Page 83 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

I know now. Today.

We reach Missoula and the University of Montana campus with time to spare, find the building, find the room. This is Ivy's world, entirely hers, and I want to see it.

We find her parents first, easy enough since I've met them a handful of times over the years, always through Reid, usually during some stretch of fire season when Ivy was off working her own summer at Blackpine, and our paths never quite crossed.

“Beck!” Mrs. Sawyer says, genuinely delighted. “You made it.”

I shake Mr. Sawyer's hand, and it feels strangely different than it used to, the same handshake I've given him a half-dozen times before, except his grip seems a little firmer this time. Probably wasn't. Probably was just me, aware I’m not attending as Reid’s friend. I’m the man in love with his daughter, and that makes an ordinary handshake feel like something with stakes attached.

Russ and Annie are here too, delighted to see us.

“Didn't think you'd make it,” Russ says.

“Barely did.”

He nods, easy, no lingering look, no mention about our last conversation.

We settle in to wait. Ivy is still with her committee somewhere, finishing preparation, not yet in the room. I sit here feeling something I don’t remember feeling before an assignment or a jump in years. Not about her ability. I already know she'll be good at this. Just about seeing her, finally, after almost two months, and she has no idea I’m here.

Then the door opens, and Ivy walks in.

Her eyes find her parents first, then Russ and Annie, and then Reid. Her whole face lights up. Then she sees me. She stops, just for half a moment, eyes going wide. Then a smile breaks across her face, the one I've been picturing for weeks. I know instantly every mile of that drive was worth it.

We don't get more than that. The defense is starting. She has to take her seat at the front of the room, and I have to settle for brief eye contact and a smile that promises the rest of it will come later.

Watching her present is something else entirely. I don't follow every technical term. Postfire vegetation succession, habitat connectivity, something about soil chemistry I completely lose track of halfway through. But I recognize pieces. Fireweed comes up at one point, and I think of the old burn we hiked together, her crouched by some plant explaining why it mattered. A slide of a recovering burn scar looks like the landscape we walked through that day.

I've been hearing about this all summer, one conversation at a time. What strikes me most isn't that she’s smart. I already know that. It’s how completely she owns the room. Calm. Confident. When one of the evaluators asks a hard question, something about a methodology choice that sounds genuinely tough, she doesn't rattle. She listens, thinks it through, and answers carefully, qualifying where she isn't a hundred percent certain instead of pretending she has every answer.

It's the same competence I watched all summer on trails and fire lines, the same steady, unshowy confidence she brings to everything she does. She's never needed to be the loudest person in the room to know what she's talking about.

I feel proud watching her in a way that goes beyond anything possessive. I know what this represents. All those tired late-night calls, the frustrated ones, the ones where she talked through a revision at eleven at night because that was the only time either of us had free. All of it led to this room, this moment, her standing up there handling it like she's been born for this.

When the presentation ends, the committee asks everyone to leave the room while it deliberates. Once we’re in the hallway, that's when Ivy finally comes toward us. She goes to Reid first, hugging him hard, genuinely thrilled he made it. He was here for her, independent of me, her brother watching her accomplish something enormous.

Then she comes to me. She holds on considerably longer than she'd held Reid, and I’m not in any hurry to end it either, both of us making up for two months in one long hug in a crowded university hallway.

“Glad I got mine first,” Reid says eventually, watching us.

“That was intentional,” Ivy says, still not letting go of me. “Now I can hug him as long as I want without you feeling left out.”

“Very considerate.”

I don't kiss her, not here, not with her parents and Russ and Annie and people I don’t know standing around. That can wait. This could not.

“You made it,” she says, finally pulling back far enough to look at me.

“Told you I'd try.”

“Was it terrible?” she asks, nerves creeping back in now that the adrenaline of seeing us has faded slightly.

“No. I didn't follow all of it. But I followed enough. You were good, Ivy. Really good.”

Then they call her back in.

We wait. It isn't long, though it feels longer than it probably is, everyone standing around the hallway trying not to look as anxious as they likely feel. This was never really in doubt. Ivy knows her material better than anyone in that room. But it still feels like something worth holding your breath for.

The door opens. Ivy steps out, and her face tells us everything before she says a word.