CHAPTER 9

By 9:00 a.m., Mel worked alongside her Carbon Rural crew in a long line of ground pounders, all local agencies now on hand. A sense of urgency prevailed as Pulaskis bit into the parched dirt with muted thuds, the labored breathing of the crew’s combined efforts the only sound not drowned out by the wildfire. They were as close to the flames as they could get, close enough to feel the heat through their flame-retardant shirts, close enough to stomp out embers that smoldered under their feet.

“At least we’ve got a breeze,” Deklan called out from down the line, tugging his Buff back off his face for some relief.

A chorus of firefighters instantly gave him shit. “Yeah, wind is exactly what we need, dumbass,” Ryan lobbed at him, while Lewis coughed out a bark of a laugh.

“Ow, what? At least I can breathe while I kill myself on this chain gang.”

“Put your Buff back on,” Mel called to him. “Your ears are already burning.”

“What can I say, Chief? I’m a delicate flower.”

More muted laughter. Deklan was good for breaking the tension, at least. Mel was glad he still had the energy to be cocky, which was more than she could say for herself. She bent back down to her task, feeling more like thirty-eight going on sixty, her Pulaski seeming to gain weight in her gloved palm with every upswing, the sweat that formed with alarming volume on her neck and head dripping between her shoulder blades to slide down her back and stick to her shirt on every chop through the dense underbrush.

Up and down the line, every other veteran firefighter bent equally to the task, knowing the stakes, understanding they all raced a clock. A secondary stopwatch ran in a blur of numbers in Mel’s head, too. How long until the smoke in town proved too risky for Annie? How many hours could she breathe poor-quality air before she compromised her health too much for surgery? How many liters of oxygen did Sam have at his disposal in the portable tank at his place? Did Mel have time to break away to call him?

She refocused on the task at hand, the task she could actually tackle, or she risked going crazy with worry. Cutting this containment line was crucial; this “moat” would serve as a first defense between Carbon and the rapidly growing Flatiron Fire. They sure as hell didn’t want it to reach all the way down to the rutted Forest Service roads at the lower mountain: while excellent firebreaks in their own right, roads came with a serious downfall ... of the civilization sort. Mel had already taken inventory: along FS 7312 sat five houses, two small ranches, and a veterinary clinic. And just off FS 7312? The access road to True’s place by the river.

If the Outsider was lost, what would that do to True? She’d done a lot to the place in the years since she’d erected it. Mel had been relieved to see it was no longer a placeholder for what could have been, in some alternate reality. True had made sure of that, adding an art studio off her welding workshop and building a little bunk setup for Astor and Annie, despite the fact that to date, Mel’s younger daughter had been unable to spend a night away from her parents.

At least Sam’s house still sat in safety. The wind whipped west, sparing his ridge, and Mel imagined the air quality had to be better at elevation. He should take the girls there now, she thought—the irony, given that she had wanted him to sell it, not lost on her.

With a determined grunt, she renewed her efforts with her axe. She worked steadily and slowly, ignoring the scream of her muscles, denying herself more than the occasional water break at the hasty rig staged on the road.

Every few minutes, White, accompanied by a supervisor from Outlaw County, swept the line, pointing out needs for improvement. “Let’s double the width at the turn,” he shouted at Janet and Lewis at one point. Then: “You call this containment?”

This criticism was directed at Ryan and Deklan, who’d left a layer of roots and pine scraps under their boots. Denying the blaze the fuel it needed meant scraping this stretch of forest clean, all the way down to mineral soil, at least two feet wide. The fire line had to be barren enough to prevent smoldering, burning, or spotting by embers blowing or rolling across the line. It had to suck the oxygen right out of this beast that breathed down their necks.

She heard Deklan mutter a curse as he tackled the shoddy stretch with renewed vigor.

True set her sights on Wonderland Lodge, twelve more miles ahead, nestled in the pines along the northern bank of the Outlaw River. She bit her lip in thought, fretting about asking for sanctuary there from the Martins, who’d owned Wonderland longer than True’d been alive. She doubted she’d receive their hospitality.

“Too long in the backcountry with no one but their dogs for company,” she usually joked to her clients.

Typically, True and her party camped on the riverbank just past the Martins’ property instead. Chances were good they’d be asked to do so again, no matter that the smoke now seemed here to stay in the river canyon.

But first things first. Lying between the Wonderland of Wonderland Lodge and True’s current position on the river near Osprey Creek was Quartz Canyon, 1.3 miles of tight, twisting turns through the narrow rocky channel of the Outlaw’s most famous slot canyon carved out a millennia ago by the last ice age.

“Picture the log flume ride at Six Flags,” she told Emmett, “then double the width of the slide, and multiply the strength of the current by about ... oh, a hundred.”

Usually, she enjoyed the look of wide-eyed trepidation this description earned her; she got to build up the anticipation, rev up the adrenaline, then distribute a generous number of high fives upon her clients’ successful passage of the lengthy flume. Today, however, she was white-knuckling it as much as the Wus; more so, probably. Knowing what lay ahead sent a prickle of seldom-felt fear down her spine. Navigating Quartz was hard enough without the cover of smoke clouding her vision. She shuddered with a sudden chill.

She looked up from her oars to see Vivian studying her as they rowed across the flats following Osprey Creek. “What is it?” she asked, her pretty face arranged into a frown of concern.

True weighed her options—pretend everything was rosy, or come clean? She needed to continue to maintain what authority she’d earned from Vivian, but could use her muscle soon, it couldn’t be denied. “It’s not just the technical challenge of Quartz Canyon that makes it a Class IV,” she admitted after a beat. She glanced at Emmett, at the bow. He had leaned far forward onto his stomach, out of earshot, fingers trailing in the foam. “It’s the length of the rapids that gets to you. They just go on and on ... over a mile of paddling—serious paddling—and we’ll need to push hard from start to finish. There are obstacles to avoid at every turn; remember the boulder at Cougar?” Vivian nodded. “Imagine one of those every few meters, in a flume a quarter of the width we enjoyed at Cougar.”

“But you do it every trip,” Vivian pointed out. She didn’t add, Right? But True heard it.

“Right,” she supplied. “But we usually do it with more preparation, including plenty of scouting on foot before our attempt, not to mention visibility on the water.” And ample rest. She didn’t like the idea of heading into Quartz with her arms fatigued from rowing. They’d already pushed eight miles today, and had ten more to go before they even reached this biggest challenge of the Outlaw. By the time True heard the roar of Quartz, she knew her muscles would feel like Jell-O.

“I can help,” Vivian promised, and while True might have been tempted to chalk up her offer to untested earnestness, there was a confidence on the woman’s face that True was getting accustomed to. Who was discounting whom now? True wouldn’t be that woman. Not in a million years.

“Thank you,” she said, and Vivian literally rolled up the sleeves of her sun shirt. A moment later, her sleek black hair had been secured in a neat ponytail, and she’d pulled a trucker ballcap onto her head. Hoo boy, True thought. That look would definitely turn the heads of her fellow rafting guides, kid or no kid.

So True looked away. Ever since her realization about the Outsider and Mel, she was cognizant of her tendency to see things that just weren’t there. What if this, too, was a mirage?

They ate a quick, unceremonious lunch on the small sandbar that split the river at Blackberry Bar, four miles out from Quartz Canyon. When she bent to haul their table and chairs out of the raft, Vivian laid an unexpected hand on True’s arm. For the second time today, not that True was counting. Careful, she thought again.

“Save yourself the trouble,” Vivian told her. Spare your energy, she heard. And as much as True hated seeming weak in front of a client, she was glad Vivian had absorbed her message earlier. She pulled out some beach towels, and they ate picnic-style in the gravelly sand amid the milk thistle and river weed, enjoying their cold cuts and hummus with organic rice crackers and homemade cookies with a generous side of ash.

Afterward, Emmett explored the shoreline while Vivian helped True pack up the cooler. The Yeti once again secured with tie-downs, the two of them sat on the sun-warmed rubber tube of the oar raft watching him pick his way between the rocks, stopping every few feet to crouch down into an eddy or under a boulder, peering at what lay underneath or within.

“He’s still just a child,” Vivian said softly. Almost to herself.

True watched Emmett’s progress downriver, his white rash guard almost glowing in the hazy air. “I’ve got eyes on him,” she said, realizing belatedly that wasn’t the takeaway Vivian had intended.

“I had to buy him that sun shirt just before the trip,” she said, still watching her child. “His old one was too tight. He insists that all his clothing be loose these days. Gets almost panicked about it if anything is too form-fitting.” She was quiet for a moment, then added, so softly True had to strain to hear, “Emily.”

True shifted her gaze from downriver to Vivian, a question on her face.

“That was her—is his—deadname.” The final two words dropped from Vivian’s lips with heavy finality, like bullets into a chamber.

“Emily,” True echoed softly, sensing that Vivian needed to hear it aloud one more time.

“Am I a terrible person for missing her?” Pain lay transparent on Vivian’s face now, fragile as a sheet of glass.

“Of course not.”

Vivian exhaled long and low, as if she’d been holding her breath for the entirety of this quiet conversation. Perhaps she had been. “I love who Emmett is, I really do. I see how he has blossomed, has come into his own. God, before? He was dying inside, True. I can see that now, and I’m so glad—desperately glad—that he’s found his way to becoming who he’s meant to be. What is it you call it, on the river? A self-rescue. That’s what Emmett is doing. But sometimes”—she looked up at True earnestly—“just sometimes, I mourn my daughter.”

True nodded. “Of course you do.” She thought again of her fierce love for Astor and Annie and mentally attempted to parse their identities as human beings from their birth-assigned gender, like peeling back shiny packaging to reveal what was really inside. It was harder to conceptualize than she might have expected. “I’m thinking of the goddaughters I mentioned,” she told Vivian. “It’s not the same,” she added swiftly, “but I think I can understand. I do.”

Vivian nodded. “Tell me more about them.”

True didn’t usually get personal with river clients, so it surprised her when she blurted, “Annie has tetralogy of Fallot. It’s a heart condition. A serious one.”

But she’d forgotten, momentarily, Vivian’s medical training. “Very serious,” she said with a frown. “How are you all doing with it?”

That small thoughtfulness—including True in this sentiment—touched upon something lying dormant in her she hadn’t even known sought comfort. As interwoven into the Bishops’ lives as she’d been from the start of their family, True had always felt like a rogue thread, an interesting side pattern at best, a snag at worst. But comfort was something she and the Bishops had in short supply these days, and she’d take it where she could get it. True thought of all the bills that piled up with absolutely no hope of repayment, of the shadows that lined the soft skin under Mel’s eyes so often now, the look of tight worry always tugging at Sam’s mouth.

“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 facial hair.” 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.

“I can try to contact her,” she assured her, “but I don’t think it’s necessary.” True didn’t need to make another sat call to know the Flatiron Fire continued to grow, complicating their already complicated plans to get to Temple Bar on time.

In the meantime, she tuned her radio dial to their emergency-dispatch call signal and listened in for a moment. No evacs yet, from the sound of it, beyond the few ranches that sat at the base of Flatiron, so that was good. But she still knew nothing about the other side of the slope, where her property sat. And what about Highline Road? What about the Bishops’ place? True swallowed down a new rise of fear. What she wouldn’t give for a little reassurance, Mel’s familiar voice back on the line telling her everyone was fine. What she wouldn’t give for a quick glimpse of her place today, tucked into the cedars hugging the southern bank of the Outlaw, under Flatiron’s shadow.

Shit, True thought. She should have bulldozed that meadow into a firebreak when she’d had the chance.