Small Acts
Every Anniversary

The Year I Buried

August 25, 2026 · Part 5 of 10 · 2 min

There's a version of my life I don't talk about, the same way I don't talk about the fire. I was twenty-two. Reckless, unfinished, working construction before the fire academy would even look at my application.

Her name was Renae.

We were together eight months, apart before either of us had the sense to notice we'd become parents. She called me from a clinic waiting room to tell me. I didn't drive there fast enough, and by the time I did, the decision had mostly made itself — two kids who couldn't afford a studio apartment between them weren't going to raise a newborn.

We signed the papers together. I never asked which family took her. I told myself not knowing was a kindness — to the baby, to whoever raised her, to Renae, to me. I joined the academy four months later. I've never fully worked out whether that was penance or escape. Maybe both.

I never once connected any of it to Larkspur Street. Why would I? A rescue call is a rescue call. I didn't ask families for adoption records. I pulled a baby out of smoke and drove myself home and threw up in my own driveway, same as I did after every bad one that year.

"Did you know?" Marlowe asks now, very quietly. "Is that why you kept coming back every year? Because some part of you knew?"

"No." The word comes out fast, because it's the truest thing I've got. "I swear to you, I didn't know. I just — " I stop, because the next part sounds insane even inside my own head. "I just couldn't stop coming back. Every year I told myself I'd skip it, and every year I was in that truck by six o'clock."

Marlowe watches me like she's deciding whether to believe a stranger who might be her father.

Corinne, still gripping the back of her chair, makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh.

"That's not entirely true either," she says.

Both of us turn to her.

"Mom." Marlowe's voice has an edge now. "What isn't true?"

Corinne closes her eyes like she's about to step off something high.

"That neither of you knew," she says. "I did. I've known for almost twenty-four years."

Continue the story Part 6: What Corinne Never Said →

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