Rafe Mendez, 52, retired smokejumper turned backcountry firewood delivery owner, had already tucked his keys in his pocket three times in the last 20 minutes, ready to bolt the county end-of-summer barn dance before anyone could corner him into small talk about fire season or his ex-wife. He’d only shown up because his old jump partner Jeb had begged, said the new forest ranger needed intel on the remote drainages west of the valley where cell service died completely, and Rafe was the only person who knew every inch of that land. He leaned against the rough pine barn wall, cold Coors sweating through the paper napkin wrapped around it, watching dust motes dance in the slanted golden hour light filtering through the cracked siding, and was just about to turn for the parking lot when he saw her.
Clara Bennett. His ex-wife’s first cousin, the woman he’d shared exactly three solo conversations with in the 12 years he was married, each one seared into his memory like a brand. She’d moved back to the valley two weeks prior to care for her 82-year-old mom who’d suffered a stroke, he’d heard through the grapevine, but he’d gone out of his way to avoid running into her, convinced the quiet spark he’d always felt around her was some kind of moral failure, even after his ex had left him for a cruise ship magician seven years prior and hadn’t spoken to either of them in five. She spotted him before he could duck behind the stack of hay bales to his left, paused mid-laugh with the woman from the county extension office, and held his eye contact for three full beats too long to be polite, then started walking over.
She was wearing a well-worn navy flannel tied around her waist, cutoff denim shorts that showed a faint white scar on her right thigh from a horse riding accident when she was a kid, scuffed work boots caked with topsoil, a smudge of dirt high on her left cheek from planting apple saplings that morning, he guessed. She stopped so close he could smell the lavender hand soap she used, mixed with pine sap and the vanilla buttercream of the cupcake she’d just eaten on her breath, close enough that if he shifted an inch forward his shoulder would brush hers. “You look like you’re about to make a run for it,” she said, grinning, and reached out to pluck the beer from his hand before he could think to stop her, her calloused vet tech fingers brushing the raised scar running down his left forearm, the one he’d gotten when a dead fir fell on him during his last jump. He flinched, not from pain, from the sharp, warm jolt that shot up his arm straight to his chest.
He told himself he was disgusting for even noticing how her lips wrapped around the mouth of the bottle, for the way his throat went dry when she swallowed and wiped a bead of beer foam off her chin with the back of her hand. It was wrong, wasn’t it? She was family, or had been, once, and he’d spent seven years deliberately shutting out any possibility of something that might make him feel less like a ghost drifting through his own life, convinced any connection would just burn to the ground the way his marriage had. But she was talking now, asking about the lookout tower he’d renovated on the ridge above his property, the one he’d posted photos of to the local hiking group last month, and he found himself answering without the usual defensive edge he used with people who asked about his personal life, telling her about the solar panels he’d installed, the old cast iron wood stove he’d dragged up the three mile trail by himself last spring.
The fiddle band switched to a slow Johnny Cash cover, couples started shuffling closer together on the dirt dance floor, kids were screaming as they chased a stray golden retriever past them, and no one was paying them any attention. She leaned in a little so he could hear her over the music, her shoulder pressing solidly against his now, and he didn’t move away. “I thought about you, you know,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear, her thumb brushing the scar on his forearm again, deliberate this time, not an accident. “After the divorce. I always thought she was an idiot for leaving someone who’d drive three hours in a blizzard just to pick up her mom’s prescription. I felt guilty for thinking it, for years, but when I found out I was moving back here, I hoped I’d run into you.”
The words hit him like a punch to the ribs, and for a second he couldn’t breathe, the old guilt warring with the warm, heavy desire he’d been shoving down for a decade, the desire to stop being alone, to stop feeling like he was only half alive. He didn’t say anything for a long time, just stared at her, at the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, the faint laugh lines around her mouth, the way her hair was falling loose from the braid she’d pulled it into that morning, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t feel the urge to run. “I’ve got a cooler of beer and a bag of those salted caramel cookies you like up at the tower,” he said, and she smiled, bright and warm, and slipped her hand into his, her calloused fingers fitting perfectly between his.
He left his half-finished beer sitting on the hay bale, didn’t even bother to say goodbye to Jeb, knowing his old friend would give him hell about it later but wouldn’t care. They walked through the dirt parking lot to his beat up 2008 Ford F150, he opened the passenger door for her, and when she climbed up her knee brushed his hip, warm and solid, no jolt this time, just quiet, steady comfort. He turned the key, the radio kicked on to a Tom Petty track he’d loved in college, he pulled out onto the gravel road headed for the ridge, and the golden hour sun hit the windshield just right, gilding the edges of her hair as she rolled the window down and let the warm pine-scented wind blow through her hair.
