“You’ll be happy you have hips aplenty in your childbearing years,” Nora’s mother had told her. Aunt Abigail had hips aplenty, and boobs galore. But Nora had other plans for her hips—childbearing was not in Nora’s plans.

On skis, my mom had observed, Nora was good at keeping her balance or recovering it, and her weight helped her go fast; at high speed, and not losing her balance, Nora could be out of control and get a long way down the mountain before she crashed. Yes, Nora skied too fast; she was too out of control to turn or stop safely. But doing things safely would never be her style.

My mother said Nora was a good enough skier to know when a crash was coming. When Nora knew she was crashing, she would find a guy and take him down with her. It was how she liked to fall, with a young man under her; it was always a hotshot skier, the same type of dickhead who reminded her of her cousin Henrik.

Nora—on the verge of losing her balance—would suddenly crouch down and tackle a skier she’d found offensive, her strong arms wrapped around his hips. I saw Nora knock guys out of their bindings; I saw her separate skiers from their goggles and gloves. Huge hunks of snow slid down the slope, dislodged by the force of their fall. The guy always landed under Nora, cushioning her fall. The tackled skier would be screaming or gasping in pain—or he would lie unmoving, as if dead.

You could tell when Nora wondered if she’d killed someone; she pulled off her ski hat (later, her helmet) and pressed her ear to the unmoving skier’s cold lips. “I can hear or feel if the fucker’s breathing,” Nora told me. “You can’t fake not breathing, Adam—not for long.”

On skis, Nora liked what she weighed. The house where the North Conway Norwegians lived had a serious-looking scale—the tall kind, one boxers and wrestlers would use. The scale was a hulking presence in the upstairs hall; it was too big for any of the bathrooms. I don’t know if athletic-minded Norwegians do things ritualistically, but Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan did. Every New Year’s Day, we children were weighed in the upstairs hall. The annual weigh-ins were required of us all: the North Conway Norwegians (those girly-girl blondes), Nora, Henrik, and me. We were always weighed in our pajamas. Nora was the heaviest.

Her senior year in prep school, Nora weighed 170 pounds, minus whatever her pajamas weighed. When Henrik was fully grown, he was taller. Henrik would be over six feet tall; Nora was five-ten, and counting. “I’m five-eleven,” was the way Nora put it. And Nora was a very solid 170 pounds; as fast as she skied, when she hit you, she hit you hard.