“Yeah, but then I have to drive all the way here to get you, and then all the way back.” Mom has this thing now where she browses. She reads greeting cards she doesn't plan to buy. She considers the sizes and shapes of Tupperware containers that won't fit in our full-to-bursting cabinets. She tests outrageous lipstick colors on her wrist. It's like entering a drugstore black hole, time itself suspended.

Mom pursed her lips and nodded. She didn't say anything else, but I know she's not letting it go, either. I picture Mom adding a stone to the disappointing daughter jar she carries in her heart. Mom keeps track, and if I'm honest, I do too, my grudges like magnets. The more I carry, the more I collect.

The wind set the tops of the trees swaying, but where we were, below, it was gentle, soft against the skin, scented with pine pitch and river water.

“In Denver there are Walgreens everywhere. Maybe even walking distance,” I said.

“What makes you think I'm coming with you?” she asked.

“If I go,” I said, “you can't stay up here alone.”

“Like hell I can't.”

She's wrong about that, in denial about her ever-shrinking independence, just like she's wrong that nothing contents me. Living with Mom in the canyon would be perfectly fine except that I can't seem to be a grown-up with her around. Every time I think I'm acting responsibly, Mom makes me feel like I'm chasing the river mist. She's wrong about who I am, but so confidently that I get to doubting myself. What she will say when she finds out I am knocked up by a stranger, I don't know. I feel like I've lost an old fight with her. I imagine her nodding, unsurprised, saying, I always told you that's who you were.

“I'm turning in,” she said.

“It's barely dark.”

“Doctors say rest. I'm resting.” Mom's voice had an edge. She's especially irritable since the diagnosis. Irritability is not a symptom of congestive heart failure. I looked it up. I guess I wanted to confirm that she could help it, if she wanted to, all her special meanness.

“You feeling well enough to hike in the morning?”

“Doctors say exercise,” Mom said, rubbing her swollen ankles. “They say rest, and they say exercise. The hell.”