Epilogue
EPILOGUE
Reed
6 years later…
M y beautiful wife presses her side against the living room windowpane. A fresh coat of hunter-green paint frames the glass overlooking the side of the yard closest to the lake. Her jeans hug her thighs, and her hair is woven into a tight braid just how I like it. I sneak up behind her, gripping her hips and nuzzling my nose into the spot behind her ear that makes her hum. She snakes her arm around my neck and I wrap mine around her waist.
“What are we watching?” I draw my attention to the overgrown pine tree a few yards from the edge of the water. Two little sundrenched feet sail toward the sky.
“He’s so good with her, isn’t he?” she croons.
I can see the faint reflection of Hailey’s wistful smile through the window as a happy little sigh escapes her lips—a sound I bottled up and tucked away in my heart a long time ago.
“He is,” I agree .
The tiny squeak of a voice melts its way through the glass. “Papa, push me higher! You’re going too soft.”
Our daughter’s long chestnut hair fans against layers of lime green sparkly tulle.
“It’s my job to keep you safe, Jo,” Jack reminds her.
“But Paaapaa ,” she whines, “I’m not Jo today, remember? You’re supposed to call me Tinkerbell, because look at me… I can fly!” She stretches her arms out wide, my brave girl. I’d like to think she gets that from me.
“Oh shoot, you’re right. How could I forget,” he says in an exasperated voice, smacking his forehead.
She giggles and turns around to look at him.
“That’s what old people do. They forget sometimes.”
“Hey, you take that back, young lady.” He tickles her gently under her armpits, and she squirms against the rope.
“Never!” She giggles again.
Hailey sighs.
“What’s on your mind, Red?” I tuck my chin on top of her head.
“I was just thinking how far we’ve come.”
She stares at Jack as he slows the swing and lifts Jo down, holding her hand as she skips across the yard toward the cabin.
“Do you still wish you’d had moments like that with him?” I ask.
It comes from a place of knowing that once upon a time she didn’t always feel okay. A time when he made her feel anxious instead of safe like he does now.
Hailey shakes her head. “Why would I when I have something”—she squats down and swings her arms wide as Jo barrels through the front door—“even better.” She winds our four-year-old’s hair around her hand and wraps her up in her arms.
“Are you guys talking about my birfday?” Jo gasps .
We’re still working on that “th” sound because I don’t correct her when she says it wrong. I want to pretend those two letters never existed.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because it’s in two weeks,” she reminds us.
“No.” I shake my head. “There’s no way. Tinkerbell never gets older. She has to stay four forever.”
Jo frowns. “I don’t fink I like that part about being Tinkerbell very much.”
“Good thing you can be whatever you want to be, Josephine McCafferty Morgan,” Jack says.
“Daddy, do you promise you’ll be back for birfday cake?”
Jack rests a palm on my back. “He wouldn’t miss it, right, rookie?”
He gives me a fatherly look of pride.
I crouch down low so I can look Jo in the eyes as I say it. “Not for the world.” She wraps her little arms around my neck and squeezes. I fake wheeze for air because it makes her laugh.
Hailey leans in and kisses me. Then she says my three favorite words: “I love you.”
“Remember me, Red.” I swat her butt then tip my helmet to Jack. “Superintendent.”
“Make us proud out there.”
Whenever he says “us,” I know it means more than just the people in this room. I did three more years with Iron Summit before I got a spot as a smokejumper. I promised Hailey the day we got married beneath the pine trees on the shore of Payette Lake that I’d be around, for her, for our daughter. So, I go and do what I love, but then I come back to this cabin, Hailey’s childhood home, to be with the people that I love.
“I’ll be back by the time everyone arrives,” I tell Jo. She’s the one who has the hardest time with me being gone .
“Yay! Mo and Bo will be here! And Aunt Karen, too,” Jo says, bouncing up and down.
“Yes, they will!” I say confidently.
Both of our parents show up now for Jo in a way they never really did for us. But that’s the beauty of second chances.
“See you all soon,” I say, before slipping out the front door.
It’s harder now to do the daredevil things I once loved. There are two beautiful girls on the other side of every decision I make—a constant voice in the back of my mind reminding me to stay safe for them, to come home to them.
Two posts with a pavilion roof welcome me to the McCall Smokejumper Base, and just as I do every time I come to work, I haul my gear slung over my shoulder to the locker room.
“What are you doing?” Murphy asks to the rectangular door next to mine. His phone is pressed to his ear as he unloads his gear inside of it.
He’s the only one from our original crew who stuck with fire. I think of the guys, and while I miss them, we still get together from time to time.
We’ve watched Daniels purchase land like he always said he would. He grew his mustache back and gets to wear those damn overalls he loves every day. It turns out they look pretty good on a potato farmer.
We’ve gotten the privilege of seeing Evans model for GQ and give him crap all the time for it. Except for Christmas, when he gifts us all a generous supply of Hanes briefs.
We sat in the audience of Marshall’s graduation from Harvard. He works for NASA now as a mechanical engineer.
And we all showed up with “It’s a boy!” balloons the day Jackson became a dad.
I’m proud of how far we’ve come. Especially Murphy. Coming out couldn’t have been easy, but he did it for Ramirez .
“We’re not getting a damn cat! Drop it,” he barks into the speaker. He gives me a disgruntled nod before closing his locker door. “I love you too, baby,” he coos, and ends the call.
“Trouble in paradise?” I tease him.
“That man thinks we need something to nurture. I told him to go get himself a house plant.”
“Happy wife, happy life is my motto,” I say.
“And what should that make mine? Happy spouse, happy house?”
I snicker. “It makes you the happy owner of a cat.”
There’s a moment of this job I like the most: right after I jump. For a minute and thirty seconds I’m suspended in the air, floating in the sky. It’s silent when I think of them.
I’ve learned some people come into your life for a season, filling your world with change you hardly notice until it’s slipping through your fingers like the last days of the summer sun. There will always be a part of me that sees Teddy and Miles in the glimmer of lake water. They shaped my earliest experiences of life and friendship, and saying goodbye to them was devastating. But now I look back with such fondness. A season that taught me how to love and let go.
Other people come into your life for a reason, teaching you things you’d never learn on your own. I’ll never not see Dean McCafferty’s face in the backcountry fire that sweeps across the ground. He lives and breathes out here, my constant companion in the trees.
And sometimes, with a stroke of luck or fate or however you’d describe the magic of serendipity when someone steps into your world at the exact turning point you need them to, you find the people who are there for a lifetime. They’re your parachute. The ones you hang on to in good times and bad. Because, like a wildfire, life can change in a second. And they’ll be the ones who carry you home.
THE END