Page 5 of Smoke Season

It always came out as a question, which was probably half the problem. He knew Mel had eventually grown weary of convincing him he was good enough, man enough, all the enoughs.

But the thing was, he hadn’t been. Not for Annie.

“That kind of thinking isn’t healthy,” True always told him with a firm shake of her head. And if he pushed back, wallowed even, she gavehim shit, for which Sam was downright thankful. True could have chosen sides. More specifically, she could have chosen Mel. Sam wouldn’t have blamed her, even if True and Samhadbeen friends first.

“You’re stuck with me, and so is she,” True said instead. “Sorry not sorry.”

He made a mental note to try to touch base with True tonight—she, too, was out in the field tonight in her own right—then called out to the kids. The three of them might as well eat while the cheesy goo still bubbled. His stint as a firefighter’s husband had taught him not to wait on dinner, even back when Mel’s presence had graced their table, making it complete.

He pushed this memory back as Astor immediately ran into the kitchen from the couch, Annie attempting to keep up in a rare but gallant show of energy.

“Astor! Slow down!” Sam chided as Annie predictably gave up the race at the doorway, the short sprint leaving her gasping. “You know how important it is that your sister not overexert herself until she’s cleared at her pre-op.”

Mention of impending heart surgery tended to alter the tone of a room, and Sam was immediately sorry when Astor’s expression clouded. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt the gloom of this particular storm gathering, but Sam reminded himself that according to Annie’s surgeon, it could be the last. Annie only had one more pediatric surgery to go.

“What? I just came when you called,” Astor quipped, her expression guileless. But something flickered behind her eyes as she added, “And I don’t know why we’re in a rush. It’s not like Mom’s on her way.” She glanced up at Sam, testing his reaction. “Right?”

So the sudden attitude had less to do with her sister and more to do with her mother. It came and went with Astor, righteous anger at the fate of her family flashing one moment, gone the next, disappearing under the serene surface of her steady personality like the elusive rainbow trout in the shallows of the Outlaw outside the Eddy door.

“She got called out on a fire out by Flatiron,” he told her, and he was sorry as hell about it, but he couldn’t let Astor walk all over him as a result. He gave her a pointed look until she reached out and helped her sister up onto her seat at the counter.

Annie accepted the proffered hand eagerly, and, watching how instantly she forgave and forgot, Sam knew he should press the issue with Astor, but the truth was, it heartened him to see Astor treating Annie more like an equal than the invalid everyone else saw. It allowed her to experience having an annoying kid sister for a change, not the sick little girl with the congenital heart condition that ran as a headline in everyone else’s mind.

Annie took inventory of the kitchen. “Mac and cheese! Yay!” she exclaimed, just as Astor reached around her to snag a bite from the stirring spoon on the stove, then let out a squawk when the hot cheese hit her tongue.

“That’s karma, kid, for a few minutes ago.”

Sam dished them up, and Annie was three halfhearted bites into her bright-yellow noodles before noting with a disgruntled little sigh, “Mom promised we’d play Sorry!”

“You hate that game anyway,” Astor told her, though whether in solidarity or to cause more friction, Sam couldn’t say. “You never get to Safety.”

“Do too!”

His phone rang, and Sam fished it out of his back pocket, shushing the girls while wiping off his palms on the already dirty dish towel. “This might be her again,” he told them.

He was greeted instead by the voice of his longtime neighbor, Claude, who, after retiring from forty years of medical practice, still lived next door to Sam’s house on Highline. Though “next door” was a relative term. Claude’s place, where he and his late wife had raised their kids, lay almost a quarter mile across a shared field.

“Looks like the lightning storm lit up Flatiron,” Claude said.

Sam nodded. “Yep, Mel took the call.”

“Well, shoot. I know that’s tough,” Claude said.

Tough to be parenting solo again, or tough knowing the woman he loves—yes, present tense, unfortunately for Sam—and the mother of his children was out on the line? Both. Definitely both.

“Anyhow, I’ll have a front-row seat to Mother Nature’s fire show tonight, I’d wager,” Claude continued as Sam smiled to himself. Claude managed to see the beauty in everything. He pictured the old man craning his neck out his kitchen window toward his unobstructed view of Flatiron Peak. Even perched a full ridgeline away, their houses sat in its shadow.

“We can see it here, too,” Sam told him, reaching across the stovetop to push the pot to the back burner, out of the girls’ reach, before stepping out onto the narrow back deck, where the lingering humidity from the electrical storm greeted him in an unwelcome embrace. It prickled the scruff along his neck; as Kim was always quick to point out, he’d fallen a bit out of the habit of shaving in the months since he’d semi-returned to bachelorhood. “I’ll keep you posted if I get any news.”

Astor followed him, asking, “Is that Uncle Claude?”

“Hi, Uncle Claude!” Annie chimed in, trailing after.

Astor squinted into the distance, eyeing the small plume of smoke as Claude returned the girls’ greeting with a chuckle. Sam switched the phone to speaker in time to hear “You kids gonna be good for your papa now?”

“Never!” they both chorused, just as Claude had taught them, Astor adding, “You see the fire up there, too, Claude?”

“No bigger than a Bic flame, kiddo,” Claude answered, and Sam told him, “She doesn’t know what a Bic lighter is, Claude.”

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