Dad, who resolutely told us all no, he would not get on the ice, has given in. Twirling my mother, admiring her skills with a besotted softness to his eyes until too many of us notice and he glares it into submission. The pair of them are night and day: she’s quite verbose about her affection for him, whereas he photographs his feelings when he can’t give them voice, leaving snapshots of her smile, his wedding ring, the dining room doorway where he notched the height of their kids every year, in places where she’ll discover them and smile, clutching the pictures to her heart.

Athena and Felix are racing side by side as the kids scream, egging them on. Felix plays dirty, jabbing her with an elbow. Athena plays dirtier, closing him in until he topples off the rink’s edge.

“Ragh!” Felix growls, tugging a scarf from around his neck. He’s got another around his waist like a belt. The second he gets rid of it, the wind brings it right back like a boomerang and the fabric attaches itself to him with static cling. I ought to magic up some banana peels as punishment for him leaking pictures of me, but I don’t have the heart. My brother’s clueless and he’s about to start over yet again, another spiral followed by a New and Improved Incarnation of Felix. It won’t stop him from remarrying again in two years, though, promising his undying devotion to someone who won’t keep it.

The magic eventually says goodbye to my family. I watch it leave them one by one—the children complain that they’re cold and hungry. Grandma has three voicemail messages. Grandpa’s missing a game on TV. Dad’s knees are bothering him. Athena and Mom are the last holdouts, the former giving up only after she jumps and comes back down wobbly. Casting left and right to see if anyone witnessed the bumble, she shrugs and exits on stiff legs.

Mom’s on fire. She doesn’t need magic. She does trick after trick, arms extended in smooth lines, skates a blur. Dad, I can’t help but notice, is lingering at the top of the hill where the base of the driveway begins, watching. Whenever she falls, she pushes herself right back up and keeps skating. She waves whenever she gets close to me, but mostly keeps to herself, doing her own thing. I bet they’re both remembering the days when she wanted to be a dancer.

The sun is setting, firecracker orange wrapping around treetops, then their middles, sinking along the ground as if swirling the drain. Twilight marbles the ice, flashing new colors every few seconds, until I wonder if the ice has always been dusty rose or deep heliotrope. The magic rink is a vivid flame for the span of one minute; then the sun slips lower, lower, over to the opposite side of the world to clock in for its other shift, and now the ice is a mirror for starlight. I turn to ask Hall if he’s ready to go back up the mountain, but he says, “One last go-round?”