“Johan’s right—you look more like your mom, Adam,” Uncle Martin said.

In the car, on our way home from Durham, the subject of physical resemblance took an abrupt turn.

“You know who the getaway driver really looks like, don’t you?” Uncle Martin suddenly asked Uncle Johan.

“I was just thinking about him!” Uncle Johan exclaimed. “He looks like that little mountaineer—that Aspen local who was a ski guide at Camp Hale!” Johan declared.

“I’ll never forget that kid,” Uncle Martin said. “It was when the Eighty-seventh returned to Camp Hale, in February ’44—the kid was turning eighteen. He couldn’t wait to be a Tenth Mountain Division man.”

“A very little man!” Uncle Johan yelled from the backseat. “He didn’t look old enough to drive, but he sure could ski! Paulino—I remember him. He ended up in the Eighty-fifth, didn’t he? The getaway driver looks like Paulino! He was Italian, wasn’t he?” Johan asked Martin.

“Paulino is a Spanish name—Spanish or Portuguese,” Martin corrected his brother. “In Colorado, I suspect, Paulino is probably a Mexican name.”

“That kid didn’t look Mexican,” Uncle Johan pointed out.

“No, he didn’t,” Uncle Martin agreed, “but around Aspen, I’m guessing, Paulino would be a Mexican name.”

No, the young snow shoveler didn’t look Mexican, I was thinking, but how could I tell them that I might have seen the little mountaineer they were remembering, or that I might have mistaken the short boy with the tall shovel for a ghost? After all, in black and white, hadn’t the small snow shoveler been in the company of ghosts?

“What was Paulino’s last name?” I asked my uncles, but Uncle Martin was explaining to Johan that “Paulino” was the Spanish or Portuguese form of just plain “Paul.” Was his name only a coincidence? I wondered, but Uncle Johan chose this moment to start talking to the snowshoer and me.

“We were just a couple of old volunteers, recruited by the National Ski Patrol to train the mountain troops—the young ones looked like kids to us,” Johan told us from the backseat. “We already had kids of our own—Nora was eight, Henrik six.”

“Paulino shipped with the Eighty-fifth, didn’t he?” Uncle Martin asked his brother.

“I’m just wondering if you remember Paulino’s last name,” I interjected.

“The Eighty-fifth and the Eighty-seventh embarked together, from Hampton Roads in ’45—bound for Naples,” Uncle Johan told his brother, as I’d heard him say (rather wistfully) before. “Paulino shipped with them.”

“What about Paulino’s last name?” I asked again, to no avail.

“I was forty, Johan thirty-eight,” Uncle Martin said, for no reason. I knew when their wartime thoughts veered off; I knew where their conversation was headed. My uncles started talking to each other as if Elliot and I weren’t in the car.