Ronan Hale is 62, spent 28 years as a U.S. Forest Service fire lookout on the Oregon coast, retired three years back after a fall messed up his left knee bad enough he couldn’t hike the three miles up to the tower every shift. His biggest flaw is he hates deviations from routine, has kept the same weekly schedule down to the minute since his wife Elara died 11 years ago: 7am grocery runs on Tuesdays, 2pm wood cutting on Thursdays, frozen meatloaf and a John Wayne marathon every Saturday night. He only showed up to the volunteer fire department’s summer barbecue because his 16-year-old niece begged him, said she needed a ride and her mom was working a double at the diner.
He’s been leaning against the dented beer cooler for 45 minutes, half-empty IPA in one hand, scanning the parking lot for an exit window, when she reaches past him for a seltzer. Her knuckles brush his, cold from the ice stacked at the bottom of the cooler, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a live wire. She laughs, low and warm, not mocking, and he recognizes her immediately: the woman who moved into the old abandoned cabin three miles up his dirt road three weeks prior. Sun-bleached auburn hair pulled back with a worn leather thong, freckles dusted across her nose, work boots caked in mud, that thin silver band on her left ring finger he’d fixated on the first time he saw her.
He’d spent the last three weeks kicking himself for even noticing her, for the split second shots of her in cutoff jeans hauling book boxes into the cabin that popped into his head unbidden when he was making coffee, when he was fixing the fence line, when he was lying in bed at night. He’d written the crush off as a sad, lonely old man’s perversion, especially when he spotted that ring, had even avoided driving past her cabin at all costs so he wouldn’t be tempted to stare.
Ronan blinks, takes a slow sip of his IPA to buy time. He’s already rehearsing the polite refusal, the line about being busy, the excuse that he doesn’t do side work anymore, when he glances down at her left hand, now resting on the edge of the cooler, and sees the engraving on the silver band: a tiny rose, the date 1972 etched into the side. “That your wedding ring?” he asks before he can think better of it, and she snorts, holding it up for him to see.
“God no. Grandma’s. She gave it to me before she died, said it brought her luck when she was fixing up her own cabin in the 70s. Never been married. Spent too much of my 20s and 30s moving around the country restoring old library collections to settle down.” She pauses, tilts her head, and holds his gaze steady, no awkward look away, no polite smile to defuse the tension. “I thought you were avoiding me, honestly. Every time I wave when I pass your truck, you floor it like the house is on fire.”
Ronan feels the back of his neck heat up, feels that sharp twist of guilt he’s been carrying for weeks melt into something lighter, something warm and giddy he hasn’t felt since Elara first asked him out at a ranger station cookout back in 1989. “I thought you were married,” he admits, and she laughs again, loud enough that a couple standing nearby glance over. “Felt like a creep for even looking.”
“Fair,” she says, and she shifts closer, so their arms are pressed together from elbow to wrist, the rough fabric of her flannel rubbing against his. He can feel the heat of her skin through the shirts, can hear the way her breath catches a little when he doesn’t pull away. “For what it’s worth, I was looking too. Saw you hauling that split oak last week, arms all covered in sawdust. Looked like you knew what you were doing.” She nods at the cooler, then back at his truck parked by the entrance. “I got a blackberry pie cooling on my kitchen counter that I baked this morning. You can take a look at the stove, have a slice. No pressure. If you hate it, you can leave. I won’t even be offended.”
Ronan’s first instinct is to say no, to make an excuse about knee pain, about the western he had planned to watch when he got home, about the wood he needed to stack before the rain came in tomorrow. But he looks at her, at the chipped navy nail polish on her fingers from gluing book spines, at the tiny scar above her left eyebrow, at the way she’s biting her lower lip like she’s nervous he’ll say no, and he nods.
She grins, tosses her empty seltzer can into the trash can by the cooler, and reaches up to brush a stray pine needle off the shoulder of his flannel, her fingers lingering for half a second on his forearm, warm even through the fabric. He unlocks his beat-up Ford F-150 with the fob in his pocket, nods at her dusty Subaru parked two spots over, and says he’ll be right behind her.
