Elias Voss, 53, spent 18 years perched 120 feet up in northern Minnesota fire towers, spotting wispy first puffs of smoke before they turned into thousand-acre blazes. Now he runs a one-man firewood delivery service, keeps his phone on silent 90% of the time, and avoids town events like they’re coated in poison ivy. His only real flaw? He still holds a grudge against the entire town for taking his ex-wife’s side when she left him for a traveling tractor salesman seven years prior, even though the divorce was finalized three years back. He’d only caved to coming to the annual fall chili cookoff because his buddy Ray owed him a free transmission rebuild, and Ray had threatened to hoard the parts if Elias didn’t show up and “stop acting like a hermit who only talks to oak trees.”
The air reeked of smoked pork, cumin, and burnt marshmallows from the kids’ s’mores pit off to the side. Elias was halfway through a paper bowl of venison chili, picking out the pickled jalapeños he hated, when a wool coat brushed his elbow hard enough to slosh a drop of chili down his work jeans. He looked up, ready to snap, and froze. Maren Hale. His ex-wife’s cousin, the one he’d only met once, at his wedding 10 years prior, when she’d showed up with a camera slung around her neck and snuck him a beer during the boring speeches. She was 38 now, her blonde hair streaked with a single silver streak at the temple, her boots caked in mud from hiking, the same beat-up camera hanging off her shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” she said, grinning, and leaned in close enough that he could smell pine and lavender shampoo on her hair. “Been chasing a fox around the park for 20 minutes, I’m still half running.” She nodded at the bowl in his hand. “Still picking out all the pickles, huh? I remembered that from the wedding. You hid a whole plate of them under your seat so Marnie wouldn’t yell at you for wasting food.”
Elias blinked. No one had remembered that small, stupid detail in years. He’d spent so long being “the guy Marnie left” that he’d forgotten anyone knew anything else about him. The little flutter in his chest was immediately squashed by the voice in his head yelling that this was a terrible idea. Everyone in this town knew who she was. If anyone saw them talking for more than 10 seconds, the gossip would spread faster than the 2019 birch fire he’d spotted from his tower.
She slid onto the picnic bench next to him, her knee brushing his under the table, and didn’t move away when he didn’t shift back. She told him she’d moved back to town two months prior to take care of her mom, who was recovering from a stroke, and she’d been doing wildlife photography for a national park contract on the side. She teased him about the old fire tower stories she’d heard from Ray, asked if it was as peaceful up there as people said. When he told her about the time he’d watched a moose walk around the base of the tower for three hours, licking salt off the support beams, she laughed so hard her shoulder pressed into his bicep, and he didn’t move away.
The sun was dipping low, painting the tops of the maple trees neon orange, when she leaned in again, her voice low enough that no one at the next table could hear. “I’ve wanted to go up that old tower of yours to get sunset shots for weeks. Ray said you still have a key. You wanna take me?”
He hesitated for a full 10 seconds, glancing over at the group of Marnie’s friends standing by the chili tables, already glancing over at them. Then he nodded. The drive up the dirt road to the tower was quiet, the crunch of gravel under the tires mixing with the old Johnny Cash album playing on his truck’s radio. When they climbed the creaky metal stairs to the top, the wind hit them sharp and cold, stinging his cheeks. She leaned against the railing, lifting her camera to snap shots of the valley below, and for a second he was back in his old spot, scanning the trees, the quiet wrapping around him like a blanket.
She turned to him, camera hanging loose around her neck, and her voice was soft when she spoke. “I had a crush on you at the wedding, you know. Never said anything. You were so happy back then, I didn’t want to mess that up.” She stepped a little closer, her boots almost touching his. “Figured now might be a better time.”
He reached out slow, his calloused hand wrapping around her wrist, just light enough that she could pull away if she wanted. She didn’t. When he kissed her, the wind was tangling her hair in his face, the distant sound of a loon calling from the lake down below mixing with the quiet hum of her camera strap rubbing against her coat.
They climbed back down the tower 20 minutes later, her hand tucked into the pocket of his flannel shirt, no rush to get back to town. He stopped at his small cabin off the main road on the way back, grabbed a couple mugs out of the cabinet to heat up hot cocoa on the wood stove. She set her camera bag on the kitchen table, kicked her boots off by the door, and leaned against the counter, watching him stir mini marshmallows into the steaming mugs, no sign of leaving any time soon.
