Page 19 of Smoke Season

“I’ve seen the medical bills; some have been twice my friend Mel’s annual salary, even after making battalion chief at our local fire station. They’re laughable ... I mean, I literally laughed, trying to imagine Annie’s parents paying those as a small-business owner and firefighter.”

“Can they file for bankruptcy?” Vivian asked.

“They’d lose the house, I think, so Annie’s dad—my friend Sam—won’t go there.”

That damned Bishop house was Sam’s flag planted in the ground here in Carbon, his promise to his girls that their legacy in this town would be different from his own. Yeah, it was bass-ackward, but try telling Sam that.

“And their insurance plan basically flipped them the bird,” she added.

Vivian nodded. “I know the feeling. It’s why I took a job at the university hospital, even though the hours are horrendous. Better insurance.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Slightly better, anyway.”

“With Annie, if we—her parents, I mean—can’t keep her on the ... what are they?” She searched her brain for the terms and found them. “The ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers, her circulation will continue to worsen.”

“Yes,” Vivian said. She left it at that, but True knew the rest. Heart failure would follow. A perpetually cyanotic state.

It’s why I have to push us so hard,True wanted to tell Vivian.It’s why we’re muscling our way down this river instead of giving you and your child the trip you deserve.

Because she couldn’t, she turned to watch Emmett again, now making his way back to them. When he stumbled over a slippery rock, catching himself with a slender arm, Vivian tensed, but didn’t rise to his aid. “I just hope he can pass, one day,” she said quietly. “He’s desperate to start hormone-replacement therapy, but it took two referrals to find a pediatrician, then a child psychologist, who would approve the paperwork for insurance. And that’s in California. And with me working in the medical field, knowing every angle to pursue. And of course at any time, policies, laws even, could change, couldn’t they?” Vivian took a breath. “I thank God for his genes. I keep promising him I developed late, so he will, too.”

A ticking clock. It was all so unfair.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world, knowing that I could be helpless to ensure my child has the care he needs.”

Vivian’s voice hitched on the last few words; even articulating this fear aloud seemed to snatch the air out of her lungs. True felt her own chest tighten painfully in response as she waited for Vivian to collect herself.

“I remind myself that there are plenty of shorter-statured Asian men,” she said with a bracing smile. “And most don’t have much facialhair.” She offered True a shaky laugh. “But I can tell you: he was such a pretty baby.”

True smiled. “I bet.”

Vivian looked out over the river. “I had him alone, you know. Sperm donor. Back then, in the early aughts, adoption wasn’t an option for those of us in the LGBTQ community. Not that it’s exactly easy now, even with a partner, from what some of my patients say.”

True could confirm. Her friends Alexa and Korey had been enrolled in the foster-to-adopt program for several years. It wasn’t until they moved from Idaho to Massachusetts that they made any progress in the queue for a child to raise as their own.

“Emmett hit every milestone early,” Vivian said. “Sitting up, walking ... now, I keep trying to slow him down. Let him adjust to each step as it comes. Clothes shopping in the boys’ section, like for the rash guard. Haircut at a barbershop. Baby steps. That’s what he calls that.”

Astor came to True’s mind. Only eight years old and already desperate to be taken seriously. To be the superhero in her own story.

“I hope he realizes how heroic he is,” True said. When Vivian smiled self-deprecatingly, True leaned forward in emphasis. “I’m serious. He’s managed what plenty of adults have never figured out, at least the ones I know: how to self-rescue, like you said.”

Vivian’s slight shoulders straightened as she looked from True to Emmett, then back to True again. “You’re right,” she decided. “Thank you for the reminder. I think I needed that.”

True gave the hand resting on the raft tube a brief squeeze—two could play at that game—as Emmett returned to the raft. “Hey bud,” she said, clearing the emotion that had found its way to her throat with a gruff cough. “Find anything cool?”

“Nah. It’s still so smoky,” he observed, waving his hand in the air in front of his face like he might have some luck wafting it away. “I can’t even see the trees anymore.”

He was right: the smoke from the Flatiron Fire had settled into the river canyon so densely, True couldn’t even make out the slopes of the mountains that rose just across the water. Flatiron itself was now completely shrouded, detectable only by the dark-gray, almost black clouds that continually blossomed and dissipated high in the sky.

“Do you think that mountain’s still burning?” Emmett wondered, following True’s line of sight toward the peak.

“Yes,” she said tightly. Her normal flair for entertaining—and, let’s face it, impressing—preteens seemed to have failed her.

“Maybe you should check that radio of yours again,” Vivian suggested. “That woman you keep calling might know something more.”

That woman?True lifted her eyebrows in Vivian’s direction, a warning shot from the bow, before remembering herself. Vivian had no way of knowing who “that woman” was, and certainly wouldn’t have guessed she’d stepped on a landmine by mentioning her. There was no reason her choice of phrasing should burn off the intimacy they’d enjoyed during their lunch break, at any rate.

“Funny story: that’s Annie’s mother, actually. My friend the fire battalion chief?”

Vivian’s expression immediately relaxed, a sight True might have found amusing had she been one of the women True dated and then dropped once the river season got underway. Instead, it sent another jolt of the unsolicited possibility True had been feeling ever since they’d met through her. That jolt was dangerous, so she turned the conversation back to Mel.

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