Roy Pritchard, 62, retired wildfire hotshot crew foreman, leaned back on the splintered picnic table bench and stared at the foam ring circling the bottom of his IPA. He’d only dragged himself to the Missoula County Fair that night because his old crew was getting a distinguished service award for the 2017 Lolo Peak fire, and he couldn’t say no to the kids he’d led through half a dozen infernos. The second the ceremony ended, he’d bolted for the beer garden, dodging the neighbors who still gave him that tight, pitying smile seven years after his wife Elaine died of ovarian cancer. He hated being the town’s resident grieving widower, hated that people only ever asked him how he was holding up instead of asking if he’d caught any good trout lately, or if the new solar panels on his cabin had survived the last winter storm.
He was halfway through planning his exit route when someone slid onto the bench across from him, thigh brushing his under the table hard enough that he jolted. He looked up, and his jaw tightened. Lila Marquez, 48, Elaine’s second cousin, the woman his wife had spent 30 years warning him away from, was grinning at him like she owned the place. She was wearing cutoffs and a faded Pearl Jam tee, sun streaked through her dark curly hair, and he could smell coconut sunscreen and cedar perfume curling off her, sharp enough to cut through the scent of fried oreos and spilled beer hanging over the garden. She held his gaze, unblinking, when he frowned at her, no hint of the polite deference everyone else gave him these days.
“Thought that was you,” she said, reaching across the table to pluck his beer out of his hand before he could stop her. Her fingers brushed his, calloused from what looked like years of working with her hands, a thin white scar wrapping around her left wrist that he recognized from the 1994 family barbecue where she’d fallen off her brother’s bronco and landed on a barbed wire fence. He didn’t pull away, even though every voice in his head was screaming that this was a bad idea, that Elaine would kill him if she saw this. She took a long sip, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, and nodded at the scuffed work boots he’d had resoled three times. “You still wear those things? I swear you had them when you were 30.”
He huffed, half annoyed, half amused. He’d always thought Lila was reckless, the kind of woman who’d kiss a stranger in a bar parking lot just for the thrill of it, the kind of woman Elaine said was “bad news for anyone who likes their life quiet.” He’d avoided her at every family gathering for decades, had always brushed off her flirty comments like they were static. But now, sitting across from her, no Elaine to roll her eyes and pull him away, he found he didn’t want to leave. “They still fit,” he said, leaning forward a little, his knee brushing hers again on purpose this time. “What are you even doing here? Last I heard you were living in Bozeman, married to that real estate guy.”
She snorted, set the beer back down between them, their fingers brushing again when he reached for it. “Got divorced last year. Moved back to run that horse rescue out off the highway to Seeley Lake. You’d know that if you ever left your cabin, Roy. Everyone in town knows you’ve been holed up up there, acting like you’re serving a life sentence for something you didn’t do.”
The comment hit him square in the chest, sharper than any flying embers he’d ever dodged on a fire line. No one had said that to him before, no one had dared call him out for hiding. He stared at her, and she didn’t look away, her dark eyes soft, no pity in them, just something warm, something hungry. He realized he’d spent so long feeling guilty for all the time he’d been gone on fire calls when Elaine was sick, so long convinced he didn’t deserve to feel anything but grief, that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be seen as a person, not a widower.
She leaned across the table then, her hair falling over her shoulder and brushing his forearm, warm and soft. “I used to drop care packages off for your crew when you were fighting the Lolo fire,” she said, her voice lower now, enough that he had to lean in to hear her over the band playing at the other end of the garden. “Elaine never told you, did she? I always thought you were too good for that quiet, perfect life she wanted for you. You’ve got fire in you still, Roy. You don’t have to bury it just because she’s gone.”
He sat there for a long second, the buzz of the fair fading into the background, every part of him warring between the guilt that had wrapped around him for seven years and the low, thrumming desire he’d thought was dead a long time ago. He didn’t feel disgusted, didn’t feel like he was betraying Elaine. He felt lighter than he had in years, like someone had cut the weight he’d been carrying off his shoulders.
He finished the last of the beer, stood up, and held his hand out to her. The calluses on her palm matched his when she took it, her fingers fitting between his like they’d been made to. “There’s a diner down the road that makes the best cherry pie in the state,” he said, nodding toward the exit. “You want to come with?”
She grinned, stood up, and let him lead her through the crowd, his hand resting light on the small of her back when he held the garden gate open for her.
