Cole Marlow, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service firefighter, had only agreed to come to the town’s annual fall beer festival because his buddy Ray had shown up at his cabin at 2 p.m. with a six pack and a threat to hide all his chainsaw parts if he didn’t get out of the house. He’d spent the last three years holed up on his 10-acre plot outside Weaverville, planting ponderosa pine saplings to replace the stand he lost in the 2020 August Complex fire, avoiding small talk with anyone who asked how he was holding up after Linda passed. His biggest flaw, as Ray liked to point out, was that he’d convinced himself any joy not tied to her memory was a betrayal.
He was leaning against a splintered wooden picnic table by the IPA tent, boots crunching half-crushed maple leaves underfoot, when a body slammed into his side. Half his beer sloshed over the rim of the red plastic cup, soaking the front of a navy blue flannel shirt worn by the woman he’d just run into. He stumbled back, his hand brushing the soft curve of her waist for half a second before he pulled away, stammering an apology. The smell of vanilla shampoo and pine resin hit him before she looked up.
She was 52, he’d guess later, dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of dirt on her left cheek, work boots caked in mud. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the tinny Tom Petty cover blaring from the stage 50 feet away, and wiped at the wet spot on her shirt with the back of her hand. “Relax, I already had sap all over this thing from planting white fir saplings up on Trinity Mountain this morning. Your beer’s an improvement.” She held out her hand, calloused at the palm, and told him her name was Clara, she’d moved to town three months prior to run the Forest Service’s post-fire reforestation grants for the region.
They stood close as the crowd shifted around them, shoulders brushing every time a group of college kids pushed past to get to the sour ale tent. She asked what he did, and when he said he’d retired from the Forest Service two years prior, her eyes lit up. She told him she’d been going through old incident reports from the 2018 Camp Fire, and had seen his name listed as crew lead on the team that saved the old elementary school in Paradise. He tensed up, waiting for the inevitable sad head tilt, the soft “I’m so sorry for what you saw” that everyone always gave him when the fire came up. Instead, she nudged his arm with her elbow, and teased him for the note he’d scrawled at the bottom of the report complaining that the local diner had run out of apple pie when his crew got back to town.
He didn’t even notice when he finished his beer, too busy leaning in to hear her over the crowd, their faces inches apart when she told him a story about a bear stealing her lunch off the back of her truck the week prior. When she reached past him to grab a napkin off the table behind him, her forearm brushed the faint, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm, the one he’d gotten when a burning oak branch fell on him during the Camp Fire. She paused, her thumb brushing the raised edge of the scar for a split second, and he froze, his skin buzzing where she touched him. He felt that familiar twist of guilt in his gut, the voice in his head that screamed he had no right to be this comfortable with someone who wasn’t Linda, that he was being disrespectful, that he should make an excuse and leave.
The band shifted to “Free Fallin’” right then, and the crowd around them erupted, couples pulling each other close to sway to the music. Clara grabbed his hand, her fingers lacing through his easily, and pulled him half a step closer, so their chests were almost touching. She didn’t yell over the crowd, just leaned in so her breath was warm against his ear, and said she’d seen his retirement paperwork, the short line he’d written about leaving the service because he didn’t have anything left to fight for after Linda was gone. “Grief doesn’t get to be your only permanent roommate, Cole,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear. He didn’t pull away when her forehead rested against his, the cold tip of her nose brushing his cheek, the callus on her thumb rubbing slow circles on the back of his hand. That voice in his head got quieter, drowned out by the sound of her breathing, the faint vanilla of her shampoo, the way her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes when she pulled back to look at him.
They left the festival 20 minutes later, walking down Main Street as the sun dipped below the pine-covered hills, the sound of the band fading behind them. The air was sharp with fall cold, and he pulled his old faded Forest Service hoodie tighter around his shoulders, listening to her ramble about the grant she was working on to plant 100,000 saplings across the burn scar the next spring. He stopped outside the old diner on the corner, the same one he and Linda had stopped at after every fire call for 27 years, the one he’d avoided stepping foot in since she died. He turned to Clara, his hand brushing the small of her back, and asked if she wanted to split a slice of apple pie. She grinned, rocking up on her toes for half a second, and said only if he let her pay for the coffee to go with it. He held the diner door open for her, his palm resting light on her back as she stepped inside, the smell of cinnamon and fresh baked pastry wrapping around both of them.
