“I’m home!” I yell after tumbling down the stairs back to the ground floor and catching my breath outside our door. My skin is still vibrating at a weird frequency from being in the Troys’ apartment and at that laptop.

“Ma?” I call out after spotting her bag by the door. “Ma? Are you here?”

“H-Henri? No, wait, don’t come in—”

“Holy crap.”

She’s standing in the middle of the living room, looking at herself in the leaning full-length mirror we keep in the corner. There wouldn’t be anything unusual about the sight if it wasn’t for the fact that she is currently fully dressed in New York firefighter gear, watching herself in our small space. Everything about her uniform feels new and crisp. Heavy and durable. The sort of black and striped yellow coats you glimpse on the street whenever a shrieking fire truck rushes by.

“Holy shit, Mom!”

“Don’t laugh,” she warns. I would never dream of laughing right now.

“You look . . . badass,” I manage once I recover, needing a moment to take it all in.

“Yeah?” she says, pulling up her visor to smile at me. “I kind of do, don’t I?”

She really had done it. I don’t quite know when exactly it happened, but somewhere along the way, this pipe dream became her reality. Our reality.

“Are you, um, allowed to bring that home?”

“Probably not,” she admits as she removes the vest, revealing what are now full muscles through her undershirt. “Definitely not. But there was a photo shoot for this article in AM New York. ‘Midcareer changes’ or something. They let us bring the new bunker gear off-site for it this morning. I took a little detour home to—I don’t know—bask for a minute.”

She folds the heavy-looking jacket and hangs it off her arm before turning back to the mirror and posing like it’s a magazine shoot. She laughs at her reflection, giggling in a note I’ve never heard before.

“How do I look? Halloween costume or badass firefighter?”

She’s still staring at herself, smiling as she holds on to the straps of the reflective trimmed overalls, in an undershirt.

“Unquestionably badass firefighter.”

“My wedding dress was borrowed,” she continues, folding the uniform with reverence. “This . . . I earned it, you know?” She catches my gaze in the mirror. “Ah! Pa gade mwin, Henri! Don’t look at me. It’s silly.”

“No, Ma,” I say. “Not silly at all.”

My skin feels like it’s crawling again.

“Anyway, reverie over,” she says, getting to work removing her boots. “I don’t need an offense on my files before even starting the job. Want to get started on dinner while I drop this back off at the station? How do mashed potatoes sound?”

“Um, good,” I say. “Hey, Ma? I left something at the Troys’ upstairs. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Your girlfriend is traveling until Friday, right?”