“I will take you up on that,” John told him. “It’ll mean we’ll have run down Prior Silver and I can finally relax.”

Everett handed identical wrapped gifts to his niece and brother.

Grant motioned for Rachel to go first.

It was a beautiful silver-leaf picture frame holding a black-and-white photograph—taken on a beach featuring a much younger Everett, Allison, and an infant Rachel. They were burying a sleeping Grant up to his neck in the sand. Whatever he was dreaming about, there was a smile on his face.

“I’ve never seen this,” said Rachel. “I certainly don’t remember it.”

Her father laughed. “I do. You were maybe three or four years old. We’d all gone down to Brighton for the day and I woke up from a lovely nap to find myself sputtering sand.” He tapped Rachel’s giggling face staring up from beneath the glass. “You thought it was the funniest thing you’d ever seen.”

“It’s the only picture I can find of the four of us,” explained Everett. “Usually you, me, or Allison were taking a picture of the others with the baby.”

Rachel ran her fingers lovingly over the picture frame. “It’s totally perfect—especially since everyone looks so happy.”

“We were,” recalled Grant.

“Then hopefully you’ll like yours,” said Everett, indicating his unopened gift.

The commander tore off bright Christmas wrapping to reveal a similar frame.

This black-and-white picture was of two young boys—clearly her father and uncle. They were maybe five and seven years old. Both were bundled up in ski clothes and old-style parkas; sheaths of ice glistened behind them.

“Top of the world,” muttered Grant.

“You remember,” said Everett.

“I’m surprised you do.”

“It’s one of my earliest memories.”

John looked at the decades-old photograph. “Explanations, please?”

“Top of the world. It’s what we called the peak of the Matterhorn,” Grant told him.

“Our first Christmas away from England,” added Everett.

“Dad hauled us up as far as you could go in those days and had us pose in front of the glacier,” remembered Grant.

“You can go a whole lot higher now. They’ve got a cable car track that heads up into the mountain; there’s an incredible ice palace carved inside the glacier up there.”

Grant nodded at the picture. “I think our folks sent this out as a New Year’s card right after it was taken.”

“Dad loved it so much that when he finally came into a little money, he bought a small cottage in Zermatt down below,” Everett further explained. “He ended up leaving it to the two of us, but I can never get Austin to go there.”

“I have this thing about heights,” Grant told John.

“Yet I keep telling him the cottage is firmly entrenched on terra firma.”

“You still have to get up there,” Grant lamented.