I was searching for a note in the pockets of my mother’s ski parka, but she’d left nothing in writing for me—not even a familiar quip. “When the time is right, sweetie,” she might have written, but I couldn’t find anything. I asked Molly to take a look in the snowshoer’s pockets. Surely the little English teacher would have written something, I thought, but the ski patroller said the snowshoer’s pockets were empty.

There was fresh snow all around; nothing was written in the snow. “What are you looking for, Kid?” Molly asked me.

“Writing in the snow—one of them might have written something,” I said.

“Look at them, Kid—they left room for you to sit with them, for the ride down the mountain,” the old patroller told me. “You’re supposed to ride with them, Kid—clear as written in the snow,” Molly said. “You sit between them, so they don’t slump in the chair, and I’ll bring you down—that’s what I’m supposed to do, Kid,” she said.

She went into the lift-station shack. God knows what went on in there; I never knew. Molly said she would make sure the safety gate on the unloading platform was set in the right position. “I’m also checking the stop button,” she called to me. I saw her check the bull wheel for ice. I watched her leaving me, over my right shoulder. I saw the rising sun strike the left side of my mom’s face, but her face was the same grayish white as the hoarfrost on the seats and the safety bar of the chairlift; I put my arm around her shoulders, and the snowshoer’s, but it was hard to look at them.

I could hear Molly’s snowmobile; she didn’t gun it, going downhill. I knew she would go down Twister to Yodeler, to the base of the Blue Ribbon Quad. It wouldn’t take her more than five minutes to get down the mountain. I had only a vague idea of what she had to do at the base of Number Ten. She would climb up the ladder to the motor room and start the drive motor; then I think she had to go into the lift station and turn on the safety system. I sat with the snowshoer and my mother for ten or fifteen minutes; it was a peaceful time.

That chairlift was a four-seater, and we were three small people. I sat close between my mom and Mr. Barlow, holding them tight. To the east, where the sun had risen, was Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, but I wasn’t squinting into the sun. I made myself look at my mother and the snowshoer. It was a wonderful, uninterrupted time. I admired the life they’d made together, and how they’d chosen to end it. I admired Molly for not interfering.