Rico Marquez, 57, spent 22 years as a smokejumper before a blown knee on the 2018 Eagle Creek fire forced him into early retirement. Now he runs a small firewood and custom axe sharpening service out of the cinder block shop behind his rural Oregon property, and he’s avoided the town’s weekly farmers market for three straight years, convinced small town gossip sticks worse than pine sap on a scuffed work boot. His only social interaction outside of the occasional hardware store run is a monthly beer with his old jump partner, who lives two hours away, and he’d convinced himself he liked it that way—no questions, no expectations, no one prying into why his wife left him for a Portland realtor eight years prior.
The September air bit at his cheeks when he finally caved and hauled 12 bundles of cured oak firewood to the market that Saturday, his left knee throbbing with every step over the rutted gravel lot. He’d run out of propane for his shop heater the night before, and the extra cash from the bundles would cover the refill without him dipping into the grandkids’ Christmas fund. He’d set up his stack at the far end of the row, away from the craft jewelry stands and screaming toddlers, when he heard a laugh he hadn’t heard in 12 years, warm and rough around the edges, cutting through the bluegrass band’s cover of Folsom Prison Blues and the crunch of apple cider donuts from the stand two rows over.
He looked up. Elara Voss, his ex-wife’s younger sister, was leaning against the edge of a jam stand stacked high with mason jars of peach, blackberry, and spiced pear, wiping a smudge of purple jam off her flannel sleeve with the heel of her hand. She’d moved to Ketchikan right after his wedding, working as a fisheries biologist, and he’d only seen her a handful of times since then. Her hair was streaked with silver now, pulled back in a loose braid, and she had a tiny scar above her right eyebrow he didn’t remember, from a kayaking accident she’d mention later. She held his gaze for three full beats, no smile at first, then she crooked a finger at him, and he found himself walking over before he could talk himself out of it.
His knee ached worse the closer he got, and he stumbled over the edge of a wooden crate stacked with mini pumpkins, catching himself on the edge of her stand. Her hand wrapped around his elbow before he could face-plant into a jar of jam, warm and calloused from years of hauling netting and sorting fish, and he caught a whiff of cinnamon and pine resin off her flannel, sharp and sweet. “Rico Marquez,” she said, grinning, her thumb brushing the raised scar on his left cheek, the one he got when a tree branch hit him mid-jump in 2011. “I’d know that dumb scar anywhere. My sister used to say you got it fighting a bear to impress her. I never bought that.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he didn’t recognize coming out of his own mouth. He’d spent so long only speaking in grunts to the cashier at the feed store he forgot what it felt like to laugh around someone who knew pieces of his old life. He tried not to stare at the way her flannel was unbuttoned at the collar, showing a sliver of freckled skin above her faded band tee, and he kicked himself for even noticing. This was his ex-wife’s sister. Small town gossip would have them engaged before the market closed, and his ex would have a fit loud enough to hear all the way from Portland. He told himself to hand her a free bundle of oak for her mom, who was recovering from hip surgery, and leave. He’d dropped off firewood for her mom three times in the last month, when no one else was around, and he’d thought no one knew.
When he held the bundle out to her, their fingers brushed, and he felt a jolt run up his arm, like he’d touched a live wire. He flinched back, knocking a jar of spiced pear jam off the edge of the stand, and she caught it one handed, laughing so hard she snort-laughed, the sound mixing with the band’s twang. “Whoa, easy there, smokejumper,” she said, setting the jam back down. She leaned in a little, close enough he could smell clove shampoo in her hair, and her voice dropped so no one passing by could hear. “I saw you dropping that wood off for mom, by the way. No one else bothered. Not even my sister.”
He froze. He’d thought he’d been sneaky, pulling up at 6 a.m. before anyone was awake, stacking the wood on her back porch and leaving before the lights turned on. He didn’t want anyone thinking he was trying to get in good with the ex’s family, didn’t want anyone talking. “I needed a hand fixing the wood stove at mom’s place tonight,” she said, tapping the edge of the firewood bundle with her fingernail. “I tried last night and almost burned the porch down. I’ll make you peach pie. The kind with the crumb top you used to beg for at Thanksgiving.”
Every voice in his head was screaming no, that this was a bad idea, that everyone would talk, that he was just setting himself up to get hurt again. But he looked at her, grinning, her eyes crinkled at the corners, and he realized he was tired of listening to those voices. Tired of eating frozen dinners alone on his couch, tired of going to bed at 8 p.m. because there was nothing else to do, tired of pretending he liked being alone all the time. He nodded.
He showed up at her mom’s house at 7 p.m. sharp, his old work boots caked in mud, carrying a custom sharpened hatchet he’d finished the night before as a gift, the handle carved with tiny pine trees. She opened the door before he could knock, wearing soft gray sweatpants and a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour shirt, the house behind her smelling like baked peach and burning fir. She took the hatchet from him, her fingers wrapping around his for a long, slow second, and she tugged him over the threshold before he could start overthinking the choice again.
