Lodgepole pine

We take the book to the kitchen table and bend over it together, searching for exact type of pine tree from my vision. To someone on the outside we'd look like nothing more than a mother helping her daughter with her homework, not a pair of part angels researching a mission from heaven.

"That's it," I say at last, pointing to a picture in the book and then rocking back in my chair, feeling pretty pleased with myself. "The lodgepole pine".

"Twisted yellowish needles found in pairs," Mum reads from the book. "Brown, egg-shape cone?"

I didn't get close look at the pinecones, Mum. It's just the right shape, with the branches starting partway up the trunk like that, and it feels right," I answer around a spoonful of ice cream.

"Okay." She consults the book again. "It looks like the lodgepole pine found exclusively in the Rocky Mountains and northwestern coast of the US and Canada. The Native Americans like to use the trunks for main supports in their wigwams. Hence the name lodgepole.

And," she continues, " it says here that the cones require extreme heat--like, say, from a forest fire -- to open and release their seeds."

"This is so educational," I quip. Still, the idea of a tree that only grows in burned places sends a quiver of excitement through me. Even the tree has a kind of predestined meaning.

"Good. So we know roughly where this will happen," says Mum.

"Now all we have to do is narrow it down."

"And then what?" I examine the picture of the pine tree, suddenly imagining the branches in flames.

"Then we'll move."

"Move? As in leave California?"

"Yes," she says. Apparently she's serious.

But____" I sputter. "What about school? What about my friends? What about your job?

"You'll go to a new school, I imagine, and make new friends. I'll get a new job, or find a way to do a job from home."

"What about Jeffrey?"

She give a little laugh and pats my hand like it's a silly question. "Jeffrey will come, too."