Saving Elijah

faster clip than I'd ever gone before.
    He was waiting for me as I passed by. "See, I told you! Dinah Rosenberg wins the gold."
    That was when I hit a patch of ice, lost my balance, and went down. I thought I would never stop tumbling down that hill. Worse, for some reason my ski didn't release. Over and over I went, my leg and foot twisting around at unnatural angles, until I finally landed in a heap about twenty feet farther down the slope, my right ski still attached to my boot.
    Then Sam was bending over me. "Dinah, I'm so sorry."
    "It's not your fault, I'm the one who fell." I was trying not to cry, my ankle was throbbing cruelly but I didn't want him to think I was a baby. I started to get up but the pain was unbearable. I groaned.
    He put his hand on my shoulder. "You're not going to move until the ski patrol gets here." While I rocked and groaned, he released the binding on my ski and crossed the pair upright in the snow so no one would plow into us.
    He sat down beside me in the snow. "Maybe I should do penance for this. My mother would be ashamed of me if I didn't, considering it was my fault."
    I looked at him. "Your mother's religious, is she?"
    He slapped his thigh and laughed. "Religious? My mother could teach the Pope a thing or two. Her parents didn't name her Mary for nothing."
    "Well, go ahead. I've never seen anyone do penance before."
    "You're kidding."
    "You're talking about a formal prayer, like with a rosary? I'm afraid rosaries were in short supply in my house. Charlotte had pearls."
    He cocked his eyebrows. "You call your mother Charlotte?"
    "It's a long story."
    "Well, all the same, I'd better get this penance right if you've never heard one before. 'HailMaryfullofgrace...'" He said the words of the prayer faster than I'd ever heard anyone say anything.
    "Sounds like you've said that a few times."
    "A few million. I was always fast, but my brother Aiden, now I once clocked him at two seconds on my Spiderman watch. Look, my penance did do something."
    "What?"
    He smiled. "Got you to stop moaning."
    Eventually the ski patrol put me on a gurney and wrapped me in a blanket to take me to the bottom. Sam skied down alongside this embarrassing little procession, went with me to the hospital, waited with me for the X rays. He kept telling me stories and jokes while we sat in the waiting room, got me laughing until my side hurt more than my ankle. Finally the doctor came over and told me it was just a sprain.
    "Boy, don't I feel stupid," I said.
    "I'm afraid I have the lock on that department," Sam said, making a sheepish face.
    I had to have a cast anyway. And for the next few days I sat immobilized in the lodge or in the cabin feeling sorry for myself even though everyone, particularly Sam, made it a point to spend at least a little time with me, and waited on me hand and foot. Sam brought me a little gold statue he'd found in one of the novelty shops. "Ski Bunny of the Year." Along with that I received a Sam Galligan original, penned in his freewheeling hand: "Roses are red, violets are purple, I'll take my forty lashes now, with a wet nurdle."
    On New Year's Eve we all went out to a bar called The Wobbly Barn. They had a live band that night, very good, very loud, and we were all having a great, raucous time, laughing and talking and dancing. David loved to dance, and I was on crutches, and that left Sam and me sitting alone together whenever David and Julie were dancing. Every time I caught Sam looking at me across the table, I looked away. Every time I looked at him, he did the same.
    Being with Sam made me feel clean again, happy, hopeful—and smitten. I tried to tell myself I was mistaken, it was just the good time, a few drinks, but I knew I was lying to myself. I also knew my friendship with Julie wouldn't survive a second crisis.
    "I'd like to sign your cast, Dinah," he said.
    I lifted up my leg and put it on his knee. "Go ahead, everyone else has." I fished a pen out of my bag.
    He rolled up the sleeves of his sun-faded flannel shirt and started to make a production out of signing, cracking his wrists, his hand poised over the cast. Then he looked up, straight into my eyes, and said, "I can't."
    "Why not?"
    "I'd have to write something no one else could see. It would have to be only for you."
    "I don't think that's a good idea."
    He handed me the pen.
    I couldn't resist asking. "What would you have written, Sammy?" No one else called him Sammy. I started to right then.
    He looked into my