“It’s the diaper man reaction—you can’t blame her, Kid,” Molly said.

I didn’t blame her. I knew what Molly meant. My mom wouldn’t let herself become incapacitated, dependent on Molly or the snowshoer for her most intimate and degrading needs. Little Ray wouldn’t be remembered as sick and pathetic.

As with other enigmatic matters, Mr. Barlow managed to be mysterious and emphatic at the same time. “You know your mother, Adam,” Elliot said. “She can accept that she’s going to die, but not that her ending isn’t in her hands.”

“What does that mean?” Em and I asked the little English teacher.

“Molly knows what I mean,” the snowshoer said. “The end of it is in Ray’s hands, as it should be—that’s all I’m saying.” We could see the snowshoer was crying. Molly wrapped her big arms around the little English teacher, hugging all four feet nine of her.

“It’s in Ray’s hands and in yours, snowshoer,” the trail groomer told her. My mother had gone off to bed, in one of the guest bedrooms.

“I don’t care if we spend the night here, or if you go home without me,” she’d said to Molly, kissing her good night. By mid-September, my mom didn’t look or feel ill, but her energy and appetite had declined, and she continued to hold her lower abdomen and pelvic areas accountable for “still growing.” Over the next four months, we would notice her progressive decline—people who didn’t know about her cancer would ask her if she was okay.

“Little Ray is your rescue job now, Elliot. I’m fine on my own—you know that, don’t you?” Em asked the snowshoer, who was crying.

“I know!” the little English teacher told her, engulfed in Molly’s embrace.

“Here’s what I know,” Grace said to me, but loudly enough for Em and Molly and the snowshoer to hear her. “Em should stay with you and Matthew, when I’m in New York. You both have novels to finish—you can take turns with Matthew. When I’m home, Matthew will have the three of us taking turns with him—he’ll love that,” Grace told us. It’s good to remember these moments, when the people you care the most about behave at their best.