When the worst thing you can imagine—the thing you’ve been obsessively imagining—happens, it’s worse than the anticipation of it, but not by as much as you’d think. An unspeakable aspect of the worst-case scenario is that it brings with it some relief, because you’re no longer waiting for it.

Because of our estrangement from Penny, we heard what happened from the news like everyone else. The story broke while I was flying home from the two-day trip to Buenos Aires with Blair. By the time we landed, my voice mail was full with messages. When we met Luke at baggage claim, his face was ashen; he’d known for several hours. I know he flew home with me to Idaho to make sure I got there in one piece, but I have no memory of the trip.

The media attention ratcheted up fast, and what began as a local horror story quickly got picked up by the wire services, then by the morning shows and evening news magazines. Soon, my voice mail was filling up so fast I had to change my number. The U.S. Ski Team recommended a crisis PR agent and swiftly distanced themselves from the story with an anodyne statement about being sorry for our loss.

I could tell my sponsors were spooked—the story of a murdered child is too horrific to touch—and it didn’t help that my previous season hadn’t been stellar. I could barely sleep and was having panic attacks.

“Don’t worry,” Tad Duncan said, clapping his hand on my shoulder. “This will all blow over after the trial and you can focus on skiing again.” But the look in his eye as he spoke was one I now recognized: I was bad for his brand too, and his sons’. I was toxic by association.

As the trial drew nearer, as the press became more relentless and my e-mail in-box filled with hate mail, it sunk in just how much there was to lose. No less than everything.

Liz at the End of the World