Page 57 of Smoke Season

No longer would it provide them with even inadequate shelter from the smoke. He looked automatically at his watch. 15:40. He hadn’t been a firefighter’s spouse for nothing: Level 3 meant he had thirtyminutes, tops. Sure, he’d been Level 2 ready for two days now, but actually mobilizing was another thing, requiring a shift of mental and physical gears that wouldn’t be easy with two small kids. Hell, he could barely manage the task on the average school morning. He calculated what needed doing in one part of his brain while counting minutes on one hand. He could have the girls ready by 15:50, if he hustled. He’d want the car loaded by 1600, giving him five minutes to double-check they had everything and another five for a buffer.

Which he’d need, because already Astor was upon him, worry pitching her face. She pointed to the radio. “That means we have to go, right, Dad? Do we have to go?”

Her voice quavered, and behind her, Annie cried softly, her hands clamped over her ears.

“Make that noise stop, Daddy.”

God, if only he could.You can do this,he told himself firmly.Stay calm, work through it, and just get it done.

He turned down the volume on the radio, scooped up Annie under her armpits, and deposited her on the couch. Trusting the TV remote control into Astor’s hands, he said, “Find something for her.” She opened her mouth to protest, and he silenced her with a rare “Stop!” He sucked in a breath. “Find something for her, then come find me. You can help.”

He consulted the handwritten list on the Post-it note he’d already stuck on their primary go bag, a rare thankfulness for their complicated custody schedule rushing through him. Handing Astor and Annie off every weekdidkeep them organized. He and Mel always kept a written record of Annie’s most essential medications, just to make sure nothing fell through the cracks.

God, Mel. He wasted precious seconds peering out the window again, fear for her churning in his gut. Where was she? Whom was she with? Lewis? He was good ... that made Sam feel the tiniest bit better. But what if she was with the rookie teens? A volunteer? That assholeDoug White, who couldn’t stand her? The fear in Sam swelled, lurching him forward again.Astor. Annie.

The former was back at his side, and he tasked her with piling ice into the cooler, which sat by the Goal Zero by the door. Meanwhile he found the backup heart monitor in the top cabinet over the dishwasher, and even though Sam tried his best to work methodically and calmly, he pinched his finger on the stupid plastic child lock on the cabinet door as he reached for it too quickly. Next, he fished in their kitchen fridge for the meds that had to remain cold until the last minute, then scooped up the emergency vials of morphine, which he’d stashed out of reach in the cupboard. The hour, unfortunately, was upon them.

As Astor dripped water all over and Annie continued to cry and cough from the couch, her “Ingrid blankie” wrapped around her like a tortilla, Sam reached for the overdue and outdated stack of insurance paperwork and medical bills next, then hesitated. What exactly happened next if the entire pile burned to ash? He kind of wanted to find out.

What else? What else? Besides the scrapbooks and framed photos that already sat by the door with Annie’s go bag, was there anything else he couldn’t live without? What about all the tools he’d inherited from his old man? They were worth a ton, which was more than he could say for Mark Bishop himself. What about his fly-fishing gear or his bow? It was time to make those final decisions about what came with them on the ride down Highline and what he could be prepared to lose forever.

Everything, as it turned out. Sam took full stock, from the comfortably cluttered living room with its windows that still awaited curtains to the exposed drywall of the half-finished addition he’d insisted on building as a one-day sunroom. His eye lingered on the entryway through which he’d ushered first Mel, then both Astor and Annie from Carbon General Hospital as newborns—well, Astor as a newborn, Annie as a three-month-old graduate of the NICU—and Sam knew with a sense of certainty that had eluded him his entire adulthood that he was prepared to lose everything if only he could keep his girls safe. It was so obviousto him now. His family made Sam the man he was, just as it had made Mark Bishop the man he wasn’t, not a house. Not even this house.

Thinking of family shifted his thoughts back to Claude. He lacked a radio, so Sam needed to let him know about the evac order, too, a task he hadn’t factored into his time frame.

“Astor?” he called, and she was right there, right away, her face pink, color high on her cheeks from her exertion in the increasing smoke.Eight going on thirty-eight... another of True’s quips, and she wasn’t wrong, as sorry as Sam was for it.

“I need to go talk to Claude again,” he told her.

“Leaving me alone?” Her lips quivered in a rare show of childlike vulnerability, which only made Sam feel worse.

“I’ll be right back, I promise. Everything will be fine.”

Because this had to be true. It had to be.

He couldn’t tell if Astor believed it. She was still watching him carefully as he took a deep breath before opening the door—the smoke was worse than ever—then ran up the driveway at as fast a jog as he dared, one hand over his mouth. Breathing in this air was dangerous for everyone now, respiratory compromise or no.

Crossing the newly mowed field, he kept his eyes on his feet; he could see the uneven terrain under the Muck boots he’d tossed on, for lack of a more readily available choice by the door, but if he glanced up, the smoke had already obscured his usual view of Buck Peak to the north and looming, imposing Mt. Shasta, situated behind Flatiron. He could only make out the shape of the latter because the fire cast a glow that burned through the dark, choking haze.

Mel is somewhere out in that haze.He knew he had to stop fixating on this fact, but he couldn’t shake it. She should be here. They were a family, and Mel walking out the door and Sam failing to bring her back didn’t change that. None of that mattered right now.

This thought carried him to Claude’s door, and he pounded on it, relaying his evacuation message in a coughing fit. “Just loading up, andthen I’ll be at your door with my truck,” Claude called back. “We can fit more into it.”

Sam didn’t take the time to do more than acknowledge this before sprinting back across the field, tripping once in the uneven terrain, hardly able to see even his hand in front of his face. The wind whipped hot on the back of his neck, but at least the lightning strikes from the earlier afternoon had ceased. Now there was only ash and smoke and heat. So much heat.

Back through his own front door, he sputtered as he yanked the Buff from his face and yelled out his return to Astor, his mind already casting around for something more adequate to cover Annie’s face with when the time came to move her.We have more N95 face masks stashed somewhere.Could he double hers up? Another quick glance at his watch told him there was only time for the priorities, but Annie? In this smoke?

He heard Astor answer him, but her voice was mostly drowned out by the still-wailing radio on low, and besides, the N95-mask search had gone straight to the top of Sam’s to-do list. He rummaged like a crazy person through his bathroom drawer, then tried the medicine cabinet in the kitchen, pushing aside plastic bottles of children’s Tylenol (sometimes Annie’s fevers got stubborn) and Ace bandages and Band-Aids to finally unearth the extra N95s at the back of the shelf.

Astor appeared back in the kitchen. “Dad!”

The radio continued to screech on the kitchen counter—he wanted to turn it all the way off but didn’t dare, in case he missed any new updates—and outside, they could hear the increase of traffic on Highline. The last of their neighbors, better prepared than the battalion chief’s husband for an evac notice? Firefighters, en route to Flatiron from the south? Dare he hope ...Mel?

Sam threw a glance out the window, remembered he couldn’t see farther than the end of his own nose out there, and rechanneled his energy. “This fire is close enough that we’re going to go into town right now, sound good, Astor?”

“Yeah, but, Dad! Listen to me!” She waved him over. “You need to check Annie.”

“Why?” Sam shot back. But then he stopped, and really looked at her. Astor’s expression edged closer to panic than he had ever seen from his competent, ice-water-in-her-veins firstborn. Even closer than earlier, first hearing the siren. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

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