My therapist, Gena, told me I was suffering from PTSD, a diagnosis I couldn’t wrap my head around; it felt somehow too dramatic, reserved for war veterans and refugees. At first, it was a bad night’s sleep, then it was a bad day on the hill, then it was a shaky month on the hill. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop crying. I began taking Ativan for the panic attacks and Klonopin to sleep, usually after several glasses of wine, sometimes a bottle. My focus was shit, my thoughts were consumed. Late in the season, not long after the verdict came down, I crashed out on a sloppy training run and shattered my tibia. Then the panic attacks got worse. Luke and I broke up. Everything I’d ever consciously lived for, every reason I’d had for getting out of bed in the morning, was gone.

And that’s how Katie Cleary disappeared.

Liz Is Ready to Talk

TO SPARE myself, I ask Cali what she already knows about my sister. She recalls the broad strokes from the news coverage. The bizarre and horrifying story, the contentious, divisive acquittal.

“I remember feeling really bad for your family,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I believed you guys. I couldn’t understand how she could just walk after all that. Obviously I’m not an expert or anything, but I just thought there was no way something wasn’t seriously up with her.”

Since everyone in my old life experienced it in real time, I’ve never actually sat down and told anyone the story from start to finish. Halfway through, sobs come up from my chest, and the familiar signs that I might dissolve into panic present themselves: the coldness in my throat, the tightness in my chest. Cali asks if I’m okay. Do I want to keep going? I don’t need to if I don’t want to. But suddenly I do want to. I need Cali to know. I can’t hold the weight of it for another second. So Cali takes my hand and listens. I tell her about the breakup with Luke, the downfall of my skiing, and lastly, how I wandered into an airport and ended up here, with an alias and an apartment in San Telmo and an affair that’s slowly devolving into a disaster.

“Oh, honey,” she says, “exhale. That’s a lot.”

“I know.” I tense up, realizing too late that perhaps this was too much to lay at the feet of any new friend, and I haven’t even mentioned my pregnancy fear. “I’m sorry to just”—I mime a vomiting motion—“put that all out there.”

“Not at all,” she says. “I’m glad you felt like you could tell me.” She squeezes my hand and smiles. “I sort of can’t believe you’re still walking upright after all that.”

“Some days that’s about all I can do.”