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So I begrudgingly go. The drive down to the south pasture takes longer than it should, my hands too unsteady on the wheel, my mind refusing to focus on a single task longer than a few seconds. It always drags itself right back to that crib, that cry, that impossible small face with my own eyes, and Mom's stubborn set jaw underneath all the screaming.

Before I get to the burn pile, a heavy plume of smoke drifts across the pastures. Dad and Alexander are working fast against the wind that keeps threatening to turn a controlled burn into something considerably more destructive.

Dad doesn't look up when I climb out of the truck, just barks, "Keep the fire line contained on the north side."

I fall into the work because it's easier than standing still. So I haul brush and rake bits of ash and hot embers while my own life rearranges itself. All I can see is Lainey holding my daughter while her mama shoots darts at me.

"You're quiet," Dad says, an hour into it, wiping soot off his forehead with the back of one glove. "You alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Mm." He doesn't believe me, same as nobody in this family's believed me about anything for the better part of a year, but he lets it go. He turns back to the fire line.

I'm grateful for the reprieve, and we work through the worst of the burn in near silence. Alexander occasionally hollers instructions about wind direction. Dad barked back corrections.

At one point, I snort at the irony. The whole operation is a kind of controlled chaos that would've absorbed me completely on any other day of my life. Today, it barely touches the surface. My hands do the work while the rest of me stays back at that guesthouse, watching a bassinet, watching a woman with tears streaming down her face, watching my life turn into something I never once saw coming.

Alexander catches me staring off toward the tree line more than once, rake hanging useless in my hands while smoke curls past me untouched. He doesn't say anything about it, and I'm grateful enough for that mercy that I don't examine it too closely.

Somewhere around the third hour, while Dad and Alexander argue about whether the wind's dying down enough to start the next section, I pull my phone out with soot-stained fingers and type out a text to Roy before I can talk myself out of it.

Me: I need Lainey's cell number.

I stare at the screen a second, at how strange it feels to be asking Roy for the mother of my child's phone number.

His reply comes back fast.

Roy: Did she not show up?

Me: No, she did. But I'm in town and want an update. I didn't put her info in my cell before I left.

Roy sends it over.

Me: Thanks. Hope your dad is doing better.

Roy: Thanks.

I stare at Lainey's number longer than a grown man probably should stare at a string of numbers on a phone screen.

Dad hollers something about the west line needing to be tended to twenty feet away.

I program Lainey's number into my cell.

Dad yells, "Need you today, not tomorrow, Jagger."

I slide my phone back in my pocket and go to work.

A few hours later, the wind has died down to something manageable. The worst of the smoke drifts thin and gray against a sky already going dark at the edges. And the piles are down to barely nothing but ash and some remaining hot coals.

The second Dad's back is turned, I pull my phone out, glance at the time, then type out a message with hands that aren't quite steady even now, hours removed from the worst of the shock.

Me: This is Jagger. I know today was a lot. I'm not trying to make it more complicated than it already is, but I want to see Charlie tonight. Somewhere calm. I'll be there at 8:00 so I can walk both of you over to my house. We need to talk without anyone else around.

The reply doesn't come for almost twenty minutes. I check the phone probably a dozen times.

Alexander steps next to me and asks, "What's going on?"

"Nothing." My phone vibrates, and I turn away from him.