Chapter Two
Alice
I decide to backtrack.
It's the only sensible move. Retrace my steps to the fork, try the other path, and pay attention this time instead of composing chapter endings in my head.
I turn around and start walking, listening to my own footsteps in the leaves, watching the beam of my phone's flashlight — I've got maybe forty percent battery left, which I will not think about — sweep across the roots and rocks below me.
The forest at night sounds different than I expected. Not frightening, exactly, but layered. Things shift in the dark above me. Branches settle. Something small moves through the underbrush off to my left and then goes quiet. I keep walking.
I've gone maybe five minutes when I hear footsteps that aren't mine.
Not the scattered rustling of an animal. These are deliberate, evenly spaced, moving through the trees from somewhere to my left with the kind of unhurried certainty that means whoever it is knows exactly where they're going. I stop. The footsteps stop a half-second later.
"Hello?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
A beam of light cuts through the trees, sweeping the ground and then lifting toward me. I flinch and raise a hand against the brightness.
"Park service." It’s a man's voice, calm and unhurried. "You're all right."
The relief is so immediate and so physical that I actually exhale out loud.
The beam drops to illuminate the ground between us rather than my face, which I appreciate, and a figure steps into clearer view: tall, wearing a ranger uniform with a patch on the shoulder that catches the light.
He moves through the terrain without looking at his feet.
"You've veered off the main loop onto an unmarked trail," he says. Not an accusation. Just a fact.
"I gathered that." I lower my hand. "I took the wrong fork. I thought I was heading downhill toward the parking area."
“You’re nowhere near the parking lot.” He studies me the way someone does when they're running a quick assessment—pack, boots, hands, and face—without making it feel clinical. "How long have you been out here?"
"Longer than I should have been. I lost track of time sketching.”
"Sketching?" He nods at my pack, where my sketchbook is wedged under the top flap.
"Mostly trees today," I say. "For a children's book. About a fox." I pause. "That's not really relevant, is it? You don’t care about my fictional fox. The truth is I just wasn’t paying good enough attention to where I was going. I’m an idiot.”
Something shifts at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but close. "I happen to love foxes, but right now, we probably should focus on getting you someplace warm. Do you have gloves? Your fingers are already looking pale.”
I look down. He's right. "I don’t have gloves."
He pulls off his own gloves and hands them to me. “Here, wear these.”
I take the gloves gratefully, sliding them onto my own hands. They’re too big, the fingers flopping uselessly, but my hands immediately welcome the warmth. “Thank you.”
“There's a ranger cabin about twenty minutes out. I think it’d be better to go there than to try hiking all the way back to the parking lot in the dark. You can sleep there and I’ll lead you back to the main trail in the morning when there's light."
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “Hikers are allowed to stop for the night at ranger’s cabins?”
He gives me a look that manages to be patient and very slightly amused at the same time. "I'm the ranger currently in residence, and I'm allowing it."
"Right." I shift my weight. "Sorry. I default to asking permission for things."
"I noticed." He reaches for my pack straps. "Let me take that."
"I'm fine."
"I know you are," he says. "Hand it over anyway."
There's no edge in his voice. He's not being dismissive.
He just says it the way someone says something that isn't worth arguing about, and before I've made a conscious decision, I'm sliding the straps off my shoulders and handing it to him.
His fingers brush mine as he takes it, warm against my cold skin, and he slings it over one shoulder like it weighs nothing.
"I'm Cal," he says.
"Alice."
He repeats it once, quietly, as if he's filing it somewhere. Then he turns and starts walking, his headlamp throwing a clean line of light across the trail ahead. "Ground's uneven in places. Stay close."
I fall into step behind him. I watch the steady way he moves and feel the tension in my shoulders ease by degrees. Above us, the stars are extraordinary, thick and white across a sky that has no competition from any artificial light for miles in any direction.
We walk in silence for a while after that. The kind of silence that doesn't need to be filled.
The cabin appears through the trees without much warning: low and solid, a covered porch, a woodpile stacked neatly against one wall. Cal unlocks the door and steps inside first, sweeping his flashlight across the room before reaching for a lamp.
Warm light fills the space. A woodstove, a small kitchen, a table with two chairs. Everything practical and in its place.
"Sit down," he says. "I'll get the fire going."
I sit.
I watch him crouch in front of the stove and build the fire the way someone does who has done it thousands of times. Within a few minutes the wood catches and warmth begins to push into the room.
He disappears through a back doorway and returns with a sweatshirt, which he holds out without preamble. "Put this on."
It's large and soft and smells like smoke and sandalwood, decidedly and pleasantly male.
I pull it over my head and the sleeves fall well past my wrists.
I push them up and find him watching me with an expression I can't quite read.
Not guarded, exactly. More like someone who has just noticed something he wasn't expecting.
"Tea," he says, turning toward the kitchen. "And then you can tell me about this fictional fox of yours."