Page 32 of Smoke Season

She stifled another bitter laugh and navigated to the ramp in an eerie silence, the slap of her oars on the still water loud in her ears. A single light shone over the pit-toilet bathroom, orange in the smoky air, and True flipped on her headlamp to guide their nose up onto the sloping concrete of the ramp.

“As soon as we’re grounded, you both can hop out,” she told the Wus, who clambered out the sides of the raft clumsily, their sudden splashing jarring in the gathering dark.

She followed suit—more gracefully, she’d like to think—water to her knees at the back of the boat, pushing the stern up the rampwith a grunt of breath. Her biceps were so spent, the damned thing barely moved. Vivian turned immediately to help, and Emmett gamely grabbed the tie-off rope at the bow, tugging. Together, they got the loaded-down raft out of the water, True leaning forward, hands on her knees, to catch her breath in the thick air.

“Thanks,” she told them. “You all can grab your dry bags and change out of your wet clothes, if you like.” She pointed toward the bathroom. “There’s space to change behind it, too,” she added. “Benefit of having this place to ourselves ... total privacy.”

“When will the van be here?” Emmett asked, eyeing the darkening sky.

True consulted her watch. “About ten minutes, I’d guess.” She’d been promised a shuttle driven by one of the old-timers least likely to be spooked by the smoke.

Emmett set out with his gear, but Vivian hung back, offering to help with the Yeti cooler, which was a two-person job even mostly empty. True took her up on it, heaving her end out of the boat while thinking ruefully of the steaks still thawing inside, ready for tonight’s dinner. They’d skipped it, opting for trail mix and granola bars as True continued to row, and row, and row.

“I really am sorry to be ending early,” Vivian said once they’d set the Yeti down on the concrete.

And she sounded it, too, but True was tired and miserable and feeling a bit too sorry for herself, so instead of “Me, too,” what came out of her mouth was “I’ll give you a refund, so don’t worry about that.”

She felt the backlash of Vivian’s hurt even before she registered it on her face. It reverberated from her very being. “No, thank you,” she said tightly. But then she seemed to recover herself. “You know, True, I have a sense that you wish this trip had gone very differently, and so do I. I know we’re rookies when it comes to this rafting stuff, Emmett and me, but this was an act of nature, and—”

True couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let Vivian think she, or Emmett, had done anything wrong. “It’s my fault.” She took a step towardVivian, noted her crossed arms and braced stance, and thought better of it. “I did want things to go differently,” she told her. “But you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Obviously,” Vivian shot back. “What I was going to say,” she continued, “is that I understand we’re not exactly assets, but we’re not liabilities, either.”

At True’s baffled expression, Vivian blurted, “Why were you so quick to pawn us off?”

Wait. Was Vivian hurt because True had told her to go with the Martins? She just barely managed to mask a very small, very cautious smile. Shedidrisk a cautious step forward. “I didn’t want you to go with the Martins,” she said, relishing every word for how true each one was. “But I couldn’t in good conscience advise you not to. This is getting real,” she said, indicating the smoke around them. “As much as I want to spend more time with you”—she deliberately emphasized the single word, even feeling a pang of betrayal to Emmett as she did so—“I had to think of your safety.”

Vivian made a face of frustration. “But you wouldn’t come, too. Why?”

Why. True just looked at her, feeling once again caught in that distributary, as good as a million miles away from where she wanted to be.I can’t tell you why.She just shook her head, the weariness and misery from moments before coming back to claim her.

How to fix this? How to explain? True was still wrestling with this, and Vivian was still waiting, when Emmett returned, emerging back through the gloom to startle them both.

“Mom, there’s a moth in the bathroomthis big,” he told her, hands spanned at least six inches apart. “So, you know, be careful.”

As far as dismissals went, it sufficed. Vivian picked up her gear bag and turned heel, leaving Emmett to help True with the rest of the gear. They hauled out the table and tents, then the dry bags containing the sleeping bags and pillows, the tarp, the stove, and the fuel canisters. True set them all in orderly file on the ramp by the boat, a creature ofhabit even though tonight she certainly had ample space available to spread out. Her thoughts were racing the whole while, everything she should have said to Vivian instead of what she had said running in a loop in her head.

I got into something over my head.

My problems tonight do not define me, I promise.

I am a woman you can trust, and trust me, I want to see you again.

Emmett helped more than his share, hauling out the awkward, bulky Paco Pads they slept on despite the fact that they were taller than he was, then the chairs, and finally the ammo boxes ... one, two, three ... and four.

True grabbed the last one from him,theammo box, the smallest one that meant everything and that had ruined everything. She clutched it tight against her sweat- and river-water-soaked tank top, ignoring Emmett’s protests that it wasn’t too much for him, that he could carry it. As he set back out toward the bathrooms to check on his mom, she flicked a glance toward the road where she expected the shuttle to emerge soon in a flash of headlight beams; daylight faded fast here in the river canyon. She couldn’t quite let go of a lingering hope that a truck with the ridiculousFallows, Inc.wrap around the door would suddenly show first. Imagine actually wishing those guys anywhere. No, True was on her own, for better or worse, that concept ofalonenessstirring something restless and discontented in her again.

Though she was normally in a hurry to part ways with this ammo box by this point in her weekly river journey, tonight, her first instinct was to not let it out of her sight. But that meant bringing it back in the shuttle with them, and Fallows’s words echoed in her head:Never, ever let me catch you with my cash off the river.She decided she should stick to Plan A, as best she could, glancing around her at a loss.Stash it somewhere here?Usually, it was so easy. Fallows’s contacts rotated between the lanky young guy with long hair—usually up in a sloppy man bun—and the wiry old guy always wearing a sweat-stained Mariners ball cap and carrying his tackle box and rod. Both blended in with every raftingdude and loner fisherman True had ever met, fixtures of the dock every Friday. The shuttle drivers all knew them. The guides all tolerated them, apart from when they tried to bum a beer. The clients were oblivious, unless they had teenage girls, in which case they found themselves tugging their daughters away in a hurry from unwanted attention.

Old Dude never failed to hit on all the other female river guides, too, and when True warned Fallows that every single one of her river sisters was well and over it, he’d only smirked.

“You’re a solid nine yourself, you know. With a little effort, you probably don’t even have to date chicks, honey.” She’d caught sight of Fallows’s hand snaking around to the hollow of her lower back and pivoted away with an angry curse.

“Put your hand on me and you’ll lose it,” she’d hissed.

“Chill, neighbor.” His eyes on her were small and mean. She’d felt naked in her tank top and river shorts. “Just thought we could break the ice with a little foreplay. But we can be strictly business. Fine by me.”

True had spent her entire adult life avoiding guys like this, and now look at her. Cowering here as twilight descended, trying her damnedest to do his bidding. She looked at the bright side: at least she didn’t have to interact with either of his sleazy friends tonight. Young Dude’s meth rot wasn’t on display as he slid her a smile from the parking lot. Old Dude wasn’t here trying to hit on a fifteen-year-old in a bikini top. But that meant it was up to True to decide what to do now with her contraband. And time was wasting.

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