The next six months, as the CPS investigation into Penny wound its way through the courts, were a miserable but somehow galvanizing time. Until it was all put out in the open, I hadn’t quite recognized the toll that Penny’s illness and the constant worry about Ava had taken on me, how isolating it had been to know so deeply that something was very wrong but not be able to articulate it. Luke was better at supporting me during this time; the fact of the court case gave him a way to wrap his head around what was happening. I pushed down the thought that perhaps he hadn’t entirely believed me before. But then, I hadn’t entirely believed it myself. However alarming it was to have the doctors at Children’s, social workers, and Ava’s court-appointed special advocate involved, it validated what had previously felt like paranoia. Something was wrong, and all these people knew it. Surely, something would be done.

CPS called me frequently as they put their case together and one such phone call made me late to training. I usually loved off-season. After months on the road and the grueling race schedule that ran November through March, it was fun to be back in Park City with all of the other Alpine athletes, training during the day and drinking beers in the evening with the snowboarders and ski jumpers, trading good-natured insults with the freeskiers. But this year was different. As I slipped into the gym as unobtrusively as possible, the phone call with the caseworker replayed in my head, and it felt as though I was looking at my teammates through a telescope, their world unreachable even as I walked among them. I’d been asked to come home for a “family meeting,” something the social worker assigned to the case had conceived of. I would see my sister for the first time in months, albeit from across a courtroom.

My father, we decided, wouldn’t come to the meeting. He would get too angry and it wouldn’t be productive. My mom and I met with the social worker, Quinn, and I nearly gasped when I saw her. She was twenty-three at most with wide blue eyes and a pixie cut, hemp jewelry on her wrists and neck. I knew it was unfair to judge her on sight and that she was probably doing the best she could, but I couldn’t imagine that she was prepared for anything like my sister. Her office—its every surface covered by stacks of file folders—did nothing to assuage my fears. Family court is as desolate a place as you can imagine. The horrible truth is that most people end up there because of deep and systemic issues related to poverty. My sister with her shiny hair and her designer handbag did not look the part.