My knee had almost had it but we somehow hobbled fifteen kilometers down the trail through the raging snowstorm. Beyond speech by that point, we simply clung to each other for balance and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. It took us six hours to reach the village. We were rushed to the hospital. Police spoke to us and took Odette’s brothers into custody—for all the good that did. They denied all knowledge of their sister’s vendetta and ended up losing only their jobs, not their liberty.

The next morning, the doctors released me with my leg strapped up, telling me I’d need knee surgery once I got home. Leaving Curtis in the hospital, I rode the lifts back up to the glacier with the Mountain Rescue and watched them winch Heather’s and Dale’s bodies from the crevasse.

As we returned to the Panorama building, the second team of rescuers skied down toward us, dragging a sledge between them. Until that point, I’d held out hope that Brent had somehow survived. That he’d dodged the shots or merely been wounded. That he’d been able to make his way back to the building and shelter there overnight. Then the mound on the sledge came into view. Still and silent. Covered over. And all hope died.

As for Odette, the snowstorm had dumped half a meter of fresh.

Which might or might not explain why her body was nowhere to be found.

—

An hour later, Curtis and I walk to the cable car, hand in hand.

When he asked me to move in with him in London after we left Le Rocher, so we could go through surgery and rehab together, I wasn’t sure. I’m hard enough to live with as a failed ex-athlete; as an injured one I’d be a hundred times worse, and I sensed he’d struggle with being injured as much as I would. In the end, I figured if we could get through that . . .

Anyway, we got through it. Then he asked me to coach teenagers in his freestyle camps.

He puts a protective arm around me as the cable car swings into motion. The cabin is only a quarter full, far quieter than it would be in winter, a mix of pro skiers, snowboarders, and locals. I scan the faces to see if any of our kids are in here, but it’s early still and they went out last night. I’m very into my snowboarding again and I may yet try another backflip.

We sail over stunted trees, wooden lift shacks, and stationary chairlifts. The river is a gushing torrent of opaque blue-gray meltwater. I think of another river—a frozen one that flows too slowly for the eye to see. And the bodies that may or may not flow with it.

No. Don’t think of that.