Clay Bennett, 58, retired forest ranger, leaned against the rough cedar siding of The Spur, the town’s only dive bar, and stared at the dented bottom of his IPA. He’d only shown up to the summer block party because his former patrol partner had shown up on his porch at 4 p.m. with a six pack and a threat to mow down his prized tomato patch if he spent another Saturday alone with his old hiking logs and a rerun of *Gunsmoke*. Seven years after his wife Ellen died, Clay still treated all social events like a mandatory wildfire briefing he’d rather skip. He hated the small talk, hated how everyone in town still looked at him like he was one wrong comment away from breaking, hated the blowhard mayor’s constant grandstanding about “progress” that meant clearcutting old growth to build luxury vacation cabins no local could afford. The air smelled like charred bratwurst, citronella, and cut alfalfa, and a cover of Tom Petty’s *Free Fallin’* hummed low from the bar’s rusted outdoor speakers, tinny but familiar.
He’d just resolved to slip out the side alley when someone tripped over a kid’s discarded BMX bike two feet from him, and he reacted on instinct, reaching out to wrap a calloused hand around their elbow to steady them. It was Lila Marlow, the mayor’s wife. He’d only seen her a handful of times since she’d moved to town 18 months prior, married to the 62-year-old mayor six months after she’d left a corporate law job in Portland, the subject of every dinner party gossip circle for 100 square miles. She was 52, with streaks of silver running through her chestnut hair pulled back in a loose braid, wearing faded high-waisted jeans and a white linen button down unbuttoned enough to show a faint scar at the base of her throat, no makeup, none of the diamond jewelry the town rumor mill swore she had stashed in a safe. Her skin was warm under his hand, sun-warmed, a little rough at the elbow from gardening, he noticed, before he realized he was holding on too long and let go. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that cut through the noise of a group of teens yelling over a cornhole game, and didn’t step back, even when a group of people pushed past them heading for the grill. “Thanks,” she said, and her hazel eyes held his, no polite flick away like everyone else did when they talked to the grieving widower ranger. “I swear that bike has been a land mine for an hour.”
Clay’s jaw tightened. He knew he shouldn’t talk to her. The mayor was a petty, vindictive son of a bitch who’d already tried to yank funding for the volunteer trail maintenance program Clay ran, just because Clay had testified against his proposed development at the last town hall. More than that, though, he felt a hot twist of shame in his gut at the jolt of something he hadn’t felt in seven years when he’d touched her, something that wasn’t grief or boredom or anger. He nodded, mumbled a no problem, and turned to head back to the bar for another beer, fully planning to escape before she could say anything else. But when he turned around from the bar, she was right there, leaning against the counter waiting for her own drink, her shoulder brushing his when she shifted her weight. “You’re Clay, right?” she said, before he could step away. “I saw your name on the old trail signs up on Trail 412. I’ve been hiking that route every weekend, and I can never find the hidden alpine lake everyone talks about. All the posted maps cut it out.”
He blinked, surprised. No one had asked him about trail routes in years, not since he’d stepped back from the full-time ranger job. “The park service cut it from the public maps in ‘09,” he said, before he could stop himself. “Too many tourists were trashing the shoreline, leaving garbage, scaring off the loons that nest there.” She leaned in a little, then, close enough that he could smell her perfume, something sharp and green, like pine and lavender, no sickly sweet florals he’d expected from a big city lawyer. She nodded, like she already knew that, and he noticed the faint smudge of dirt under her left fingernail, the way she was twisting a plain silver ring on her right hand, no wedding band in sight. “I’ve been fighting the mayor on that development he wants to put up right by the trailhead,” she said, her voice low enough only he could hear it. “He says no one uses that land anyway. I’m trying to prove him wrong. I need photos of the lake, the nesting sites, something to show the county commission.”
They talked for 40 minutes then, him leaning against the bar, her leaning in close, their shoulders brushing every time someone squeezed past the narrow entrance, her laughing at his story about the time he’d had to chase a stray goat off a fire tower in 2019, him smiling so wide his cheeks hurt, a feeling he’d forgotten existed. He didn’t even notice the mayor walking up until the man clapped Lila so hard on the back she stumbled forward a little, her hand landing on Clay’s chest to steady herself. “There you are,” the mayor said, loud and braying, not even glancing at Clay. “Come help me run the raffle, everyone’s asking for you.” Lila rolled her eyes so subtly only Clay caught it, and she squeezed his wrist, quick and firm, before she stepped away, pressing a crumpled scrap of receipt paper into his palm as she went. The mayor didn’t notice, already turning to yell at a volunteer who’d dropped a stack of raffle tickets. Clay waited 10 minutes, his hand tight around the paper, before he unfolded it. Scrawled in blue ink, messy and slanted: Trail 412 head, 7 a.m. tomorrow. Bring water. And a trail map.
He sat on his porch until 2 a.m. that night, staring at the paper, going back and forth. He told himself he was crazy, that getting involved with the mayor’s wife would get him run out of town, that he was just setting himself up for more hurt, that he didn’t need any more chaos in his quiet little life. But he kept thinking about the way she’d looked when he’d talked about the loons, like she actually cared, like she wasn’t just humoring the weird old widower ranger. He packed his day pack at 6 a.m., threw a folded copy of the 2008 trail map, two bottles of cold water, and a pack of the peanut butter granola bars Ellen used to make for his hikes into the bag, and drove to the trailhead 10 minutes early. He was leaning against the side of his beat up 2008 Ford F-150, sipping black coffee from a chipped thermos, when he saw her beat up Subaru Outback pull into the dirt parking lot. She hopped out, wearing scuffed hiking boots, a gray flannel tied around her waist, no makeup, holding a thermos of her own, grinning so wide the crinkles at the corners of her eyes deepened. She walked over to him, and held out a paper bag with two still-warm breakfast burritos from the diner on Main Street, her fingers brushing his when he took it. He didn’t pull away.
