“Not bad. It’s easier here than it was in Cusco.” I didn’t add that I’d felt like death in Cusco. For the past three months, I’d barely slept, unless I knocked myself out with sleeping pills. In Cusco, even the pills hadn’t worked. The combination of thin Andean air and shallow breathing left my lungs starving for oxygen, and my body’s panicked self-preservation mechanism kicked in every time I lost consciousness. A terrifying jolt of adrenaline would shock me awake, leaving me gasping and bolt upright in bed, as if I’d had a nightmare, though I rarely slept long enough, or deeply enough, for dreams anymore.

“That’s ’cause Cusco is over eleven thousand feet above sea level,” Jesse said. “We started at the top.”

When we arrived in Peru, we’d headed straight to Cusco, the ancient Inca capital, and we’d started hiking the Inca Trail with a group the next day. It had sounded like an exciting plan when Jesse suggested it on the phone. In reality, I’d overestimated my abilities and my resilience. Now that we’d completed the four-day hike, all I could say for the Inca Trail was that it had worn me down to the point where I didn’t care to see another moss-covered ruin again. I was so weary, it would only take the slightest gust of wind to knock me over and down and out for good. I wouldn’t have cared.

“Hey! You payin’ attention to any of this?” Jesse asked suddenly.

“Any of what?”

“That’s what I thought! Here I am, tryin’ to get you up to speed on Inca architecture, and you’re starin’ down there like a big magnet’s pullin’ you in.”

“You should go back to the group. I’m such bad company right now.” Not sleeping had left me dwelling permanently in twilight, and I couldn’t shake myself out of it.

“I’m sorry, Lil. I’m just blabbin’. I know you’re not yourself, for plenty of reasons.” He didn’t mention the obvious one, that my sister’s funeral had taken place in January, three months and two days earlier. Instead, he cleared his throat. “I’m to blame for draggin’ you here. Thought it would be good for us to spend time together, and to travel. Hell, I thought you’d be writin’ stories and I’d be takin’ photos to go with ’em. But I rushed you into this trip.”