So I reclaimed the mountain too.

I walked its safe trails and looked at its wildflowers and let it become, again, what it had always been to everyone else: enormous, and indifferent, and beautiful, and not, in the end, about Brandon at all.

The mountain had never hated me.

It had simply been the stage a hateful man chose.

And a stage can be walked again, in daylight, with a laughing baby on your chest, until the memory of the worst night loosens its grip and becomes just one thing, among many, that once happened in a very large and beautiful place.

Liam was six months old, and heavier every week, and he rode against my chest in a carrier, gnawing thoughtfully on his own fist and squinting at the enormous bright world.