Milo Rourke, 62, retired U.S. Forest Service fire spotter, leans against the beer cooler at the Douglas County fire department charity barbecue, hat pulled low over his salt-and-pepper hair. He’d avoided every local community event for eight years, ever since his wife Diane died in a rain-slicked car crash outside Portland, but his old crew chief left three unhinged voicemails begging him to show up—they were handing out a plaque for the 2003 Umpqua Complex fire, the blaze he’d spotted 17 days early from a north ridge tower, eating nothing but canned beans and expired granola bars while wind howled 50 miles an hour around him. The air reeks of charcoal smoke, pine, and cheap citrus body spray from the teen volunteers running the hot dog stand, and he’s already mentally mapping his exit route when a warmer, sweeter scent cuts through the noise: baked blackberry, brown butter, a faint tang of wild honey.
He follows the smell to the pie auction booth, and there she is. Lena Voss, 58, gray hair braided down her back streaked with leftover honey blonde, flannel shirt rolled up to elbows dusted with flour, a faint purple bee sting swelling on her left wrist. She’s teasing a 10-year-old who tried to sneak a bite of peach pie, and her laugh is rough, graveled from years of yelling over mountain wind to her seasonal hive hands. She catches him staring, one eyebrow arched, and he freezes mid-sip of lukewarm Coors, heat creeping up his neck. He’s spent eight years dodging church ladies and his nosy sister-in-law, all of them either demanding he “stay loyal to Diane’s memory” or trying to set him up with their widowed cousins, and he’d fully planned to be back in his quiet off-grid cabin by 7 p.m.
She pushes off the booth edge and crosses to him, close enough that he can smell lavender soap under the flour and pie scent, the toe of her work boot brushing his. “You’re Milo, right? The fire spotter. I’ve got 42 hives up on that north ridge you used to man. Saw your old tower last week, the one with the rusted moose weather vane on the roof.” Her knee brushes his when she shifts her weight, and he can feel the heat of it through his faded denim jeans, his throat going dry enough that he has to clear it twice before he can answer. He tells her about the raccoon that stole his entire week’s supply of peanut butter crackers off the tower ledge in 2004, and she laughs so hard she snorts, a loud, unselfconscious sound that makes the corner of his mouth twitch up before he can stop it.
He ends up perched on the picnic table next to her booth for an hour, scrolling through photos of her hives on her cracked iPhone 11, their knees pressed together the whole time, neither of them moving to shift away. She tells him she travels up and down the West Coast every year, moving her hives to follow wildflower blooms, has been on her own since her ex-husband left her for a yoga instructor in Santa Fe 12 years back. He tells her about the lightning strike he spotted 22 miles out on a hazy afternoon in 2001, called it in fast enough to save three small unincorporated towns from burning to the ground. She hands him a sample slice of her blackberry honey pie, and their fingers brush when he takes the paper plate, the rough callus on her index finger catching on the scar across his knuckle from a 1998 fire ax accident. A jolt zips up his arm, and he has to look away for a second, embarrassed like he’s 16 again fumbling through his first makeout behind the high school gym.
Hate pricks at his chest a second later, sharp and hot. His sister-in-law told him six months after Diane’s funeral that dating anyone else would be a slap in her face, that he owed it to her to stay alone for the rest of his life, and he’d believed her for eight whole years. But Lena doesn’t mention Diane, doesn’t ask him if he’s “lonely out in that cabin,” doesn’t give him that pitying look every other person in town shoots him when they think he’s not paying attention. When the pie auction starts, the announcer holds up her last blackberry honey pie, and he bids $120 before he can think better of it, three times the going rate, more than the local diner owner was willing to pay to add it to his summer menu.
He’s leaning against the side of a beat-up 1998 fire truck parked on the edge of the lot 20 minutes later, holding the pie in a crinkly paper box, when she walks over, holding two plastic forks and a jar of her raw wild honey tucked under her arm. “You didn’t have to drop that much cash,” she says, grinning, leaning in so her shoulder presses solid against his. “I would’ve given you a whole pie for free if you’d just asked.” He admits he bid that high because he didn’t want to leave without an excuse to see her again, that he’d been 10 seconds from bailing for his truck before she walked over to him earlier. She doesn’t say anything for a beat, then reaches up and swipes a smudge of flour from her cheek onto his, laughing when he huffs and pretends to wipe it off.
They drive up to the north ridge an hour later, the pie sitting on the bench seat between them, windows rolled down so the cool mountain air blows through the cab, carrying the scent of pine and wild clover. They climb onto the hood of his dented 2006 Ford F-150, eating pie straight out of the box, watching the town lights blink on far below as the sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in streaks of tangerine and deep purple. She feeds him a bite of pie, and sweet blackberry juice drips down his chin; she swipes it off with her thumb, licks it off slow, her dark eyes locked on his the whole time. He rests his hand on the small of her back, the soft worn flannel of her shirt warm under his palm, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel guilty for wanting to stay.
