Elias Voss, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, had avoided the Truckee downtown summer block party for 12 straight years. He’d spent 38 years manning remote Sierra Nevada fire towers, 10 days on 4 days off, most of that time alone with a radio, a pair of binoculars, and a stack of tattered paperback novels, so small town crowds felt suffocating, the inevitable questions about how he was holding up after Lynn’s passing felt like tiny, sharp thorns under his skin. He’d only showed up this year because his 17-year-old granddaughter had begged him, said she was manning the lemonade stand for her 4-H club and wanted him to be the first customer. He’d bought three cups, tipped her 20 bucks, and immediately ducked behind the oversized keg cooler to hide from the crowds, planning to slip out as soon as she was distracted.
The cooler hummed low, cold air seeping through the metal sides to chill the back of his flannel shirt even though the sun had only dipped below the mountains 20 minutes prior, the asphalt under his work boots still holding the day’s 82-degree heat. He twisted the cap off a cold IPA, took a long sip, the hoppy bite stinging the back of his throat, when a woman reached past him for a black cherry seltzer, their hands brushing when they both reached for the same shelf at the same time. Her knuckles were cool, dotted with a faint smudge of blue ink on her index finger, and Elias flinched like he’d touched a live wire, yanking his hand back fast enough that he knocked a can of soda off the shelf. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of Merle Haggard playing from a rusted F150 parked by the grill, and bent to pick it up, her long silver-streaked brown hair falling over her shoulder as she moved.
“Relax, I don’t bite,” she said, setting the can back on the shelf, wiping the dust off the seltzer can on her jeans. She was mid-50s, wearing a faded Flaming Lips t-shirt under a denim jacket, scuffed white Converse, a silver owl pendant around her neck. Elias recognized her as Mara, the new county librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, the one the ladies at the diner had been trying to set him up with for three months straight, the one he’d deliberately avoided every time he’d gone to pick up holds for his granddaughter. He mumbled an apology, staring at the scuff on his left boot, already mentally mapping the fastest way to get to his truck without being rude.
She didn’t let him leave. She asked him what he was reading these days, and when he admitted he’d been re reading the same Jack London collection he’d carried in his fire tower for 25 years, her face lit up. She asked him if he’d ever read London’s lesser-known essays about backcountry firefighting, and before he knew it, they’d been talking for 45 minutes, standing so close their shoulders brushed every time a group of kids ran past chasing a stray dog, close enough he could smell jasmine shampoo in her hair and the faint tang of cherry seltzer on her breath when she leaned in to hear him over the noise of the bouncy house. Elias kept waiting for the familiar tightness in his chest, the guilt that always crept in when he felt even a flicker of interest in someone who wasn’t Lynn, but it never came. Instead, he found himself telling her about the time he’d spent three days stuck in a fire tower during a 2011 blizzard, surviving on peanut butter crackers and a half-empty bottle of bourbon, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth like she was embarrassed, and Elias found himself smiling, a real smile, the kind he hadn’t let cross his face in years.
The crowd shifted around them as the sun dipped fully below the mountains, everyone moving toward the empty field at the end of the block for the annual fireworks show. Mara grabbed his hand without asking, her palm warm and calloused, her fingers lacing through his like they belonged there, pulling him through the crowd so they didn’t get separated. Elias froze for half a second, every instinct screaming at him to pull away, to run back to his cabin in the woods where he didn’t have to feel anything, but he didn’t. He let her pull him through the crowd, his hand in hers, her thumb brushing the thick, raised scar on his palm from a 2007 chainsaw accident he’d gotten clearing a fire break, the one Lynn had teased him about for months because he’d been too stubborn to wear work gloves.
They stopped at the edge of the field, far enough away from the crowd that they didn’t have to shout to hear each other, and she didn’t let go of his hand. “How’d you get that?” she asked, running her thumb over the scar again, and Elias told her the whole story, didn’t leave out the part where he’d been showing off for a group of new rangers, didn’t leave out the part where Lynn had driven 45 minutes on a dirt road to pick him up from the ER, yelling at him the whole ride home for being an idiot. She nodded, like she got it, like she understood the kind of stupid, stubborn pride that makes you do dumb things, and when the first firework went off, painting the sky bright red, she didn’t look up at the lights. She looked at him, her eyes dark in the low light, holding eye contact for three full beats longer than was polite, and Elias didn’t look away.
The fireworks boomed overhead, blue and green and gold light painting their faces, and Mara leaned in a fraction of an inch, her shoulder pressing fully against his, her hand still tight around his. When the show ended, the crowd cheering around them, the smell of smoke hanging thick in the cool mountain air, she turned to him, tilting her head to the side. “I picked up a first edition of *White Fang* at an estate sale last month,” she said, her voice soft, only loud enough for him to hear. “Wanna come back to my place to see it? I got fresh baked chocolate chip cookies too, still warm.” Elias thought for half a second about the framed photo of Lynn on his kitchen counter, the note she’d left him the day she went into the hospital telling him to live his life, to not spend the rest of his days alone. He nodded, squeezing her hand a little tighter.
They walked toward her small hatchback parked a block away, the sound of the crowd fading behind them, crickets chirping in the pine trees lining the street. She didn’t let go of his hand the whole walk.
