Lesson One

The Mattsson Lodge sits above the base village like it's keeping an eye on everyone: timber and stone and three stories of glass, built by Sixten in the sixties and added onto by every Mattsson since. Staff don't go in the front door. You go in the front door anyway, because the text didn't say otherwise.

A tall woman in her late sixties with iron-gray hair in a bun opens it before you knock. She looks at your boots, then at your face.

"You are the one who fell under her," she says, with a Swedish lilt that turns it into a verdict.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Hm." She steps back. "I'm Berit. Wipe your feet. He's upstairs."

Torvald Mattsson's office is all books and antlers and a window that frames Lantern Chute like a painting. He's standing at the window when you come in, tall and stooped, silver-bearded, in a gray cardigan that looks older than you. He turns, and he looks at you for a long time. Longer than a man looks at an instructor.

You have the strangest feeling that he's checking whether you've changed.

"Sit down," he says.

You sit. You've got a speech ready: you were trying to stop her, the run was closed, you'd do it again. He doesn't let you use it.

"She told me what happened." He lowers himself into the chair behind the desk, slowly, like a man whose chest hurts. "She told me you threw yourself between her and the trees."

"She was going to hit them."

"Yes." Something passes over his face. "She would have."

He opens a drawer, takes out a checkbook, writes, tears, and slides it across the desk. It's for twice what Marv offered you. Eight hundred an hour, all of December, paid up front.

You don't touch it. "Mr. Mattsson, I didn't come here for a raise."

"I know you didn't." He folds his hands. "Get her down that run by Christmas Eve. However you do it. And Ethan..." He pauses, and for a second the courtly old man looks very tired and very frightened. "She mustn't be hurt again."

Again.

You want to ask. You don't. Some doors you leave closed until the person on the other side opens them.

Liv arrives at 9:04. You decide to count it as nine.

She has two lattes this time and holds one out to you without looking at you, which you're fairly sure is the closest thing to an apology she owns. Then she looks around the bunny hill. It's a Sunday, sunny, crowded: families, ski school kids in a snake line, a dozen beginners from a bachelor party in matching onesies.

"No," she says.

"No what?"

"I'm not falling down in front of a bachelor party."

"That's exactly what you're doing."

She pulls out her phone, types something, and two minutes later a voice crackles over the beginner lift's speaker: The Bunny Carpet is closing for a private session. We apologize for the inconvenience. The liftie, a tired-looking woman in a Silver Lantern jacket, starts herding families off the conveyor. A little girl in a pink helmet starts to cry.

You look at Liv.

Liv looks at her phone.

"Reopen it," you say.

"It's my mountain."

"It's their vacation. That kid saved up her whole year for this. That family drove from Kansas. You're not falling in front of them because you're scared, and you're making them leave because you're scared. Reopen it."

Her jaw goes tight. You've seen that look on racers at the start gate. She stares at you, and you stare back, and the little girl in the pink helmet keeps crying.

Liv walks over to the liftie.

"Rocío," she says, and the woman's eyes go wide, because nobody from the lodge has ever called her by name. "I'm sorry. Turn it back on. Is Kaylee still sick?"

"She's... she's better, Miss Mattsson. The antibiotics worked."

"Good." Liv crouches to the little girl in pink. "Hey. It was a mistake. You go first, okay? Show me how it's done."

The kid stops crying. The carpet hums back to life.

You don't say anything. You don't trust your face.

The falling lesson goes like this: you show her how. Knees bent, hands in fists, tuck, roll onto your backside or your forearms, never put out your wrists. You fall forty times in front of her. The bachelor party gives you a round of applause.

Liv watches with her arms crossed.

"Your turn."

She sits down. Carefully, deliberately, like a duchess lowering herself onto a chaise.

"That's not falling," you say. "That's sitting."

"I strategically sat."

"You can't strategically sit at forty miles an hour."

"Watch me."

You don't get a real fall out of her all day. You get a hundred perfect sits. You get her riding twenty feet, locking up, refusing to go down, and skidding to a stop with her chin in the air. But you also get, three times, the corner of her mouth going up when you say something she doesn't expect, and you're starting to count those.

At night the base village plaza fills up: fire pits, string lights, a guy selling cocoa out of a converted snowcat, music drifting from the bar. Paz finds you on a bench with your hands around a cup and your knee aching.

"So," she says, sitting down far too close. "The heiress."

"Don't."

"Dez says you saved her life and she landed on your face."

"Dez is a liar. It was my chest."

"Oh, much better." Paz takes your cocoa and drinks half of it. "Careful, Ethan. Girls like that don't keep instructors. They keep instructors' phone numbers in case their pipes freeze."

"She doesn't have my number."

"She does now," says a voice behind you.

Liv Mattsson is standing on the other side of the fire pit in a long white coat, a cashmere hat and an expression of total serenity. She holds out her hand.

You stare at it.

"Phone," she says. "For scheduling."

Paz makes a noise like a kettle. You give Liv your phone. She types, hands it back, nods to Paz with a look that could chill cocoa, and walks off into the lights.

Under Contacts, a new entry: Liv (do not be late).

At 11:02 p.m. you're in bed with an ice pack on your hip, staring at the ceiling and not thinking about storm-gray eyes, when your phone lights up.

A photo. Lantern Chute at night, under the grooming lights, a long white stripe of untouched corduroy between the pines.

And under it, three dots, typing.