Page 13 of Born in the Spring

She nods out toward the trees, her eyes angled more to where he crashed—which is a first—and inhales my reassurance through a deep breath, creases in her pinkened cheeks—another first. “Maybe that was the last time I’ll need to hear that.” She gives my hands a light smack, and I muster my biggest smile back, though still small, since sitting here.

“I’ll say it as much as you need.” I return her light smack, and she grabs onto my hand.

“Ooh,” she says through a shaken laugh. “Don’t take away the heat yet. It’s chillier.”

I stack my hands around hers and she rubs them together like she’s building a fire. From living on this mountain, we’re almost used to the cold. But the season’s not the reason for the sudden dip in temperature. Up here’s an entire shift in atmosphere. Up here is colder. Sleepy. Calls for a bit more comfort. So I hold my mom’s hands.

And that’s all the more reason to reopen the area. I truly believe bringing Jude’s Way to life again will bring some warmth back to our winter. I’m already sizzling with a restored energy in my veins at just the thought, the buzz pumping through me to give this back to us. To all of us. To pushforward, because we have to.

And the third first with Mom while sitting here is in her touch, the energy restored inside her as well.

I study her as she lets go of my hands, then clasps hers between her thighs, questions popping up, but she gets hers in before I can choose one.

“Another dream?”

“No.” I sigh out my preparing breath. “Another thought.”

“You wanna revisit reopening the slope,” Mom says with a nodded side glance, and before I can rehash my speech, and even add in some bottom lines I haven’t yet, she swipes it from me and balls it up with three words. “Maybe we should.”

“Maybe we should,” I repeat, my spine shocked straight at her obviously unexpected change of heart. “Maybe we should?”

She closes her eyes, another crease in her cheek, as she affirms, “Maybe we will.”

I hear her clear now, and with her hands still out of my reach, I bump my shoulder into hers to let her know I’ll be here the whole way for support. She bumps me back, and I’m warmed with a higher hope, more for Mom’s healing than anything else.

There’s more speech I planned to give once we got here, and the start of it comes out before I stop and think of it potentially changing her heart back. “Maybe we should tell everyone the truth too.”

Her heart holds to the reopening but not to this. “Well, maybe not.” She pauses slightly aftermaybe, like she actually may be weighing up the idea too, before she presses down onnot. “Tarnishing his memory is what wedon’thave to do.”

“His legacy is solid,” I argue to hers, an assurance in mytone. “His memory won’t matter.”

“Won’t matter,” Mom echoes, with a whipped stare my way, stung by the words themselves, and I double back.

“His memory matters,” I say gently, and she slacks her defense. “I meant in comparison to how he’s known.” Shepherd’s impact on the snowboarding world is long-lasting and all everyone exclusive of us who really knew him remembers as it is now.

“I know what you meant.” She pats my hand, then faces the landscape. “But no.” She stares head-on now toward where he crashed, and I lay off this one, giving a silent thanks for her seeing some light inside a space that’s been so dark. “I wish I could figure out why he’d do something so careless,” she adds, half to herself. “It wasn’t like him. Maybe it’s cursed.” Her tone flares with the thought, a gesture out to the open, and I shake my head, short of laughing her off.

Jude’s Way isn’t cursed. But I’m not telling that to a grieving mother, just pleading for an answer.

I don’t apologize anymore for not stopping him. This isn’t the only time Mom’s said it wasn’t like him.So what made that like him?

She also tried to assure me that Shepherd made his own decision, and she’d tell me the same now. It hasn’t been too long since I finally came to terms with that too.

I could’ve stopped him.

I said those words out loud the first time the day of his funeral, to Elara, and she said them right back to me. We both blamed ourselves. I’ve thought about the possibility, that maybe she was with him before I was. But I was still the last person he saw, so it was on me.

It was onnobody.

It wasn’t even on Shepherd, and I know my mom doesn’t think so, either, even after hearing the words she chose to make me feel better. He was under the influence. Itwasn’thim. It was all just such shit, and that’s why he needed someone—me, when I was there to—

“You’re going there again.” Mom stops my plummeting before I get too far with a sturdy hand on my knee, then a touch to my cheek, her cool fingers fading the shame from my face. “It’s not your place to be.”

I shift in my seat, pulling up the sleeves of my sweater, suddenly feeling too much heat in the cold.

“So, I’m taking it you haven’t seen,” she chimes in the better spirits way she used when shemaybeagreed to reopen the slope.

“Seen?”

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