"It was my fault, really," she said. Her fingers brushed the photograph: a girl in high school uniform, laughing, wind whipping her hair about her face. Sunlight broken into a thousand scintillating shards on the water. "I met your father here, on this bridge. I wanted you to see it before it was gone for good, even if you were too young to remember. I wanted to take pictures..."
Her daughter's hug interrupted her, abruptly fierce. "Chihiro," she said in wonderment, lifting a hand to the girl's hair.
"Don't be sorry, Kaasan," she said. "You don't have to be sorry."
Chihiro understood, afterward, that she was not alone: perhaps every adult held places in their heart to which they could not travel, that may as well never have existed. Perhaps every adult had to trust, that memory and love spoke true.
She revisited her hometown, winter before graduation. The apartment buildings that overran the river were no longer new, or even new-looking; real-estate value had fallen in the last decade. Dingy snow dusted the asphalt.
Water ran deep beneath her feet, swift in the subterranean dark.
She smiled up at the overcast sky. Thinking: I can wait.
I can trust.