Elias Voss, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, stood behind the county fire safety booth at the Missoula summer street fair and wished he’d said no when the parks department called. He’d spent 32 years chasing blazes across Idaho and Montana, had outrun two crown fires and a 2009 lightning strike that took out three of his crew, but crowds of screaming kids and overperfumed tourists still made his skin crawl. He sipped lukewarm seltzer from a plastic cup, picked at a frayed edge of his fire-retardant work shirt, and handed out cheap plastic fire helmets to toddlers whose parents barely made eye contact. His wife Karen had died eight years prior from ovarian cancer, and he’d spent every day since clinging to rigid routine: 6 a.m. coffee, county carpentry jobs until 3, a single bourbon on the rocks at the dive bar off Highway 93, bed by 9. He’d turned down every invitation to fish with old crew mates, every half-hearted set-up from the church ladies down the street, convinced letting anyone new in would be a betrayal of the 27 years he’d had with Karen.
The smell of fried dough and charcoal from the grill nearby hit his nose right before he saw her. Lila Marlow, 58, mother of Jake Marlow, the rookie on his last fire crew before he retired. He’d only seen her twice before: once at Jake’s fire academy graduation, where she’d brought a tin of chocolate chip cookies so good the rest of the crew had stolen half of his share, and once at the 2017 end-of-season cookout, where she’d laughed so hard at his story about a baby moose wandering into fire camp she’d snort-laughed beer out of her nose. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts, a faded Tom Petty t-shirt, flannel tied around her waist, silver hoops glinting in the late afternoon sun, a smudge of cherry pie filling on her left thumb. She walked straight for the booth, no hesitation, and leaned in for a hug before he could react. Her perfume was cedar and vanilla, her shoulder warm where it pressed against his chest for the two seconds the hug lasted, and he felt a jolt run up his spine he hadn’t felt since he was 19 kissing a girl for the first time behind his high school gym.
She leaned against the edge of the booth, her arm brushing his every time a kid darted past and she shifted out of the way, and asked how he’d been. He gave her the standard answer: fine, work’s steady, the fishing’s good this year. She didn’t buy it. She tilted her head, dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners, and said she’d heard he’d turned down Jake’s invitation to go elk hunting the previous fall, that Jake had been hurt. Elias sighed, admitted he’d been avoiding any situation that didn’t fit his boring little routine, that he was scared of messing up the quiet life he’d built after Karen died. She nodded, didn’t push, just told him she’d moved back to town three months prior, divorced from her husband of 30 years who’d left her for a 28-year-old realtor in Bozeman. She reached for a plastic fire helmet to hand to a passing toddler, and her hand brushed his where it rested on the counter. Her skin was soft, sun-warmed, and he had to fight the urge to wrap his fingers around hers.
He spent the next 45 minutes talking to her, forgetting all about the booth, forgetting the crowd, forgetting the seltzer in his hand that had gone flat. She told him she was working part time at the animal shelter down the street, that she’d adopted three senior dogs in the last year, that she still baked those chocolate chip cookies every Sunday. He told her about the cabin he was fixing up for the county up in the Bitterroot Mountains, about the time he’d seen a wolf pack take down a deer right off his porch the previous winter. She kept eye contact the whole time, no looking away, no checking her phone, laughing at every dumb joke he made, even the one about the guy who tried to put out a campfire with a case of beer. When his shift at the booth ended, she wiped the cherry pie filling off her thumb with a napkin, leaned in a little closer, and asked if he wanted to get a beer at the dive bar down the street.
His first instinct was to say no. He told himself it was wrong, that she was Jake’s mom, that everyone in town knew everyone’s business, that the church ladies would talk, that he was betraying Karen by even considering it. He opened his mouth to turn her down, then looked at her, at the faint scar above her left eyebrow she’d gotten when she fell off a horse as a kid, at the strands of silver mixed in with her dark brown hair, at the way she was biting her lip like she was nervous he’d say no, and he said yes.
They sat in the back booth of the bar, the same one he sat in every night, and she ordered a draft IPA, he ordered his usual bourbon on the rocks. She rested her hand on the table an inch away from his, not pushing, not making a move, just talking. She told him she’d always thought he was cute back when Jake was on his crew, that she’d noticed how he’d stayed late to help Jake fix his beat up Ford F-150 after he crashed it into a fence, that her ex had never been that kind of guy. She said she knew what it was like to lose someone you loved, even if it was a divorce instead of a death, that she knew how scary it was to let someone new see you when you felt broken. He told her he’d spent the last eight years feeling like he was just going through the motions, that he thought if he changed anything about his life he’d forget the sound of Karen’s laugh, the way she made pancakes on Saturday mornings that were always burnt on the bottom. She reached across the table, rested her hand on top of his, and said that loving someone new didn’t mean you loved the person you lost any less.
He walked her to her beat up Subaru Outback an hour later, the sun setting pink and orange over the mountains, the air cool enough that he could see his breath when he exhaled. She stopped at the driver’s side door, turned to face him, and leaned up to kiss him soft on the mouth. She tasted like cherry pie and IPA, her hand on the back of his neck warm, and he didn’t pull away. She pulled back after a few seconds, smiled, and told him she’d meet him for breakfast at the diner on Main Street Saturday at 8, that she’d bring the chocolate chip cookies. He nodded, watched her climb into her truck, wave, and pull out of the parking lot. He pulled the napkin she’d scrawled her phone number on out of his pocket, folded it carefully, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his work shirt, right next to the folded photo of Karen he kept there. He turned to walk to his own truck, the cool night air on his face, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel guilty for looking forward to Saturday.
