I slept badly that August night in Vermont. I heard Molly’s voice a couple of times; she sounded like she was arguing with my mother, but my mom said nothing I could hear. Later I heard a clunking sound; it came from the kitchen. Maybe my mom had thrown up again, and Molly was getting her something to drink from the fridge. I got up and went into the kitchen, where I saw my mother. She usually slept in a T-shirt or a tank top and a pair of athletic shorts—maybe sweatpants, in the winter—but she was wearing just a bra and panties. After she’d thrown up, she must have passed out in her underwear.

I could tell I’d startled her, because my mom froze for a second over what she was doing at the kitchen table. I could see I’d caught her loading the twenty-gauge. She quickly closed the lever-action, single-shot shotgun, but I saw the shell she’d slipped into the barrel—the gun was loaded. “I heard a varmint,” my mother said softly. I knew she was hoping Molly hadn’t heard her.

“Ray?” Molly called from the bedroom. My mom just looked at me, cradling the shotgun.

“What are you doing, Ray?” Molly asked, coming into the kitchen.

“Heard a varmint,” my mother said; she was whispering.

“I shoot the varmints—give me the gun, Ray,” the ski patroller said. My mom hesitated. “Zim isn’t your kid—you can’t shoot other people’s children, Ray,” Molly told her.

“If Zim’s mother loved him, she would shoot him. And what’s the matter with Elmira?” my mom asked me. “You said Elmira was Zim’s main mother. Why doesn’t Elmira shoot him, if she loves him?”

“You can’t shoot other people’s kids, Ray,” the snowcat operator repeated. Molly took the twenty-gauge away from her and unloaded it. “You’d make a mess of a varmint if you shot one with a deer slug,” Molly told my mother.

“One shot, just under the patella—you can have a good life with a bad knee, you can still get laid with a limp, and have children, and make friends,” my mom told us. Little Ray didn’t slip away to their bedroom this time; she was clearly pissed off, and left us in a huff.