For His First Love, He Let Me Die in an Avalanche

Estelle Norris has loved Dale Kemp for ten years and been married to him for seven. When Grace Langstaff, the woman Dale has always cherished, invites Estelle skiing, an avalanche buries them both in the snow. Dale, a rescuer, reaches them first, but he can carry only one person out. Estelle tells him she is pregnant and begs him not to leave her; he kicks her away, saying Grace has asthma and will die if she stays. He does not know Estelle has a congenital heart disease, and he does not believe her pregnancy is real.

Buried in the snow, Estelle watches Dale carry Grace away. When the second rescue team arrives an hour later, Keith Shepherd and his police dog search for her, but the storm hides her. Keith calls Dale again and again; Dale answers only to sneer that Estelle is playing one of her boring games. He remembers only that she once pushed Jerry down a cliff, a charge she denies.

As Dale tends to Grace's leg and promises never to lose her, Estelle lies frozen in the snowdrift, her heart breaking over the seven years she gave to a man who never believed a word she said.