The morning we were supposed to go skiing, Cam couldn't find his left glove. Not the pair—just the left one. He'd spent twenty minutes retracing his steps while everyone else waited in the lobby, fully geared up, watching him with varying degrees of patience. Mitchell was checking his phone. Phil was attempting to yodel. Claire was mentally calculating how many hours of daylight we'd wasted.
Jay stood by the window, looking at the mountains, and just shook his head.
"It's in your room," I said without looking up from my book.
"You don't know that," Cam said, but he was already heading back upstairs.
He found it in his room. On his bed. Next to its matching pair.
"How did you—" he started when he came back down.
"You were wearing them when we got back yesterday," I said. "You took them off in the lobby, put them on the side table, then forgot about them because you were too busy talking about cheese."
Cam considered this. "That's a very specific observation."
"It's not really," I said. "You're just predictable."
He grinned. "Fair."
The cable car station was about forty minutes away, nestled at the base of the mountain where the Alps started to get serious about being dramatic. Our rental van was cramped—all of us squeezed into something that had probably been designed for six people who didn't have luggage or opinions about music choices.
The drive itself was mostly quiet, which for our family meant someone was definitely planning something.
It was Phil.
"So I was thinking," he said from the front seat (he'd volunteered to drive, which worried everyone), "what if we did something fun on the way up? Like a game?"
"Please no," Claire said immediately.
"Car games are torture," Alex added without looking up from her book.
"I was thinking," Phil continued, undeterred, "we could each guess how many people would be on the cable car with us."
"That's not a game," Mitchell said. "That's just... guessing."
"Exactly! And whoever's closest wins."
"Wins what?" Haley asked.
Phil hadn't thought that far. "Bragging rights?"
Luke, sitting between me and Manny in the back row, was already on board. "I'm in. I'm guessing thirty-five people."
"Why thirty-five?" Jay asked.
"Because it's random and specific. Makes it more likely I'll be close."
That was actually decent logic.
I guessed forty-two. Cam guessed fifty (Cam always guessed high, like he was trying to manifest abundance). Claire guessed twenty-eight. Mitchell guessed thirty. Manny guessed twenty-three. Haley guessed forty and immediately forgot she'd guessed. Gloria guessed thirty-five, same as Luke, then claimed she'd said it first.
"You didn't," Luke said. "I clearly said it before you."
"No, mijo, I was thinking it before you said it."
"That's not how the game works," Luke pointed out, which was fair, but also meant he was about to lose his first argument of the day.
Jay didn't guess. He just said the cable car would be crowded and that was all the certainty he needed.
When we got to the station, there were actually forty people waiting to board. I'd won by two.
"What does he get?" Cam asked.
"Bragging rights," Phil said.
"I don't want bragging rights," I said. "Can I get a different prize?"
"Like what?"
"You have to stop trying to teach me to yodel."
Phil looked genuinely wounded. "But you're getting better!"
"I'm not yodeling, Phil. That's just me making noises."
The cable car up the mountain was one of those old-fashioned ones—wooden benches, metal framework, windows you could actually see out of without them fogging up or being scratched beyond recognition. Forty people sounds like a lot until you realize how many of them are just quiet tourists trying to take pictures.
We took up most of the back section. Luke immediately pressed his face against the window. Haley was filming for her Instagram (mountains looked better "cinematic," apparently). Alex was reading. Manny was explaining something about Alpine geology to nobody in particular. Phil was pointing out rocks and calling them by made-up names. Claire was doing a headcount to make sure nobody had jumped off the side yet.
Cam was asking Gloria about her favorite mountains, which led to a fifteen-minute conversation about the Andes and whether Swiss mountains were "sad" compared to them.
"They are not sad," Gloria said firmly. "They are different. Mountains have personalities, yes? Swiss mountains are quiet. Respectful. Like they know they are beautiful and don't need to brag."
"Colombian mountains brag?" Mitchell asked.
"Everything in Colombia brags a little," Gloria said. "It is part of the charm."
Jay was just sitting quietly, watching everything. He'd moved to the window seat without asking, and nobody had questioned it. Sometimes Jay just needed to exist next to a beautiful view and not talk about it.
I was reading Pride and Prejudice—still—because apparently Switzerland was the perfect place to experience Elizabeth Bennet's snark in a new light. But I kept getting distracted by the actual view. The mountains were doing that thing where they looked like someone's idea of mountains, not real mountains. Everything was too steep, too perfect, too exactly what you'd expect a mountain to look like.
"Are you going to read that the whole time?" Mitchell asked, sliding into the seat next to me.
"Probably," I said.
"You know there's mountains, right? Outside?"
"I know."
"But you're choosing to read about British people falling in love instead."
"Yes."
He smiled. "Fair. Carry on."
The cable car ride took about twenty minutes. By the time we got to the top, everyone had a different idea about what we should do first. Claire wanted to start with a "moderate walk" to scope out the area. Phil wanted lunch. Cam wanted to just sit and "absorb the energy." Luke wanted to find the highest point and "see all of Switzerland." Haley wanted to find good photo spots. Manny wanted to find the wildlife center if there was one. Jay wanted to sit down.
"We can do all of it," Gloria said, the voice of reason. "We just start with one thing and then move to the next."
"That's not a plan," Claire said. "That's just chaos."
"Maybe we need some chaos," Gloria replied, which immediately made Jay look at her with this expression like he'd married the right person, which, fair.
We compromised on walking to a nearby café first. Even the "outdoorsy" people agreed that sitting for twenty minutes wasn't betraying the mountains.
The café at the top of the mountain was exactly what you'd expect—expensive, had a view that would make you not notice how expensive it was, and served hot chocolate that tasted like someone had somehow bottled Switzerland and turned it into a beverage.
We spread across three tables. Phil immediately started a conversation with a German family about their experience on the cable car. Claire and Mitchell were quietly discussing work emails (which seemed criminal to be thinking about at this altitude, but they couldn't help it). Luke was trying to convince Manny that the mountains could absolutely be haunted, following up on the whole room 305 situation. Manny wasn't buying it.
"Ghosts require infrastructure," Manny said seriously. "Mountains don't have rooms. They're open to the elements. A ghost would just... dissipate."
"What if the ghost is part of the mountain?" Luke asked.
"Then it's not a ghost, it's geology."
I decided not to get involved. Haley and Alex were taking turns stealing bites from each other's desserts. Gloria was telling a long story about a ski trip her cousin once took in Colombia ("which wasn't actually skiing, it was someone falling down a hill, but she kept saying she was skiing"). Jay was drinking coffee like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
"This is nice," Mitchell said to me, out of nowhere.
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
"No cases. No YouTube deadlines. No templates to practice." I thought
"Just family," I agreed and said .
"Just family," he repeated, then paused. "Though Luke's going to drive me insane with the ghost stuff."
"Probably," I said. "But at least he's entertained."
After we'd sat for maybe thirty minutes—longer than anyone had actually planned—we split up. Claire, Phil, and Manny went on the "moderate walk." Cam and Gloria decided to sit a while longer and "meditate on the Alps." Jay went with them, because Jay didn't have to meditate—he just had to exist. Mitchell went to the gift shop to buy postcards (he actually sends those, which is weird but kind of endearing). Luke, Haley, and Alex went to find the "best photo spot," which was Haley's euphemism for "the most Instagrammable location."
I grabbed a table alone and kept reading, occasionally looking up at the mountains like I was supposed to appreciate them properly. They were fine. Beautiful, obviously, but also just mountains—big rocks that had been there for millions of years and would be there for millions more. Humans showing up with cameras and hot chocolate and family drama didn't change much.
By the time everyone reconvened at the bottom cable car station—tired, hungry, slightly sunburned despite the season—it was late afternoon. The sun was starting to think about heading down, turning the snow orange in that way that made every photo look like you'd added a filter that nobody approved of.
Phil had gotten blisters. Claire was already planning their next hike. Manny had collected rocks and was explaining their mineral composition to anyone who would listen (nobody). Cam had taken approximately six hundred photos of flowers. Gloria had taught some other tourists a Spanish word that was definitely not family-friendly (Jay had tried to stop her but gave up). Mitchell had bought more postcards than we could possibly need. Luke had convinced himself the mountain had its own ghosts but they were "nice ghosts" who left people alone. Haley had gotten enough content to last her a week. Alex had finished her book.
Jay looked peaceful, which was the only metric that actually mattered.
On the drive back to the hotel, Phil tried to start the guessing game again, but everyone was too tired. The van was quiet except for Luke asking random questions about mountains and geology. By the time we got back, most people were already half-asleep.
Dinner was room service—pizza that wasn't particularly Swiss but nobody cared. We ate in a weird configuration of people sprawled across two adjacent rooms, watching some Swiss variety show that nobody understood. Gloria translated random lines. Cam kept falling asleep and jolting awake. Claire made notes about tomorrow's plan. Phil told the same story about his blister three times. Jay and I just sat quietly, him with his coffee, me with my book (still not finished with Elizabeth Bennet).
Around ten, people started drifting to their rooms. Mitchell pulled me aside before heading to sleep.
"Good day?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said. "Really good day."
"No drama, no mysteries, no people needing help?"
"Nope."
He smiled. "Those are rare. Enjoy them when they come."
I went back to my room and opened my laptop to check my messages. Fifty-three notifications. Comment requests, livestream questions, a couple of sponsorship offers. All of it could wait.
I closed the laptop and picked up Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth was about to tell Darcy off (again), and honestly, that felt like exactly what I needed right now.
Outside, the Swiss mountains were just existing—quiet, respectful, not bragging about being beautiful. They'd be there tomorrow. They'd be there next week. They didn't care about cable cars or family dramas or YouTube schedules or ghosts or haunted rooms or anything else.
Sometimes that was exactly what you needed to remember as tomorrow would be back to normal