Some guys thought Nora was a guy. When she wore a ski parka that was long enough to hide her hips, or an oversize sweater—it had to be huge to conceal her breasts—the prominent jut of Nora’s jaw and her broad shoulders gave her a masculine appearance. And on skis—even when she was just walking on skis—Nora could maintain a manly swagger. Not so off skis, when her hips were involved in the process. With her hips in the picture, or her boobs, it was evident to anyone that Nora was a woman.

As for those hotshot skiers lying under her on a ski trail—in particular, those dickheads who’d had their wind knocked out or were concussed—imagine their surprise when they regained consciousness with their quivering lips pressed against Nora’s ear. I’m guessing the questionably erotic confusion of the moment suddenly stood in contrast to Nora’s bristling crew cut, her handsome but hard-looking face—the granite jaw, the tight-lipped smirk that passed for Nora’s cruel smile.

But I’m making too much of the heroic example Nora set for me. Yes, she helped me endure those winter ski trips up north. But Nora’s rebellious antics notwithstanding, what stands out for me are those two weeks every winter when my mother and I were together—in particular, our nights.

“Oh, boy—a sleepover, Adam!” my mom would exclaim, in her little-girl way. “Aren’t you excited?”

Yes, I was—at any age. I always was. My mother made me feel that a sleepover with me was her favorite thing; in retrospect, perhaps it was. I know this from Nora: Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha were ceaselessly disapproving that my mom and I shared a room together during her North Conway visits. For a time, we were given a room with a queen-size bed; to the dismay of my rigidly conventional aunts, my mother and I had sleepovers in the same bed. But that would stop before I became a teenager; when I was eleven or twelve, my aunts persuaded the North Conway Norwegians to give my mom and me a bedroom with two twin-size beds.

“My mother and Martha will even find a way to die appropriately,” was Nora’s response. Indeed, they would.

(I’m a little sensitive to the subject of the deaths of aunts in my novels. Unkind critics have complained how I dispatch, or dispose of, the unlikable aunts in my fiction, but these critics never knew Aunt Abigail or Aunt Martha. Any deus ex machina device would not be too improbable for them.)

Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha interfered with my mom’s and my sleeping arrangements. What business was it of theirs?