5. Ivy
five
Ivy
The Grangers' kitchen is full by the time we walk in, just like every Sunday.
Tessa heads straight for the cabinet with the water glasses.
Dani has her head in the refrigerator before she's even said hello to anyone.
Reid and Trevor disappear toward the porch to grab extra chairs, and Cassidy scoops a stack of plates off the counter like she's done it thirty times, because she has.
“Where does this go?” Nolan is standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a bowl of rolls like it might detonate.
Three people answer at once. He looks more confused than before he asked.
Annie is at the stove, wooden spoon in hand, giving directions to no one in particular and everyone at once. “Someone needs to tell Russ the corn is almost ready.”
“I heard you,” Russ calls through the screen door. “I have ears.”
“You normally have selective ears.”
Reid reaches for a piece of bread on the cutting board.
Annie doesn't even look over. “Reid Sawyer, if that bread is gone before dinner, you're eating outside with the dog.”
He puts it back.
Sunday dinner at Russ and Annie Granger's has marked the unofficial start of every Blackpine workweek for as many summers as I can remember. Fire assignments and emergencies are the only things that get you out of it. Everything else waits until Monday.
Beck stands just inside the doorway, and for the first time since he showed up on our floor yesterday morning, he looks like he doesn't know what to do with himself.
I hand him a stack of napkins. “Table. Russ likes them folded, but nobody does it.”
He looks at the napkins, then at me. “Got it.”
Watching him figure out the house is strange.
Beck's the kind of person who walks into a burning forest and knows where to put his hands.
Here, he doesn't know which cupboard holds the glasses, doesn't know Russ hates being offered help with the grill, doesn't know which chair at the table wobbles if you lean the wrong way.
He's on Nolan's level tonight. But it doesn't last long.
By the time I glance back over, someone's put him on corn duty, and he's figured out how Annie wants it stacked on the serving plate.
I'm carrying a casserole dish out of the oven when I realize I don't have anywhere to set it. Beck reaches past me and slides a trivet onto the counter. “You looked like you needed that about two seconds ago.”
“Thanks. I did.”
He passes things, I direct, and we move around each other in a kitchen that isn't ours like we've done it before. It's the same rhythm from Mercer's yesterday.
When the food is ready, all ten of us crowd around a table built for eight, extra chairs wedged in wherever they fit. Once we're all more or less seated, the lake comes up.
“So,” Annie says, passing a bowl of green beans down the table, “I hear somebody had trouble with the rope swing.”
Nolan groans into his plate. “We really don't have to tell this story.”
“Yes, we do,” Tessa says.
“It was one time.”
“It was fifteen minutes,” Trevor says.
“It was not fifteen minutes.”
“It felt like fifteen minutes,” Reid says. “For the rest of us.”
By the time the story's finished, Nolan had swung back and forth at least four times according to Cassidy, screamed something different every pass according to Tessa, none of which is true according to Nolan.
“How long are we going to talk about this?” he asks.
“Probably until September,” Tessa says.
Annie laughs so hard she has to set down her fork.
Reid isn't finished making his case, either. “And then they cheated us out of the noodle championship.”
“We won,” I say.
“Same thing.”
Russ looks between us. “Somebody explain the noodle championship.”
“They wouldn't let Reid and me be partners,” I say. “Something about us always winning.”
“So they gave her Beck instead,” Reid says, like this is a great injustice. “Which solved nothing.”
Annie glances at Beck with open curiosity, but nothing more than that. “Good instincts?”
“Good listener,” Beck says, nodding at me. “She called the direction. I just tried not to drop her.”
“Sounds like a solid partnership,” Russ says, and reaches for the potatoes, and that's the end of it. No look between him and Annie. Just dinner conversation moving on to the next thing.
I catch Beck watching Russ and Annie a little later, after Russ gets up to grab something from the counter and comes back holding the pepper Annie hadn't asked for yet, setting it beside her plate without a word.
She doesn't even look up, just says thanks and keeps eating.
Beck watches the whole exchange with an expression I haven't seen on him before, something quiet and a little far away.
That's when Beck stops eating and stares at something over my shoulder. “Is that you?”
I don't need to turn around to know which photo he's found. The refrigerator is covered in them. Years of crew photos, some curling at the edges. But there's only one that gets this reaction.
“Don't,” I say, which of course means everyone looks.
It's from my first summer at Blackpine. Eighteen years old, filthy from a full day of trail work, wearing a shirt two sizes too big that used to belong to Reid, my hair escaping a braid in every direction. I'm squinting at the camera like I resent its existence.
“You looked twelve,” Reid says.
“I did not look twelve.”
“You looked like you'd wandered away from a Girl Scout troop and got lost in a national forest.”
Annie swats him with a dish towel without looking. “She looked wonderful. She looked like she'd worked hard all day, which she had.”
“That was your first summer?” Beck's still looking at the photo.
“First one. I was terrified the whole time. Pretended I wasn't.”
“She threw up on day two,” Reid offers.
“That's not — okay, that happened once.”
Beck huffs something close to a laugh but doesn't say anything else. He just looks at the picture longer than the joke really requires, like he's doing the math on how many summers of photos are on the refrigerator, how many of them have my face in them, growing up one Sunday dinner at a time.
Dinner rolls on loud and a little chaotic, like usual.
Someone reaches across someone else for the rolls.
Annie tells Reid to stop leaning his chair back before he cracks his skull on her tile.
Nolan tries to defend his rope-swing technique one more time and gets shut down by three separate people simultaneously.
Russ turns his attention to Beck. “How long you figure you'll keep jumping?”
“As long as they'll let me,” Beck says, easy, like it's not even a question worth considering twice.
“Rough on the body, from what I hear.”
“It is. Worth it, though.”
Russ asks him something about static line procedures, and Beck answers without hesitation, the kind of detail that only comes from doing something for years.
He doesn't stop being easygoing, but his answers get more careful, more exact, the way people talk about things they take seriously.
He talks about judgment calls and crew responsibility the way some people talk about things they'd defend with their life, because he probably has.
I watch him field Russ's questions and think, not for the first time, that there's a difference between knowing someone does something dangerous for a living and seeing what that means to him.
After dinner, cleanup happens in the usual sprawl. Someone washing, someone drying, someone deliberately avoiding both. I end up next to Annie at the sink, drying dishes she hands me faster than I can keep up.
“Last summer here, isn't it,” she says, not quite a question.
“I'm not gone yet.”
“Good,” she says. “I haven't trained anyone else to make the salad.”
I laugh, and she lets it go at that. I'm grateful, because I don't have an answer ready for anything bigger than a dish towel and a joke about salad.
Later, drying my hands, I look out at the room.
Beck's standing near the door with Reid and Russ, listening to something Russ is saying, taking a container of leftovers Annie's pressed on him despite his protests he really doesn't need that much potato salad.
He looks like someone who belongs in this house, in this noise, in this friendly chaos.
That's a strange thing to notice about a person I've known only in pieces for a few years.
As we're gathering by the door, Annie catches Beck on his way out. “See you next Sunday.”
Not you're welcome anytime or stop by if you're still around. Instead treating him like he’s a permanent member of the regular crew.
Beck pauses. Just barely. Easy to miss if I wasn’t looking right at him. “Yeah,” he says. “See you next Sunday.”
The drive back to the crew house is quiet, windows down, the day catching up with everyone. By the time we're back, the weekend is dissolving into Monday. Someone checks gear on the porch. Someone heads straight for the shower. Nolan disappears upstairs, still muttering about the rope swing.
I encounter Beck in the common room, going through his pack.
“Big day tomorrow,” I say. “You ready to see how the other half of the forestry crew works?”
He looks up. “How bad can it be?”
I consider him for a second. “You'll be begging for a fire by Wednesday.”