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Dedication

For my mom and dad

September 2008

“I WISH WE could have stayed longer,” I told Blair. We were slaphappy from the fourteen-hour trek from Buenos Aires to Salt Lake City. Being on the long flight together had made us like little kids left unsupervised. We were stuck in coach, but fortunately we’d had an entire middle row to ourselves. We drank the complimentary booze and gorged on snacks as though none of it counted so long as we were in the air. We’d just finished a training camp in La Parva and were due for a bit of a break before World Cup season got going in November. If I felt any sense of foreboding leaving South America, it was only because the low-level buzz of it was constant by that point.

The trip had been Blair’s idea; he’d suggested to me and Luke—his brother, my boyfriend—that we see another part of South America before heading back to Park City. Things had been tense between Luke and me, and I sensed Blair thought we all needed a vacation.

“You two can if you want,” Luke had said, as though Blair had been asking his permission. “I need to chill at home before my Red Bull thing.”

“We should,” I’d said to Blair, straining to sound nonchalant about how testy Luke was being. “That would be a blast. What about Buenos Aires?”

I’d had more fun than I’d expected to. I wasn’t often alone with Blair, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed his company. He was much more easygoing than his bullheaded, charismatic brother. For once, I saw this as a mark in his favor rather than something that made him the less exciting one.

“Me too,” Blair said now as the flight attendants announced that we were preparing to land. “We’ll go back sometime.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

I’d been anxious about the long flight, but as we came in to land, I felt a cold thud of dread. I suspected this had more to do with Luke than anything else. I knew we needed to have a serious, State of the Union conversation, and I knew that I’d have to initiate it. It was always me who had to do the emotional heavy lifting.