"Who is she?" Ellen asked quietly.
Ray followed her gaze. For a moment his face closed the way a shutter closes—not rude, just complete, a practiced mechanism. Then he exhaled and sat back down, and the blanket settled over both of them again as if nothing had been disturbed.
"Claire," he said. "My wife. She died in seventy-eight. Avalanche above Molas Pass, early season, a slope we both knew and trusted the way you trust a friend until the day you shouldn't. I was on the same mountain. Different chute. I heard it—that sound like a freight train given a throat—and then the radio started filling with calls." He rubbed his thumb along the rim of his mug, finding the chip, worrying it. "We dug for six hours with the rest of the team. Probes, shovels, the dogs later. We never found her that night. The mountain gave her back in the spring thaw, downslope, in a place that looked almost peaceful if you didn't know. I've spent Christmas up here ever since. The town gets too loud with pity. People mean well. Meaning well can feel like weather you can't get out of."