Brent and Heather are sitting close in the restaurant when I carry the cups out. They fall silent as I approach—which tells me exactly what they were talking about. I pull up a chair. Brent rakes his fingers through his hair; Heather drums her perfect nails on the table. It’s so weird to think of the two of them together. She’s my polar opposite. I hope she has the sense not to tell Dale, or Brent will be in real trouble.

We sip our coffees. Brent’s hair is sticking up at all angles from so much raking. I want to rake my fingers through it and straighten it for him, but it’s not mine to rake anymore. He’s not my Brent either—not the guy I remember. The light has gone from his eyes.

I think back to the long, dark months after I quit snowboarding. There was a gaping hole in my life. I felt aimless and lost. Didn’t know who I was anymore. All I knew was I had to plug the hole before the will to live bled out of me. I turned to alcohol at first, but it only made me feel worse the next morning.

My brother dragged me to the gym one night and I slowly clawed my way out of the darkness. Sometimes, when I work my body so hard I’m nearly blacking out, I feel okay about myself. As though if I could only push myself a little harder—run a bit faster or lift another five kilos—I might feel happy again.

Anyway, I get why Brent hit the bottle, and I don’t hold it against him. But God, I miss him. The old Brent.

I turn my thoughts back to our situation. “Can I ask you something, Heather?”

She looks at me over the rim of the mug.

“The day that Saskia disappeared. Why did you go up the mountain?” It’s always struck me as odd that she was up here that day.

“I wanted to watch the competition,” she says, as though it should be obvious.

“Even though Dale wasn’t in it?”

“Yeah. Why not? I’d lost my job, didn’t have anything else to do.”

Brent sips his coffee, saying nothing.

“But the competition was at the half-pipe,” I say. “So why did you go all the way up to the glacier?”

“I saw Brent in the first cable car.” She glances at him. “We got to chatting.”

“What about?”

“How am I supposed to remember? Saskia was in there too, but I didn’t want to talk to her. When we got to the midstation, Brent said he was getting the bubble up to the glacier for a warm-up run, so I went up there with him.”