Ronan Hale, 62, spent 34 years mapping wildfire hotspots for the U.S. Forest Service before a 2021 knee injury from a falling lodgepole pine forced his early retirement. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s hidden away in his off-grid cabin outside La Grande, Oregon, for the eight years since his wife Lori died of ovarian cancer, turning down every community invitation like they were lit matches he didn’t want to catch. He only showed up to the town’s annual summer street fair that July because his knee was flaring too bad to hike the backcountry like he usually did to avoid the noise, and his sister had threatened to drop off a casserole every night for a month if he skipped again.
The sun baked the back of his neck through his faded Forest Service ball cap, the air thick with the smell of fried Oreos and charcoal from the barbecue booths, and he was already planning his escape when a sharp, sweet, spicy scent hit his nose. He followed it to a booth draped in yellow gingham, stacked with glass jars of honey, labels handwritten in messy cursive: Wild Blackberry, Cinnamon Infused, Hot Honey, Fir Needle Smoked. The woman behind the counter was wiping honey off her forearm with a rag, her auburn hair streaked with gray pulled back in a braid dotted with stray pine needles, a canvas apron slung over her shoulders stained with wax and bee stings. He spotted the thin, silvery scar snaking across her left wrist first, the exact same shape and angle as the scar on his right forearm from a falling snag during the 2017 Eagle Creek fire.
She looked up and caught him staring, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth that made his chest feel tight, like he’d breathed in too much smoke. “You gonna stand there gawking all afternoon, or you wanna try a sample?” Her voice was rough, like she’d spent decades yelling over wind and fire engines, and Ronan felt his own mouth twitch in response, a smile he hadn’t pulled out in years. He stepped closer to the booth, boots scuffing the asphalt, and leaned against the wooden edge, the gap between them no more than two feet. He nodded at her wrist. “Bear? 2017, Eagle Creek?”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she leaned in too, their proximity making the scent of her cedar shampoo mix with the honey in the air. “How’d you guess?” She held up her wrist, turning it so the scar caught the sun, and Ronan pulled up the sleeve of his flannel to show her his own scar, the raised pink flesh still sensitive to sharp temperature changes. “I was mapping hotspots for that burn. Snag fell on me when I was hiking a fire line.” She laughed, a loud, unselfconscious sound, and reached across the booth to hand him a cracker slathered in thick amber hot honey. Their fingers brushed when he took it, the rough callus on the side of her index finger from handling hive tools scraping against his knuckle, and Ronan felt a jolt go up his arm, a sensation he’d written off as dead with Lori.
He ate the cracker, the honey bursting with heat and wildflower sweetness, and fought the conflicting thoughts warring in his head. Half of him felt sick with guilt, like he was betraying Lori by even noticing how the sun caught the gold flecks in the woman’s green eyes, like he was cheating on a promise he’d made the day she died to never love anyone else. The other half was buzzing, alive in a way he hadn’t felt since he flew his last helicopter mapping run, the quiet thrill of talking to someone who didn’t look at him like he was a broken widower to be pitied, someone who knew exactly what it felt like to stand in a burning forest and wonder if you’d make it out. A drip of honey slid down his thumb, and he licked it off, catching her watching the movement, her smile widening just a fraction.
“Name’s Mara,” she said, wiping a smudge of honey off her chin with the back of her hand. “I moved out here two years ago, run a small beekeeping operation on the west side of the burn scar. Got a batch of fir needle smoked honey I just canned yesterday, made with needles from the stands we both worked in 2017. Fair closes in an hour. You wanna come back to my place and try it? Got a porch swing that faces the regrowth, cold beer in the fridge.”
Ronan hesitated for three full seconds, every self-protective instinct in his body screaming to say no, to go home to his quiet cabin and his old photos of Lori and pretend this interaction never happened. Then he looked at Mara, no expectation in her eyes, just a quiet invitation, and he nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
He followed her pickup out to her property an hour later, the sun dipping low over the hills, painting the new green growth on the burn scar pink and orange. They sat on her porch swing, the honey thick and smoky on their tongues, the low hum of the hives in the yard mixing with the sound of crickets in the brush. She shifted closer to him when the breeze picked up, her shoulder pressing firm against his, and neither of them pulled away. Ronan watched a hawk circle over the regrowing pines, and didn’t even feel the familiar twinge of guilt when he rested his hand on the swing between them, his pinky brushing hers.
