Mace Herrera, 62, retired smokejumper with a scar slicing thick across his left forearm and a habit of avoiding small talk like it’s a wind-driven wildfire, only showed up to the Bend summer street fair because his 16-year-old granddaughter begged. She’d spent three weeks squeezing lemons for her 4H fundraiser, and he’d promised he’d man the booth for an hour while she ran to get a funnel cake. He leaned against the splintered wooden table, sipping a cold hazy IPA from the food truck down the block, sun seeping through pine boughs strung above the street, bluegrass fiddle notes curling through the smell of fried dough and cut grass. He’d already turned down three neighbors who tried to chat about the local fire ban, preferring to stare at the scuff on his work boots instead of feign interest in their backyard fire pit drama.
The booth next to his granddaughter’s was stacked floor to ceiling with used books, and the woman running it was bent over the bottom shelf reaching for a tattered copy of *White Fang* when her flannel sleeve brushed the raised, pink skin of his forearm. Mace flinched hard. No one touched that scar. Not doctors, not his grandkids, not even his sister when she’d helped him change bandages after the 2017 Oregon blaze that put him in the burn unit for three weeks. He was half ready to snap a sharp “watch it” when she straightened up, and he froze. Hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, sun streaking silver through dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, a faint burn scar snaking up her own right wrist. “Shit, I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice low and rough, like she spent half her time yelling over wind or campfires, and before he could stop her she brushed her thumb lightly over the edge of his scar, not tentative, like she knew exactly what it felt like. “I recognize that mark. Same fire, right? I was on the ground crew outside Sisters. Got this one when a burning branch fell on my radio.” She tapped the scar on her wrist, and Mace’s throat went dry.
He didn’t tell her to get lost. He didn’t step away. He nodded, and before he knew it they were talking, the noise of the fair fading to background static. Her name was Elara, 56, she’d quit the park service two years prior to open a tiny used bookstore on Bend’s west side, still spent every weekend hiking the backcountry trails he used to jump into. She remembered him, she said, from his wife Clara’s funeral eight years prior. She was Clara’s younger cousin, the one who brought blackberry jam to their Christmas dinner every year, the one Clara used to gush about after their girls’ camping trips. Mace felt stupid for not recognizing her right away, but back then he’d been half checked out, either gone on a fire call or buried in paperwork when she’d come over. She leaned against the edge of the book booth, her knee brushing the outside of his denim thigh, and didn’t shift away when he didn’t move. When he laughed at her story about chasing a bear off a campground full of drunk tourists, she held his gaze, her eyes soft, like she was seeing past the gruff, closed off guy he’d been for the last eight years.
The weight of what he was doing hit him halfway through her story about getting stuck in a snowstorm on Broken Top. He’d sworn the day Clara died that he’d never let anyone get that close again. It felt like a betrayal, like he was throwing away 32 years of marriage for a pretty stranger who shared a scar with him. He tensed, ready to make an excuse to leave, when Elara paused, tilting her head like she could read the panic on his face. “Clara used to tell me if she ever went before you, she’d haunt you if you spent the rest of your life moping in that cabin of yours,” she said, quiet enough that no one passing by could hear. “Said you were the worst at being alone, even if you pretended you liked it.” Mace’s chest ached. That was exactly the kind of thing Clara would say. She’d teased him for decades about how he’d pout for three days if she went out of town without him, even if he told everyone he loved the quiet.
His granddaughter bounded over a minute later, holding a half-eaten funnel cake covered in powdered sugar, saying her mom was parked at the end of the block to pick her up. “You gonna be okay, Gramps?” she asked, glancing between Mace and Elara, a tiny smirk on her face that told him she already knew what was going on. He nodded, not taking his eyes off Elara. When his granddaughter was gone, Elara wiped powdered sugar off the corner of his mouth with her thumb, the callus on the tip catching on his stubble, and asked if he wanted to come back to her place. She had a jar of that blackberry jam he liked, she said, and a porch that overlooked the Deschutes River, no crowds, no chatter, just the sound of the water and the crickets.
For half a second, he hesitated. Old guilt nipped at the back of his throat, the voice in his head that said he didn’t get to be happy anymore. Then he thought of Clara, laughing at him when he burned pancakes on their 30th anniversary, telling him he’d better find someone who liked his terrible fire jokes when she was gone. He said yes. They packed up the last of her books into her beat up pickup, and when she climbed into the passenger seat, her shoulder pressed solid against his chest for half a beat, he rested his hand light on her waist to steady her, didn’t pull away until she was settled, grinning up at him. He shut the passenger door, walked around to the driver’s side, climbed in, the smell of lavender and old paper wrapping around him as she pulled out of the lot, heading west toward the river.
