Chapter 4
Wade
The first flake melts on my glove like it never happened.
Another follows, and another … quiet as ash, bright as sugar.
Early for this kind of fall, but the sky doesn’t ask permission.
I pour the last of the coffee into Lilah’s cup and cap the thermos, listening to the way the wind changes when snow joins in.
Softer around the edges. Colder in the middle.
“You’ll want to beat the slush down-canyon,” I say. “Road’s shaded past the switchbacks.”
She nods, brings the tin cup to her mouth. Steam blurs her face for a second, and when it clears she’s watching the ridgeline like it just told her a story. When she looks at something, she doesn’t merely see it. She joins it.
“Thank you,” she says. It’s not just for the coffee.
“You got what you came for?” I ask.
“I got what I didn’t know I needed.”
She smiles, small and honest.
I don’t touch that line. I move instead — pack cups, stow the tripod I insisted on carrying the last quarter mile because the wind was having its say. Practical tasks that are simply fence posts of my day. If I build enough of them, maybe I can keep things from straying.
Snow finds the brim of my beanie. I glance at her tires. They’re fine for dry gravel, wrong for the sheen that will glaze the first turns. “You carrying chains?”
“In the back,” she says. “Never used them.”
Of course she hasn’t. Of course I have.
“Pop the hatch.” I crouch at her rear bumper, feeling the first bite of cold find the skin between glove and sleeve.
The chains clink like coins. I show her the cross links, the fasteners, the way you feed the cable behind the tire without catching your knuckles on the fender.
She watches, knees bent and attentive. It’s the way my boy watches game film — quiet intent, catching the details without breathing on them.
“Left side first,” I say. “Always the uphill tire.”
She nods like that’s a secret worth keeping.
We wrestle the second chain together, our gloves knocking.
I think about how many versions of this moment live in this valley …
fathers and daughters, neighbors and strangers.
People wanting to get where they’re going before the weather changes its mind.
By the time I snap the fastener into place, snow has settled in the grooves of the tread like thread in a seam.
“Drive twenty yards, then stop,” I tell her. “We’ll check the tension.”
She climbs in, starts the engine and eases forward. When she idles, I test the bite. It’s good, not perfect. But the road will make up the last of what we couldn’t.
“You make hard things look like a checklist,” she says.
“Practice is just yesterday’s mistake organized.”
She laughs, surprised, like she didn’t expect I’d keep a line like that in my pocket. Truth is, I only find lines when I need them to keep from saying something truer … something I shouldn’t. My phone buzzes.
Caleb: Coach pushed the film session to 4. I’ll grab the truck. Need cash for gas?
I thumb back: Card’s in the visor. Fill the tank, check the oil. Black ice possible.
Caleb: Got it. You okay?
Yep. First snow.
I see it. Looks sick.
A photo comes through of our yard with a powdered-sugar dusting. He’s seventeen and pretending not to count the weeks until everything changes. I’m forty-one and pretending I don’t.
I pocket the phone. Lilah’s watching me with that camera-off kind of attention. “Caleb?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Hungry. Tall. Trying not to outgrow the place that made him.” I lift a shoulder. “Senior year is a slow goodbye with a loud soundtrack.”
“I remember that soundtrack,” she says softly.
The snow thickens with intent. Time to move. I remove her camera bag and pass it up to her. She steadies it, our hands brushing.
“We’ll hit the overlook again in two days,” I say.
“If the front clears like I think it will, you’ll get bluebird sky on fresh white.
Elk flats at sunset today if the road holds.
” I take out my phone, pull up the pin. “Park before the gatehouse at the ranger station. Walk the last quarter mile. Stay left at the fork. The right takes you into willow tangle and a wasted hour.”
She takes the pin, thumbs it to save. “What about you?”
“Got a half day with a couple from Texas who think crampons are a cocktail garnish.” I tip my head. “I’ll swing by the flats if they don’t tap out.”
“And if I get there first?”
“You’ll hear them before you see them,” I say. “Wind will be wrong at first, but don’t chase. Let it turn. When it does, you’ll think the whole meadow just took a breath. That’s your moment.”
“Let the meadow breathe.” She repeats it like a promise to herself. Then, with that small courage she carries like a spare battery, “You don’t mind if I text you a shot?”
“Text me three,” I say before I can weigh it. “One you’re proud of, one you’re not sure about, and one you think I won’t understand.”
Her grin is quick and bright. “Deal.”
I track her down the first mile, watching for the places the road leans toward ditch.
At the turn to my place, I lift two fingers, and she flashes her headlights in a thank-you that feels bigger than it is.
Her taillights fade into the trees, and the quiet returns, full of all the words I didn’t say.
Instead, I’m full of guide talk or whatever I go around spouting.
My phone buzzes again as I’m walking in my front door.
It’s a photo from Lilah. The image fills the screen—amber grass frozen at the tips, five elk mid-turn, all ears, all attention.
The horizon looks like a breath held and the sky like what comes after.
The herd isn’t centered. It’s edged, tension between what’s leaving the frame and what’s about to enter.
Beneath, her message: Proud.
I look at it too long, then type: You should be. Wind did what we wanted.
Another image lands. A bull in profile, antlers like a cathedral’s ribs, one eye catching a rim of light. My own breath changes.
Lilah: Not sure. Too tight?
Me: Tight on purpose, I write. Edge tells the story. He’s not posing. He’s choosing.
Lilah: Okay, I see that.
A third photo follows. Not elk at all. The meadow gone blue in shade, one boot print melting a shallow bowl in the new snow, the faint track of a crow cutting the top corner. Empty and not.
Lilah: You won’t get this one
I do, though. I get it more than I want to admit.
Me: Leaving proof. And how quickly it vanishes.
It takes a long time for her to message back. When she does, she simply says: Yes.
???
I pocket the phone like it’s warmer than my gloves. The day is tilting toward evening now, and the sky has that bruised color that means we’ll scrape windshields tomorrow.
Caleb’s truck is in the drive when I roll up from getting a new thermostat put on the truck.
He’s left the porch light on without thinking about it.
Inside, there’s the slam of the fridge, the thud of a bag dropped by the door, the voice that has been getting deeper and steadier and less mine by the week.
“Hey,” he calls. “There’s lasagna?”
“Yeah, it’s the frozen kind,” I say, kicking snow from my boots. “You get the gas?”
“Yep.” He fingers the edge of an envelope on the counter. “Coach says scouts are at Saturday’s game. Says I need to …” He stops, looks at me, eyes a mix of dogged and spooked. “I don’t know what I need.”
“Same as always,” I tell him, sliding past to the stove. “Do your job. Breathe when the pocket collapses. Take the hit you need to take. Don’t take the one you don’t.”
He watches me for a second, then nods like the words find the right hooks inside him. “You coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
After he heads to the shower, I step out back. I think about the three images on my phone. Proud. Not sure. You won’t get this one. I think about how quickly proof vanishes if you don’t hold it in your hands, and how holding, in my experience, is the part that breaks you if you’re not careful.
I text Lilah before I can talk myself out of it:
Storm track shifted north. You’ll get color at creek bend tomorrow at about 6:12. Bring the long lens and dry socks.
Lilah: I’ll bring warmth with me.
I lean against the rail and let that line thread through my mind. And then my phone pings again, four words that bring anticipation for morning.
Lilah: See you at dawn.