Epilogue 1
One week later
Jenna
I’m on the couch Jasper bought last week.
He claims he needed something in the cabin besides the bed and the chairs, but I suspect it’s because I kept editing photos cross-legged on the bed and he wanted me to stop getting crumbs on the sheets.
My laptop is on my knees. I’m culling frames from the south trail, the canyon wall in late August light, the colors deepening toward fall.
Jasper is at the workbench, sanding something I’m not allowed to look at yet.
He says it’s a commission. I suspect it’s a bookshelf for the wall by the bed because my books are currently in a stack on the floor and he looks at the stack the way other people look at a structural code violation.
My phone buzzes.
Tori: I need a vacation. I’m coming to visit.
Marissa: YES. When??
Tori: Next week. I have ten days off. I put in for it before I could talk myself out of it.
Jules: The mountain has claimed another one.
Claire: She’s visiting. That’s not the same as being claimed.
Jules: That’s what Jenna said. And Marissa before her. I have the screenshots. I HAVE THE RECEIPTS.
Paige: Tori!! That’s so exciting!! Do you want company?
Tori: Just me this time, Paige. I need quiet. The ER has been brutal this month. Three double shifts in a row last week. I need to not hear monitors beeping for ten consecutive days.
Marissa: You’re staying with us. Guest room is ready. We’ll pick you up at the airport.
Tori: You don’t have to do that.
Marissa: He’s already looking at your flight options. Don’t fight it. This is how things work here.
Tori: I can rent a car.
Marissa: Levi says the pass road is under construction and you’ll miss the turnoff. We’re picking you up.
Tori: Fine.
Jules: “Fine” is the word that starts every love story on that mountain. Just noting that for the record.
Tori: I’m coming to sleep, eat, and sit by a river. That’s it. No love stories. No mountain men. No dramatic life changes.
Jules: SCREENSHOTTED.
I’m smiling at my phone. Jasper looks up from the workbench. He doesn’t ask. He’s learned that the group chat produces a specific expression on my face (entertained, fond, slightly exasperated) and he doesn’t need details. He’ll get them later, or he won’t, and either way is fine.
“Tori’s coming to visit,” I say.
He nods. Goes back to sanding.
“Next week. Ten days.”
Another nod.
“She wants quiet. She’s an ER nurse. It’s been a rough month.”
He looks up at this. Jasper understands rough months. He understands needing quiet the way other people understand needing noise. His whole life is organized around the principle that silence is not emptiness. It’s recovery. It’s the space where you rebuild after the world takes a piece of you.
“She’ll like the mountain,” he says. Goes back to sanding.
That’s the whole conversation. That’s enough.
I go back to my editing. The canyon wall frames are strong.
I flag three for the follow-up series Montana Backcountry commissioned after the first spread sold out.
The art director wants fall colors and I’m going to give her fall colors that make her question every autumn photo she’s ever published.
My phone buzzes again. Not the group chat. Marissa, privately.
Marissa: Levi wants to take Tori rafting while she’s here. She mentioned wanting to do it again.
Jenna: That sounds perfect. She needs to unwind.
Marissa: Levi’s putting Kai on the trip as the guide.
I look at the text. Something about the way Marissa delivered that information feels deliberate. Not the words. The placement. The way she said it separately from the group chat. The way she didn’t say “one of the guides.” She said Kai.
Jenna: Kai Denmark?
Marissa: You remember him?
Jenna: From our first visit. And at the Burning Tree a few times. Jasper knows him from the valley. He’s worked with Levi a while, right?
Marissa: Best guide on the water. Levi trusts him completely. He’s quiet though. Makes Jasper look chatty.
Jenna: That’s impressive. Jasper once went four hours without speaking to me while I was sitting six feet away.
Marissa: Kai could do eight. He barely talks to the clients. Just watches the water and watches the people and makes sure everybody gets home safe.
Jenna: Sounds like a certain farrier I know.
Marissa: lol. I’m just putting the right guide on the trip. That’s all. He’s calm. She needs calm. It’s a professional decision.
Jenna: Screenshotted.
Marissa: Don’t you dare.
I put the phone down. I’m smiling again. Jasper looks up.
“What?”
“Nothing. Marissa’s putting Kai Denmark on Tori’s rafting trip.”
He stops sanding. He knows Kai. Everyone in the valley knows Kai, the same way everyone knows Jasper: by sight, by reputation, by the nod at the general store.
Kai is Levi’s best river guide. Quiet, focused, built like he was carved from the same granite as the canyon walls.
The kind of man who doesn’t take up space loudly but fills it completely.
I’ve seen him at The Burning Tree twice.
Both times I reached for my camera because his face has the kind of structure that makes photographers do exactly what I did to Jasper in that bar: walk up and ask to take a picture.
I didn’t ask Kai. I’ve learned some restraint. Minimal, but some.
“Kai’s solid,” Jasper says. Which from Jasper is a reference letter, a background check, and a personal endorsement rolled into three syllables.
“Tori can handle herself,” I say.
“I know.”
“She doesn’t need a protective river guide watching over her.”
“I know that too.”
We look at each other. We both know what we’re not saying. We both know what the mountain does. Marissa came to visit and never left. I came to shoot and never left. There’s a pattern and the pattern has a type and the type is competent women who arrive with a plan and leave with a man.
Or don’t leave at all.
“She’s just visiting,” I say.
Jasper goes back to his sanding. The corner of his mouth does the thing. The not-quite-smile that’s just for me.
“That’s what you said.”
He’s right. That’s exactly what I said. I said it while standing in his meadow at 5:47 in the morning with a camera aimed at his ridge. A plan that had nothing to do with falling in love with a man who communicates through furniture.
I pick up my phone. The group chat has continued without me.
Claire: For the record, I am not visiting any mountains. I am staying in Atlanta where there are no mountain men and no dramatic love stories and no one builds you chairs.
Jules: SCREENSHOTTING RIGHT NOW
Claire: JULES.
Paige: Tori, have the best time. You deserve it. Rest, breathe, enjoy the river. And if something unexpected happens, let it.
Tori: Nothing unexpected is going to happen. I’m going to sit by a river and read a book and eat Marissa’s cooking and sleep for ten days straight.
She sounds so sure. I was sure too. I was sure this was a magazine assignment and nothing more. I was sure right up until a man moved my camera gear before a storm and I realized nobody had ever taken care of me like that.
Tori is sure. The mountain doesn’t care about sure. The mountain has its own plans.
I close the chat. Set the phone aside. Go back to my editing. The canyon wall in the golden hour. The ridge at sunset. Frame after frame of the place that changed everything.
Jasper is sanding. The sound is steady and rhythmic, the same sound that has become the background of my life. Wood and silence and the man I came back to.
Next week, Tori arrives. She’s going to sit by a river. She’s going to meet a quiet man who watches the water. She’s going to be fine.
She’s going to be more than fine.
She just doesn’t know it yet.