We weren't even a half mile from the trailhead. Mom had gone pale, her dry cough muscled past the candy. We sat on a downed tree, and she covered her mouth with a white bandanna. When she pulled it away, the phlegm was tinted pink.

“From the candy,” she said. I wanted to shove her own words back into her mouth, ask her who was in denial now, but instead I pulled her into a side hug, felt her body relax into mine.

“Mom,” I said, “I'm pregnant.”

Her shudder ran electric along the side of my body. “By who?” Which was of course the first thing she would say.

“Ed Mayne.” Not that I hadn't thought about it, with Ed. I'd made honest efforts with the other available men in the canyon. It was a shallow pool, sparsely populated. There were plenty of moments when Ed looked just as good as anyone else.

Mom pushed away from me then, her eyes flashing. “That old goat. He knew you in diapers.”

“I'm kidding,” I said, waving my hand uselessly in the air, giggling, feeling my face burn red. Mom's lips were pursed, no hint of smile in her whole body. “Jesus, Mom. It's not Ed. It was a cowboy passing through town with the rodeo last month. A one-night thing.”

“A cowboy?”

“What? He was.” I had no plans to tell her about his wedding ring. He hadn't bothered to take it off, and I had been so grateful for his rough hands on my belly, my thighs, for the respite from my wholly unintentional celibacy, that I didn't ask questions.

Silence. Mom was stone-faced. I felt desperate, fluttery. I wanted to be able to describe the thorny truths of my life, to have Mom accept them without judgment.

“You seem a little old for a lesson in contraception,” Mom said.

“Shit happens, Mom.”

“If you let it, Lottie.”

I stood then and walked toward the water, arched my back into a stretch. I caught the staggered song of a dipper bird, its joyful bouncing along the river's edge. Dippers make hunting look like dancing, keep their life requirements playful. There's a lesson in it. I took a deep breath, turned back toward Mom. “You're not even a little happy?” I asked.

“That's not the point,” she said. “This is a hard road you're on. You need to find this rodeo clown. For the money, if nothing else.”

“Cowboy, Mom. Not clown.”

“You think you can do this all alone?”

I thought of the pink phlegm on Mom's bandanna, the fluid collecting around her ankles, her congested, gummed-up heart. “Looks that way,” I said. “Looks like I don't have much of a choice.”

“Look harder,” Mom said, doubling over into a coughing fit gone totally out of control, and I added this reaction to my list of things I want to forgive but can't.