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I drove up to the lookout on the day I had been waiting for since Mckenna’s doctor had given us the news. Off over the horizon I could see the Jemez, glowing orange beneath billowing black smoke that tinted the sky lavender. The previous year’s fires had been the worst in history. Every year was the new worst year. Mckenna had dyed her hair that color in college. Back when she called us gal pals, conspiratorially. Good friends. Roommates. She called us that until we went to one of the last extant lesbian bars in Seattle and met a couple of septuagenarians who hadn’t had the choice. Then she called us girlfriends, and her pause before the word made me wonder. We had wanted a corgi, though when the news came she’d said it wouldn’t be a good idea and decided to go platinum instead. She was worried the dog wouldn’t adjust to the change well, and was resistant to any other idea. She kept the platinum for a while, but after a few months the smell was too much for her, so she went back to her natural sandy brown. I wanted to plan, and she didn’t, because she was Jewish and it was considered bad luck, so I started sneaking things to friends to store for when it was time. When the day came, I drove her to the hospital and left a key under the mat for our friends and all the items they’d been hoarding for the better part of a year.

Asher was tiny and perfect. I drove home from the hospital under the purple sky. My mother had brought me to the lookout as a child, to take in the mountains from afar. The women in the bar had bleeding lipstick around their mouths and sat stiffly with a healthy distance between them. They’d told us they were teachers, and lots of young ladies shared flats before they got married. Mckenna asked if they’d ever considered children. One laughed, and the other flashed a rueful smile. “You didn’t have children back then without a husband. It was a choice between that and being who you were.”