Not someone who still had so much to give to the world. God, Mhairi must be so scared, grappling with this all alone. She was strong and independent, but having to face an uncertain future, not relying on the people who loved her most to support her, absolutely destroyed Brooke’s heart. She would’ve taken Mhairi to appointments, brought her dinners, found some way to bring even the slightest ray of happiness to an impossibly dark time.
Jack pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I know it’s a lot to take in.”
Brooke pulled back to look at his face. Where she expected to see grief etched along his eyes was only concern for her and this tendril of suspicion twisted up her spine. “Did your mom tell you all of this on the phone?”
Jack opened and shut his mouth. Rolled his bottom lip inside. “Mhairi told us in March.”
A hollowness opened inside Brooke and she blinked against the shock of it. “You knew?” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
He dragged a hand over his face. “Mhairi asked me not to share. She was going to tell you when we got back—”
Maybe. Or maybe Brooke wasn’t important enough to know. Wasn’t actually in Mhairi’s inner circle.
And apparently not in Jack’s, either.
He’d let her struggle through the trail, through chafed shoulders, burning muscles, blistered feet, freeze-dried food, and terrible sleep. Let her struggle through the physical pain and the fear that she wouldn’t understand the narrative for the memoir, when he’d had so many more answers than she’d had.
Like, why Mhairi had wanted a cowriter instead of writing the memoir herself. Why she’d insisted Brooke and Jack hike together. Why she’d wanted to write this story in the first place. Because Mhairi was running out of time. Trying to capture this life in something that would outlive her. Her legacy .
Brooke hadn’t known how important this project was, how far off the mark she’d been. How much was riding on finishing it.
“You should have told me.” Anger spread out in deep waves through her.
Jack gripped her upper arms but she stepped back. He let his hands drop before shoving them into his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “At first, it seemed like there was no reason to. The hike is only a week and—” He looked desolate, but not as desolate as Brooke felt. “I know you and I have history. And I never wanted to have a secret between us again. I wanted to tell you so we could carry the weight of this together.”
But Jack had deprived her of the chance to share those memories, to find her own peace on this journey, to grieve with him. For all his talk of trusting him and trusting herself, he hadn’t trusted her enough with this, hadn’t wanted to face this together. “But you didn’t.”
“It wasn’t my secret to tell, Brooke.”
She met his dark and somber gaze, saw the pain and hurt reflected there. Her anger seeped from her and left her shaky. As much as she wanted to blame him, to blame anyone, to lash out just to get these too-big feelings out, she knew he was right. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose. “ Mhairi should’ve told me.”
“Aye. But she didn’t want you grieving out here. She wanted you living.” Jack tucked a stand of hair behind Brooke’s ear, his voice soft. “She was going to tell you.”
Brooke swallowed against the thickness in her throat. Ran her palms over his cheeks and jaw, his beard soft under her hands. Tried to calm herself. Tried to believe him. “I get it.”
She tucked against him and Jack exhaled a quick breath before drawing in a new one, releasing it like an ocean wave, his arms tightening around her.
He was hurting, too. Brooke closed her eyes against the fresh surge of grief, this time for him. For all he’d lose.
“I’m sorry you carried that all alone.”
Jack shuddered against her and she pulled back, wiping the tears from his cheeks with her thumbs. “You were saying goodbye to her out there, weren’t you? With the videos and the pictures of tiny flowers?”
“Yes.” He kissed the top of her head. “And the stories. They were for you, but they were for me, too. So I don’t forget. So she lives on in your writing.”
Brooke’s tears came like the rain and she squeezed Jack, pressing her face harder against his chest.
Living in stories would never be enough. Brooke would never be ready to say goodbye to Mhairi, never be ready to watch her walk the path set in front of her.
“And I wanted to give her something. She’s given me so much.”
“Me, too,” Brooke whispered. She needed to finish the memoir. To make it perfect and worthy of Mhairi.
Jack must’ve noticed the dampness seeping into his shirt because he pulled back, cupping her face, wiping tears from her cheeks and kissing her wobbly bottom lip.
They linked their hands together and Brooke kissed each of Jack’s knuckles before pulling his hand in close to her chest.
They stayed clasped together like that, crying until the tears faded to hiccuping breaths.