Yesterday, when I told her about the job I'd been offered at the state Parks and Wildlife office in Denver, full benefits, my own office, twice my current salary, she added, “Nothing contents you now, either.” Then she took her cocktail glass and her cigarette out to the porch and sat there while the sun set, a worn blanket draped across her shrinking frame, her thinning hair a halo of static electricity. Mom is only sixty-five, but she is shrinking into herself, her heart congested, failing. She is aging fast and angry. I think all the time about the things I know but Mom doesn't, that I have a baby growing in my womb, a girl, I am nearly certain, her father a one-night stand I couldn't possibly locate now. That if I want that job, any job better than the one I have now, manning the entry station to Rocky Mountain National Park, I have to take it before I start to show. I think about the things we both know but won't say out loud. That this canyon she half raised me in has nothing that either of us needs: no doctors, no jobs. That she should lay off the cigarettes and gin, go for more walks, eat more kale. I should do all these things too, though I don't smoke the way she does anyhow. Medical instructions for the end of life and the beginning of it are surprisingly similar.

I poured a glass of cranberry juice, no vodka, and sat next to her on the porch. I'd been living for years in this cabin along the Big Thompson River. My grandfather rebuilt it after the '76 flood, and I moved in after college. When Mom retired, last year, she moved in with me, which feels similar to childhood, but harder to bear after years of adult living.

“Come on, Mom,” I said. “We could have a fine time in Denver. All that art. Poetry readings. Street festivals.” Hospitals. First responders.

“You're not a city kid, Lottie. You'd miss these mountains too much.”