Cliff Beaumont, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, had spent three months straight after the last wildfire season fixing up his late wife’s rose garden, and the only reason he’d shown up to the county fire department’s annual beer garden fundraiser was his former patrol partner had showed up on his porch at 6 p.m. with a case of his favorite IPA and a threat to hide all his fly-tying supplies if he didn’t come. He leaned against a splintered pine picnic table, scuffed steel-toe boots planted in the still-warm grass, condensation from his can dripping down his wrist to soak the frayed cuff of his work shirt, the one with the faded Bitterroot National Forest patch sewn over the left breast. The smoke had lifted three days prior, the first clear sky they’d had all summer, and the air smelled like hickory from the grill, cut grass, and the faint pine tang drifting down from the hills.
The first time she bumped into him, he was half-watching a group of volunteer firefighters play cornhole, and he almost dropped his beer when her shoulder slammed into his side, a paper plate of pulled pork sliders tilting to dribble a dollop of BBQ sauce right below his patch. “Shit, I am so sorry,” she said, laughing a little like she was used to tripping over her own feet, and he looked down to meet hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, sun streaks in her dark brown hair pulled back in a messy braid. She didn’t step back right away, their shoulders still pressed together, and she swiped at the sauce with a crumpled napkin, her knuckles brushing his chest through the thin cotton of his shirt. He flinched before he could stop himself, old reflex kicking in—he hadn’t let anyone get that close on purpose in seven years, not since Linda’s stroke had left him alone in their little cabin off the north fork road.
He recognized her, vaguely—Marnie, 54, the new part-time librarian who’d moved to town six months prior, the one who always left a stack of old wilderness memoirs on the hold shelf for him even when he didn’t ask for them. He’d avoided talking to her up until that point, half out of stubborn loyalty to Linda, half out of embarrassment that he’d spent more than a few afternoons lingering in the library just to listen to her low, smoke-rough voice help kids check out picture books. He opened his mouth to say it was fine, no harm done, but she cut him off, nodding at the scar across his left knuckle, the one he’d gotten trying to pull a curious grizzly cub away from a hiker’s cooler back in 2017. “I’ve heard the stories about that,” she said, leaning in a little so he could smell lavender shampoo and the faint, sweet tang of the hard cider she was drinking. “Figured the ranger with the grizzly scar would be the only person in town who knows where the hidden swimming hole up the creek is.”
He fought the urge to step back, his chest tight with that familiar, sharp mix of disgust and want—disgusted that he was even entertaining the thought of talking to another woman, like he was cheating on Linda, want coiling low in his gut because no one had looked at him like that, like he was something interesting, in years. The band started playing a Johnny Cash cover off to the side, the bass thrumming low enough he could feel it through the soles of his boots, and she nodded toward the edge of the park, where his beat-up 2008 Ford F150 was parked under a ponderosa pine. “You wanna get away from the noise?” she asked, and he nodded before he could overthink it.
They sat on the tailgate of his truck, legs dangling, their knees brushing every time one of them shifted. She told him she’d moved to Montana from Chicago after her divorce, sick of the crowds and constant sirens, that she’d spent every weekend since she got there hiking the public trails but hadn’t dared go off the marked paths alone. He told her about Linda, about the rose garden he tended for an hour every morning, about how he’d spent the last seven years convinced he’d never do anything fun or new again without her. She didn’t say anything for a minute, just reached over to pluck a pine needle off the collar of his shirt, her fingers brushing the side of his neck, warm and soft, and he didn’t flinch this time. “She wouldn’t want you sitting in that cabin alone forever, you know,” she said, quiet, like she wasn’t prying, just stating a fact he’d been too scared to admit to himself.
The sun dipped below the hills, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the string lights strung across the beer garden flickered on, warm gold across her face. He asked her if she wanted to hike up to the swimming hole the next Saturday, said he’d bring turkey sandwiches and the old rubber inner tube he kept in his shed for floating. She grinned, leaning in to kiss his cheek, and he turned his head a little, their lips brushing for half a second, soft, no pressure, no rush. He reached into the truck’s center console to pull out the crumpled trail map he’d marked up back in June, tucking it into his shirt pocket before she could see the tiny heart he’d drawn next to the overlook where he’d proposed to Linda 36 years earlier.
