I couldn’t make any headway with Grace. I told her about the ghosts, but she was such a disbeliever—she refused to believe a ghost could frighten Matthew. “You damn fiction writers—you can’t distinguish between what you make up and what’s real,” Grace told me. “This will likely be our last trip together, as a family—we know we’re no longer a couple. It won’t kill you to introduce me to Paul Goode, will it?” she asked me. That was when I realized Grace knew Paul Goode would be staying at the Jerome when we would be there—that was why she’d made the reservation for mid-February, irrespective of Matthew’s birthday. “If your mom is at death’s door, Matthew and I will go, or I’ll go alone—I know how to introduce myself to a movie star, if I have to,” Grace said. I understood then. Going to Aspen and staying at the Jerome was all about her meeting Paul Goode, as a publisher—as Em would say, for starters.

“Don’t tell her anything else—Grace doesn’t need your help to put her heels in the air,” Em said.

“Stop with the ghosts—that’s enough to tell her, Kid,” Molly said.

“Maybe now’s not the time to tell Grace that Paul Goode is your father. She might think you’re just making it up—you damn fiction writers,” the little English teacher told me.

Come mid-January, the snowshoer and my mother were trekking up the mountainside above my house before first light; they had come down the mountain and were in the sauna by sunrise, when Molly was making her breakfast. Matthew was ecstatic; our house was full of people he loved who were up before he was. “Grandma and the snowshoer, in the sauna—naked! And Molly gave me one of her pancakes,” Matthew reported, when he climbed into bed with Em and me. We weren’t waking up to the sound of the snowshoer’s teakettle, not now. Those two were up and out of the house before their breakfast; they weren’t even making tea and coffee till they were out of the sauna, often after Molly had left for Bromley.

It was the last week of January when my mother climbed into bed with me, right after I’d gone to bed and Em was still brushing her teeth. My mom had gone to bed hours ago; I’d assumed she was fast asleep. “Shh Don’t say anything—just listen, sweetie,” she whispered in my ear. “Don’t tell Molly or the snowshoer, but you’re not just my one and only—you’re the love of my life!” my mother told me, giggling like a little girl. Then she was gone, back to her own guest bedroom—back to Molly or the snowshoer, I could only guess.