Em had left our kitchen table and was writhing around on the living-room floor. Em had been doing more pantomime workshops—“both taking them and teaching them,” Nora had said. Em’s tortured writhing around was her way of acting out what fire and brimstone in a burning lake can do to you. It was as meaningful an enactment of the second death in Revelation as I’ve ever seen. I knew Em wrote out many of her pantomime movements before she performed them; this was what Nora meant when she said Em choreographed herself.

Nora had seen Em’s Revelation pantomime before, because Nora just kept talking at the kitchen table. “If you ever feel like letting my mother know you’re on to her, I’ll tell you the Bible note you should give to her. I gave her this one, and she stopped writing Bible notes to me,” Nora told me and the snowshoer. “Check out Hebrews 13:2—it’s a really weird one,” Nora said. Elliot went into his bathroom and brought back the Bible that was forever obscured by the L.L.Bean catalog. This made Em stop dying the second death. Em came back to the kitchen table to listen to the little English teacher read Hebrews 13:2—all of us could appreciate how the very idea of it would drive Aunt Abigail bonkers.

The snowshoer solemnly read the verse twice. “ ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’ ” We were all at a loss for words. No one could imagine Aunt Abigail entertaining strangers, nor could we imagine Nora’s mom believing that she might be missing out on entertaining angels.

In Em’s impersonation of Aunt Abigail, Nora’s mother appeared to be talking on the phone while giving birth. You would think Em had worked as a midwife, just to see how easily (and often) she imitated childbirth. “Your mother, Nora, is more unawares than most mothers,” Nora told us Em had said, in Em’s inimitable way.

The snowshoer could surprise us at times with a sudden seriousness. “Speaking strictly for me, as a man or as a woman,” Mr. Barlow began, “I am not unawares when I have entertained angels.” Nora and Em and I laughed. “You three have always been angels to me,” the little English teacher said, bursting into tears.

Em, sitting beside Elliot, pushed her chair away from the kitchen table and opened her arms to him. The snowshoer sat in Em’s lap. Em hugged him while he cried. Nora and I just held hands under the table. Nora didn’t have the hand strength of Coach Dearborn, but she had a very strong grip for a girl. You remember the emotional moments—when you think you’ve done the right thing, or all that anyone can do.