Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years chasing wildfires across the Western U.S. before retiring to a creaky cottage on the Oregon coast with his wife Eileen. Six months after they moved in, Eileen was gone, taken fast by pancreatic cancer, and Ronan had been half-living ever since—tending to the overgrown rhododendrons in their yard, filing paperwork for the local volunteer fire department, turning down every invitation to the town’s weekly oyster roast until his 72-year-old neighbor banged on his door at 5 p.m. and threatened to cut his internet if he didn’t get out of the house.
Clara Carter, Eileen’s younger cousin, was 58 now, her sun-streaked brown hair streaked with more gray than he remembered, a smudge of mud on the knee of her waterproof waders, dimples popping when she looked up and recognized him. The band cranked up a bad cover of a Tom Petty song, so she leaned in close to say hello, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep, the scent of coconut sunscreen and saltwater clinging to her flannel shirt. She’d moved to town two months prior, she yelled, working as the county’s marine biologist to restore the local oyster beds that had been hit by a recent algal bloom.
Ronan’s first instinct was to make an excuse and leave. He’d avoided Clara for decades, out of a stupid, lingering teenage guilt—he’d thought she was the most electric thing he’d ever seen when she showed up to his bachelor party, and he’d spent the entire wedding weekend terrified Eileen would notice how often his eyes drifted to her. Now, standing next to her, that same jolt hummed under his skin, and he felt sick with himself, like he was betraying Eileen just by breathing the same air.
He didn’t leave, though. They ended up squeezed into a splintered picnic bench at the edge of the crowd, knees brushing every time one of them shifted to reach for an oyster or a napkin. She told him about spending three weeks on a research boat off the coast of Alaska last year, about the way bioluminescence lit up the water so bright you could read a book in it after dark. He told her about the worst fire he’d ever fought, the one in Yellowstone in 1988, how he’d gotten separated from his crew for 12 hours and thought he was going to die there. When she took a bite of a charred oyster, a drop of garlic butter dripped down her chin, and he reached over without thinking, wiping it off with the rough pad of his thumb.
He froze, hand hovering by her jaw, waiting for her to pull away, waiting for the guilt to crash into him so hard he’d have to run. Instead, she held his gaze, her eyes soft, and said Eileen used to call her every month for the last three years, asking if she’d ever consider moving back to the coast, because Ronan was going to need someone to drag him out of the house once she was gone.
Ronan’s throat went tight. He’d spent three years convinced that letting himself feel anything other than grief was a betrayal, that Eileen would hate him if he ever so much as looked at another woman. He’d turned down every set-up, every casual conversation that felt like it could lead to more, locked himself away in their cottage like he was serving a sentence. Clara’s hand covered his where it still rested on the table, her palm calloused from handling sampling equipment, his knuckles crisscrossed with old burn scars, and she said no one who loved Eileen would ever judge him for wanting to be happy. Least of all her.
The crowd started to disperse around 10 p.m., fog rolling in off the ocean so thick the streetlights glowed like fuzzy gold coins. He walked her to her beat-up pickup truck, their boots squelching in the damp gravel, and when she leaned up to kiss him, slow and soft, he didn’t pull away. She tasted like lime seltzer and brine, her hand resting light on the side of his neck, and for the first time in three years, he didn’t feel guilty. He felt warm, like he’d been standing out in the cold for months and finally stepped in front of a fire.
She handed him a tiny, iridescent purple abalone shell she’d found in a hidden cove earlier that week, said it was a housewarming gift, that he should bring a bucket and a shovel if he wanted to check out the cove’s clam beds with her the next morning. He tucked the shell into the pocket of his hoodie, watched her truck pull out of the parking lot, taillights fading into the fog. He turned toward home, the cool night air on his face, already smiling at the thought of the sound of her laugh mixing with the crash of the waves at dawn.
