Penny’s health troubles had continued to get worse. She’d needed surgery on her back, but it did not get rid of her pain entirely, and worse yet, the surgery had messed up some of the nerves in her bladder, meaning that for a time she had to use a catheter. She’d also been diagnosed with lupus, which caused swelling in her joints, fatigue, and sometimes horrible unsightly rashes. It seemed like such bad luck, and here I’d hardly been sick a day in my life. I was still invincible then. I’d had my share of tumbles into the giant safety nets that lined the race courses, but I’d sustained nothing more serious than some spectacular bruises. Maybe it was this sense of bad luck, of being marked for suffering, that caused Penny to seek out religion.

Though the chasm between my sister’s life and mine was growing ever more vast, she still reminded me of home and I missed her when I was traveling. Penny even came to visit me in Sun Valley once. I remember being so touched that she’d made the effort, I fell all over myself to introduce her to everyone as though she were a visiting dignitary. I showed off the house as though it were my own, showed her the special home gym Tad had installed on the lower floor.

Neither Luke nor I had gotten into Dartmouth, but I’d belatedly started at Arizona State University, which offered a bachelor’s in communication that could be completed online. Luke eschewed the idea altogether. I would study between training sessions, reading my textbooks while the ice bath percolated around my exhausted legs. I had the vague notion that I might someday work as a sports correspondent or a brand rep, but any future that lay beyond skiing wasn’t one I wanted to think much about.

By her junior year of college, Penny had abandoned the idea of medical school and was instead pursuing a combined bachelor’s and master’s program that would put her on the fast track to becoming a physician’s assistant. Despite this intensive course of study, that year she seemed mostly consumed by her studies of Brandon—a hunky, milk-fed white boy from southern Idaho. She couldn’t wait for me to meet him! He wasn’t her boyfriend—at least not yet—but they’d kissed once after a Young Life party.

“Brandon doesn’t drink,” she said proudly, “which is just, like, so refreshing compared to the rest of the boys my age.”