The Family Fortune

Chapter 22 The run down Hazard Hill

I met the group back at Max’s house the next morning. After Lindsay and Heather finished putting on their makeup and after Winnie changed twice, we finally got moving. With Winnie we were six, so I was no longer a single.

Charlie and Winnie skied together, and after the second run we lost them. Winnie was a terrible skier. She had lessons when we were children like I did, but she wasn’t crazy about the cold and never took the trouble to learn.

We stayed on the gentle runs all morning because Lindsay and Heather weren’t up to anything more difficult. I tried to appreciate the lack of challenge, to enjoy the fine weather, the snow, the trees, and the views of the valley.

We all met up again at lunch, and that’s when Basil joined us. He was wearing a ski jacket and jeans. The jeans would get wet, and once wet they’d be frozen S-T-I-F-F.

“Jane,” he said, “you look beautiful.” I was digging into a bowl of chili when he said it, which I doubt is the loveliest of poses. Max appraised Basil, then looked at me as if checking to see if Basil’s vision of me had somehow come to pass. “Don’t you agree, Max? Doesn’t Jane look great? The mountain air is good for her.”

“She always looks good,” Max said.

“She looks much better than when she first came to stay,” Lindsay said.

“I agree,” Winnie said. “You look like a different person.”

I supposed that looking like a different person wasn’t such a bad thing—considering—but this kind of attention made me uncomfortable.

Guy Callow came in through a far door. He banged snow from his boots and surveyed the room. When he caught my eye, he waved and came over. A smile brightened his too-handsome face.

I introduced him to everyone. He seemed to be calculating the couples, to see who belonged to whom. Winnie vaguely remembered him.

Our table was full and we were almost finished with lunch, so Guy didn’t sit down. He just said that he’d probably see us on the slopes and clomped away in his ski boots.

“Handsome,” Winnie said. “Remind me. What happened to him? Miranda never talks about it.”

“He married a Dutch supermodel named Ooh-Lala.”

“So where is she?” Winnie asked.

“Maybe she caught her finger in a dyke,” Basil said. He laughed at his own joke.

“That’s so disgusting,” Lindsay said, but she laughed too.

Max shook his head.

“Oh, Max. You don’t have to be all high and mighty. It was funny,” Lindsay said. “Don’t be so boring.” She kissed him on the cheek.

It was on the first run of the afternoon that it happened. I wondered how all seven us would stay together throughout the afternoon. I could be a single again if I maneuvered it properly, but not on that first run. On that first run, Heather was a single because Basil insisted on taking it with me. Basil and I were the first of the group. As we came off the chairlift, Basil fell and I had to pull him away from the path of skiers before they ran over him.

“You are so good at everything, Jane,” he said. I was beginning to think that being capable wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A good nurse was capable, but was that the kind of efficiency to which I aspired?

“We don’t have to tell anyone I fell,” he said.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Of course you weren’t. Discretion is probably your middle name.”

“It’s Euphemia,” I said.

“What?”

“My middle name.”

“Like the Review?” he asked.

“Like my great-grandmother,” I said.

We looked up and there was Heather standing under a tree.

“Hey, guys,” she said.

“You think she saw me?” Basil whispered. How could she have missed this six-foot collection of arms and legs taking a tumble at the foot of the chairlift?

“I’m sure she didn’t,” I said. Basil seemed satisfied.

The others came off the chairlift in couples. First came Max and Lindsay, then Winnie and Charlie. Winnie’s nose was running. I handed her a tissue. The problem with skiing with so many people is that you spend half your time waiting around in the cold. And while it was a sunny day, December is still a cold month on a mountain.

“I think if no one minds,” Max said, “I’m going to try Hazard Hill. You want to come, Charlie?”

“But it’s a black diamond,” Heather said. “It’s too hard for us.”

“We can meet at the bottom,” Charlie said.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“If she’s going,” Lindsay said, “I’m going too.”

Max put his hand on Lindsay’s arm. “Lind, you can’t make it down an expert slope. Heather’s right. Why not meet us at the bottom?” He stroked her cheek as if trying to placate a little girl.

“I can do anything you can do,” she sang, and before any of us could stop her, she took off.

“Goddammit,” Max called after her. “Lindsay, stop.”

He was frozen in place.

“We’d better go after her,” I said. I pushed at his shoulder and we rushed away with Charlie following behind. Lindsay was wearing a red ski suit, and as I charged on, I focused on that dot of crimson as it receded and eventually disappeared.

We got to Lindsay just in time to see her fly over a large mogul and slam into the mountain. Before she fell, parts of her disappeared into the snow that rose into a wave as she tried to gain control of her skis. Then an arm appeared, a leg. She was a red dot flying into the air. She landed with a bounce and a thud and lay there, a spot of red on the white snow.

She didn’t get up. Max reached her first. He knelt in the snow and touched her head. He was afraid to move her. He kept calling her name, but she was out cold. The fall was so bad I thought it might have killed her, but she was still breathing. Charlie came up behind us.

“Holy mother of God,” he said.

Lindsay was as white as the snow she was lying on.

“Jane, go for the ski patrol,” Max said. “Please. You’re the fastest.”

I took off. I had never skied so fast before. The hut for the ski patrol was at the bottom of the hill and I skied right through the door. I was breathing hard and could barely speak. I didn’t know if my breathlessness was from the speed with which I’d taken the hill or from being scared out of my senses.

“There’s been an accident,” I said.

Chapter 23 The vigil

“It’s my fault,” Max said as I followed him toward the waiting ambulance.

“It is not. Don’t say that.”

“If she wasn’t trying to impress me, she wouldn’t have done it,” he said.

“If she wasn’t spoiled and obstinate, she wouldn’t have done it,” I said.

“Jane, how can you say that? Especially now.”

“Because it’s true. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”