We passed the hot chocolate back and forth a few times, taking turns sipping.

She shook her head and sighed. “I can’t just take pictures of kids for the rest of my life.”

“No?”

“There has to be a middle ground somewhere. I loved my job for the music magazine, but I was never home. I want to have a family someday, and there’s no way I want to drag my kids around the globe nonstop like my parents did to me. But the last few days have really made me realize how much I also need to fuel my soul.”

I nodded. “I get it. That’s how I found my way to teaching.”

“You know, when I asked you the other day how you got into teaching, you blew me off. You said it was a story for another day.” She bumped shoulders with me. “Well, it’s another day, Mr. Hooker.”

I stared out at the sky for a moment, not sure where to start. Eventually, I closed my eyes and figured it might be easiest to get the worst part of the story over with first. “I met Zoe my first semester in college—not in class, but at a bar where I was playing a gig, though she was a student, too. She was four foot eleven and weighed a hundred pounds, if that. But she walked up to the microphone and just started singing with me—‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ by Grand Funk Railroad.”

I shook my head and pictured her that night. It was the first time in a long time that I’d actually smiled thinking about Zoe. “She had the craziest deep, raspy voice. It sounded like it belonged to a three-hundred-pound, forty-year-old gospel singer. I used to tell her I fell in love with the woman stuck inside the young, pretty girl. She really was an old soul.” I paused. “Anyway, that was the last gig I ever played alone.”

“Zoe and you became a duet?”

I nodded. “She couldn’t sing if she looked out at the audience. So we sang to each other. We were students, so we played mostly local places during the week. But we branched out some on the weekends, and we started to gather a big following. Our senior year, a record label came to see us play and offered us a deal.”

“Oh wow. I had no idea.”

“That’s because we never recorded the album. Zoe and I were set to take a semester off of school. We were scheduled to go to LA to record in January. The night before we left, I had the bright idea to go skiing one last time before we went to the land of sunshine. Zoe was a decent skier, but she didn’t ski double-black-diamond trails like I did. Rather than stick to the regular trails with her, I told her I’d meet her at the bottom because I wanted to do one last run down the doubles. She insisted on coming with me. I didn’t fight her on it hard enough, so she came. Halfway down, she hit an ice patch landing a mogul and went off course.” I took a deep breath and swallowed. “She hit a tree. Broke her neck. She died instantly.”

“Oh my God, Milo.” Maddie reached out and pulled me into a hug. She held me tight. “I’m so sorry.”

I nodded. “Thank you.” After a few minutes, she loosened her grip, and I finished my story. “Anyway, yesterday was the first time I’d skied since that day. And I decided to go into teaching to stay within music, which I loved. But I couldn’t bring myself to sing without Zoe after that.”

“Wow. I can certainly understand why. But, Jesus, Milo. Why didn’t you tell me how monumental a day yesterday was?”

I didn’t know the answer to that question. “I guess I needed it to not be a big deal for me. Making it about you helped me keep my mind off of the reason I’d stopped skiing.”

“And here I am telling you all my problems. What I went through isn’t half as traumatic.”

“We both suffered a loss of someone we loved. Just in different ways.”

Maddie slipped off her glove, then reached over and gave one of my gloves a tug. Once our hands were free, she laced her fingers with mine and squeezed. “I think we were supposed to meet, Milo Hooker. Life brought us together for a reason.” She rested her head against my shoulder and let out a big sigh. “We’re here to help each other find our new paths.”

I nodded. “I think you might be right, sis. I think you really might be right.”• • •After we finished riding, we found a little hotel off of Main Street in downtown Steamboat Springs to stay for the night. Again, we got adjacent rooms.

“I’m starving,” Maddie said as we stood in front of our respective doors and swiped the keys to unlock them. “When we drove through town, I saw a cute place where I’d like to eat.”