Imprint

They had plowed the parking lot since dawn, but the snow was already filling it back in.

Michael sat in the car with the engine off, watching flakes spiral through the headlights of passing trucks. The wipers were lifted, frozen midair like hands unsure whether to wave or ward something off. He hadn’t planned to come in winter. For years he’d told himself that if he ever came back, it would be summer—green slopes, chairlifts hanging motionless like abandoned party lights, the mountain reduced to something ordinary and harmless.

But grief had its own calendar. It did not care about plans.

The wooden sign at the entrance to the resort was half-buried, only the top line visible above the drift. He knew the rest of it by heart. He had once loved this place with the uncomplicated devotion of a man who believed joy could be repeated indefinitely.

“I’m just going to look,” he said to the empty passenger seat, as if someone might argue.

The mountain rose beyond the lot, white and immense, its upper half swallowed by cloud. Wind combed the ridges, lifting plumes of snow that streamed sideways like breath in deep cold.

Three years.

Three years since the phone call in the middle of the afternoon, while he was on a ladder cleaning leaves from the gutters. He still remembered the shape of the sky that day—blue, offensively bright. The voice on the other end had been calm, practiced. Words like “accident” and “immediate” and “we did everything.”

His son, Caleb, had been twenty-one. Home from college for a long weekend. He and his friends had driven up before dawn, laughing in the driveway while Michael pretended to be annoyed about the noise.

“Don’t break anything,” he’d called.

Caleb had grinned, goggles pushed up on his hat. “Just records, Dad.”

Michael stepped out of the car. The cold took his breath in a swift, impersonal way. Snow squeaked under his boots as he crossed the lot. The lodge lights glowed amber through wide windows, silhouettes of skiers moving inside like figures in a snow globe.

He hadn’t been back since the day he’d identified the body.

Inside, the air smelled of coffee, wet wool, and that faint metallic tang of ski edges and tuning wax. Laughter burst from a table near the fireplace. A toddler in a red puffy suit waddled past, arms out for balance.

Life, rude and relentless.

He stood just inside the door, unsure what he’d expected. A memorial plaque? A hush? Some visible scar in the air?

A teenage employee behind the counter looked up. “You need a lift ticket, sir?”

Sir.

“No,” Michael said. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone older. “I’m just… visiting.”

The girl nodded, already looking past him to the next customer. Why would she know? Staff turned over every season. To her, this was just another Saturday.

He moved toward the big trail map mounted on the wall. Bright lines crisscrossed the mountain in cheerful colors. Green circles, blue squares, black diamonds.

Caleb had loved the black diamonds. Loved the speed, the edge of control.

Michael’s eyes found the name without meaning to.

Raven’s Drop.

The letters were bold, stylized, dramatic. A steep chute between rock outcroppings, groomed at the top but narrowing into moguls and trees below. He could see it in his mind: Caleb carving the first turn, whooping, the world a rush of white and sky.

The official report had said another skier had fallen ahead, just out of sight over a roll. Caleb had tried to avoid him at speed. A split-second decision, a buried rock, a bad angle. A helmet that could not rewrite physics. Michael reached out and touched the map where the trail curved.

“I told you to stick with your friends,” he murmured.

But Caleb had always skied a little faster than the group. Always chased the next line.

Outside, wind rattled the windows.

He found himself at the rental counter before he consciously decided to move. Rows of boots and helmets lined the walls. The young man behind the counter had a nose ring and a lift-pass lanyard covered in pins.

“Renting today?”

Michael hesitated. He hadn’t skied since that year. He’d sold his gear the following spring, unable to look at it in the garage without feeling like he’d left a loaded weapon lying around.

“Just boots and skis,” he heard himself say. “Easy ones.”

The employee smiled. “We’ll get you set up.”

In the chairlift line, snow fell thick and steady, muting the world. The lift hummed overhead, chairs swinging gently. A group of college kids behind him argued about which run to hit first.

“Raven’s Drop is sick today,” one said. “Powder’s perfect.”

Michael’s stomach clenched.

He wanted to turn around. To hand back the rented skis, get in his car, and drive until the mountain was a rumor in the rearview mirror.

Instead, he shuffled forward.

The chair scooped him up, and suddenly he was rising. The ground slipped away, the lodge shrinking below. Trees, heavy with snow, marched up the slope in silent ranks.

He hadn’t remembered this part—the quiet. The way the world simplified to the creak of the cable and the whisper of wind. Caleb had loved the lift rides, had once told him they were like the deep breath before a dive.

“Best part,” he’d said. “Right before everything drops away.”

At the top, visibility was low. The sky and snow blurred into a single pale void. Signs marked the trail entrances with arrows and symbols.

He started down a green run, legs stiff, movements cautious. The snow was soft, forgiving. His body remembered more than his mind did, the gentle rhythm of turn and glide.

Halfway down, he stopped and stepped to the side. His heart hammered—not from exertion, but from proximity. The mountain was no longer an abstract enemy. It was under his feet, solid and indifferent.

At a junction, a sign pointed left: BLUEBIRD WAY. Right: RAVEN’S DROP.

The black diamond symbol stared back at him.

“You don’t have to,” he said out loud.

A snowboarder slid past, calling to a friend. “Last one down buys lunch!”

They vanished over the roll, laughter trailing behind.

Michael stood there a long time. Snow collected on his shoulders. His breath fogged the air in front of him.

“I’m not here to conquer you,” he said to the trail, to the mountain, to the memory that had calcified inside him. “I’m here because you’re the last place he was alive.”

The entrance to Raven’s Drop was narrower than he remembered. Trees leaned in, branches bowed with snow. The slope tipped away steeply.

He pointed his skis downhill.

The first turns were survival, not style. His thighs burned, his balance wobbled. Moguls rose like frozen waves, and he navigated them slowly, deliberately.

Halfway down, he stopped again, chest heaving. The world was very quiet. Snow fell in fat, patient flakes.

He imagined Caleb here—alive, reckless, joyous. He tried to picture the exact spot, the exact moment. But memory refused to give him the impact, the horror. It gave him instead a flash of Caleb at age ten, face red from cold, yelling, “Did you see that, Dad?” after a tiny jump.

Michael laughed, a short, broken sound that turned into a sob before he could stop it.

“I saw you,” he said into the white air. “I always saw you.”

For three years, he had avoided this place as if it were a crime scene that might accuse him. As if coming back would mean admitting the mountain had won.

But standing there, skis half-buried in powder, he felt something loosen. The mountain had not taken his son out of malice. It had not chosen him. It had simply been what it was: steep, beautiful, dangerous, alive.

Caleb had chosen it. Had loved it.

“I can’t hate what you loved,” Michael whispered.

He pushed off again, slower now, but steadier. Each turn was a conversation between gravity and will. Each moment upright was a small, defiant fact.

At the bottom, the trail widened and gentled. He glided to a stop near the lift maze, legs trembling, face wet with something that was not entirely melted snow.

No lightning bolt struck. No voice boomed from the sky. The mountain did not acknowledge him.

But as he stood there, breath slowing, he realized he was no longer waiting for permission to remember his son without flinching.

He took off his gloves and pressed his bare hand into the snow beside the trail. Cold bit deep, sharp and clean.

“For you,” he said. “For the way you lived.”

A group of kids barreled past, one of them shouting in wild delight. The sound echoed up the slope, bright and unafraid.

Michael pulled his glove back on and turned toward the lift again.

He wasn’t finished yet.