Penny loved animals. She was one of those girls who obsessed over horses: horse shirts, horse books, horse toys. We didn’t have the land or the money for horses of our own, but my parents paid for Penny to ride at a nearby stable twice a week. At home, we had the usual spate of pets: a dog, a cat, rabbits, and the occasional pet rodent. Penny’s were always getting sick; the rabbit alone ran up vet bills like you wouldn’t believe. But those tiny pets often die one after the other, don’t they? Who hasn’t had a parade of hamsters that marched through their childhood? Poor Penny always chose the sick ones. Mine were robust, like me.

My mom, Deborah, worked several days a week as a guidance counselor at the local junior high school, something she was well suited for with her inexhaustible capacity to listen and her preternatural calm. She was tall with a willowy prettiness that neither Penny nor I had inherited: me taking after my father and Penny after our grandmother: a firecracker of a woman who stood all of five foot one.

Our dad, John, was cheerful and practical. He worked as an accountant and was the most popular guy in the office. He was happy as long as he could ski most days in the winter. He’d bummed around various ski resorts throughout the 1970s before settling in Coeur d’Alene at a time when real estate was cheap as dirt. I might have inherited my love of skiing from him, but I likely got my drive from the grandfather who’d emigrated from Austria and was more or less present at the inception of Alpine skiing. He died when I was ten. I have a framed photo of the three of us at Silver Mountain that sat beside my bed for years.

His wife died shortly before he did, and my memories of her are scant. I know she was religious and made an attempt to get my sister and me into Sunday school. Penny was beloved there—so gentle and receptive—but I didn’t fit in as well.

One afternoon, the dozen or so children gathered in the basement of the Heart of the City Church were given a photo that was meant to represent paradise. It featured a beatific-looking blond woman staring out from the porch of a lovely house as a towheaded toddler pushed a sailboat around a sparkling pond. We were told to first tear the pictures into pieces—paradise lost—then tape them back together—paradise restored!—in an emulation of God’s love. I hadn’t meant to thwart the lesson, I was simply an overzealous kid. When the Sunday school teacher saw my pile of shreds, she was dismayed. But, I pointed out, if I was representing God in this scenario, couldn’t I do anything?

I didn’t last long in Sunday school after that.