“I'm thirty-two, Mom. I'm not any kind of kid. We need the city and the money right now.” I will miss this cabin, which feels like mine even though we share it, though it's Mom's name on the property deed. She's right about that much. The river runs fast and high enough with the June rise to block the noise of the highway that runs on the other side of it. The rock wall of the canyon against the road turns pink-golden in the waning hours of the day, the tops of pines that line the steep mountain incline on our side of the river catch the sunset light and burn like torches. Each night, the cabin grows dark with the canyon bottom, though the sun's waning light shines in the sky above us. The tree that saved both our lives still flourishes on the steep slope nearby. Dad hated this cabin, or so Mom says, which is why he and my brother Andy weren't here the night of the flood. The fact that Dad hated the cabin makes Mom love it more, I think, out of spite.

Between us was Mom's stack of books, a few heady sociopolitical nonfiction titles, Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry. She'd been a librarian in Loveland for forty years. Mom named me Charlotte because she loves the Brontës, loves everything dark and gothic. She'd wanted to name Andy Heathcliff but Dad put his foot down, I guess. She's locally famous for the passionate one-woman pro-beet sugar, anti-chemical sweetener campaign she ran from behind her library desk through the eighties and beyond. Mom would stamp due dates on copies of Hop on Pop, on Hatchet, on Farmer Boy and say to the children, or their mothers, or whoever would listen, “You can't believe the commercials. Just because it's all NutraSweet all the time doesn't mean it's actually healthy for you. Causes cancer, the doctors say, and it's putting the mill under besides.”

Mom is proud of her reputation as a tough old bird, an upstanding citizen. I know it because she says it out loud. It was her most adamant lesson for Andy and me: guard your reputations, cultivate the goodwill and admiration of others, use this as currency for any number of favors, a rich array of possible rewards. Mom is at least as proud of her reputation as she is of me, I'm sure of it.

“Can you drive me to Walgreens this weekend?” Mom's doctors have advised against her getting behind the wheel. “My prescriptions will be ready on Friday.”

“I'll just stop on my way home from work.”

“I'd rather come with you.”