Chapter 16
A Better View
Autumn
At the sound of her voice, my body filled with regret.
Anxiety. Fear. Why, oh why, Lord? Why was I looking in the mirror of this sunglasses display like a deer stand in the woods when I could be halfway through the checkout line by now?
For a second, I considered pretending I didn’t hear her.
Acting like, along with losing my fiancé, I also lost all of my hearing.
But then again, I had to remember this was my cousin Becky standing behind me, and anything I said or did would be used against me, and I could also consider the fact that she had probably already got her phone out to record the encounter.
She was just that type of person. While I’d done my best to avoid her at all costs, here she was, an hour away from home, standing behind me in a small grocery store that only had possibly three other people in it, staff included.
“Hi, Becky,” I said, not even trying to hold back the groan that came with it.
I slowly turned, as if I had just run into a wild animal that I wasn’t sure had seen me yet.
But one look at Becky’s expression and I knew not only would she be reporting this encounter back to everyone I knew, but she may also be rabid.
“Autumn, I knew that was you! You’ve always had the messiest hair.
” She broke out into a loud laugh that filled the store.
I knew for a fact that my hair had looked pretty good this morning, so that was just a low blow.
Living in Wyoming, where the wind could blow over thirty miles per hour, and it was considered a breeze, it was near impossible to always have perfect hair.
Unless you were Becky, of course, who never had a hair out of place.
As she laughed dramatically and drawn out, like this encounter would be, she pulled her hand to her mouth as if she wanted to clamp it shut.
The sterile bulbs in the store hit the bulbous diamond ring on her finger like the light of a thousand suns and for a moment, I had snow blindness.
Before I could contemplate how she had found a man who wanted to spend the rest of his life with her unpleasant personality, she answered it for me.
“Billy proposed. It’s an heirloom ring.” She shoved the back of her hand out, nearly touching my nose with it, as if I needed to see it that close up. The rock on her finger could be seen from the moon.
“Billy?” It didn’t ring a bell. Her face flushed, and for a moment, I thought that the flustering was caused because I didn’t know she was in a relationship that was clearly superior to everyone else’s.
Becky wanted everyone to know everything—she wasn’t even an open book.
Her book had no cover. No spine. It was just pages scattered in the wind.
I smirked at the thought, which she didn’t react well to.
“You know, Billy. The EMT that saved my life? Perhaps your parents didn’t tell you as it was a whirlwind romance, and he’s in the medical field…
Maybe it was just too soon.” Ahh. Suddenly I did remember hearing that Becky was dating an entry-level EMT after she nearly choked to death on an after-dinner breath mint at Garlic’s Italiano.
I had forgotten the details before. The story seemed funny to me now, and I felt something shift.
Becky had always wanted to have something to “one-up” me with.
I never understood that, as we weren’t close growing up.
But her competitive personality always sought to make me feel less-than, even when I was happily planning my nuptials with Ray.
Somehow, this woman wanted me to feel awful because I thought that deep down, she felt awful.
Like the veil I never got to wear, something had been taken from my mind so I could see what was really going on here, finally. Thank you, Lord.
“Congratulations, Becky,” I said. And with that, I took the handle of my cart from the side of the sunglasses stand, grabbed a pair of sunnies that were polarized with funky blue lenses, and walked towards the checkout line.
Becky had no power over me anymore. She didn’t get to know my business or pepper me with questions that I knew were coming up right after she established that she was the one getting married now.
She didn’t deserve my time, either. If being alone in the lookout tower was teaching me anything, it was that most of the people in my life had been making me feel terrible about myself every chance they got, and it was time to let them go.
Don was waiting for me back in the truck, hopping out to let down the hatch on the truck bed, and he started loading the water for me.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice sounding shaky from the encounter.
Even though I had faked it all the way out the store, I felt rattled by seeing her.
I felt rattled by confronting her—which I did, even if the confrontation had been just walking away.
This was something I hadn’t felt the power to do until now.
I walked away from a phantom that had been haunting my life for years with her nosy “gotcha” questions. I was finally free of her.
When Don and I had finished loading up the truck bed, I had one small paper bag left in my cart, filled with a few donuts that I had purchased for the ride home, as a gesture to offer my driver as well. I climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, pulling out a large sugary apple fritter.
“Want one?” I held the bag over to him and he hesitated, peeking inside.
“I don’t want to take your donuts.” He was still looking in the bag, and I giggled.
“I got a few extra in case you did. There’s another fritter with your name on it,” I teased. I didn’t need to tell him twice, as he reached in and pulled it out, the sugary glaze flaking off in large pieces.
I bit into the fritter and closed my eyes.
This was the best donut I’d ever had. After running out of my favorite fall treats just a week into my stay in the lookout tower, each bite of melt-in-your-mouth goodness was like rain hitting the desert.
The strong cinnamon flavor and fresh apple pieces felt like fall.
In Wyoming, the sun was sitting in the sky like it was already my namesake.
September was just around the corner, and the cool breeze that was soon to follow would be welcome with the scarves, candles, and pumpkin-everything, heightened by the fall colors.
Maple Haven was known for the gorgeous foliage.
The town treated it bigger than the Fourth of July.
Bigger than the Christmas season. Sure, you’d find your fair share of live nativity scenes and Christmas carolers on the streets of Maple Haven during December.
But nothing was quite like fall in the pumpkin-loving town that I lived in.
While I was too busy eating my apple fritter to chat, Don ended up taking a work call, and most of the drive back with cell reception to my lookout was consumed with listening to him talk about fire.
“No signs of cooling off this fall, either,” he said, followed by a long pause while he listened to the other end, which sounded like something from The Peanuts to me.
“We are expecting more erratic fire behavior. We just don’t know where, and we don’t know when.
I can bet this time the governor won’t be able to send those planes, though.
They have been on the California fires ever since they left here, with no end in sight.
” I heard a lot of chatter again as Don nodded while he listened, slowing the truck to turn into the start of the wilderness.
“I’m going to lose you. I’ll call you back. Okay, bye.”
“Sorry about that,” he said, closing his flip phone and slipping it into his shirt pocket. “The work calls just never end when fire is your life.” Once we were back into the forest boundary, he grabbed his coffee cup and took a sip.
“That’s okay. I understand.” I was starting to catch the fire bug myself, as I’d really enjoyed watching for signs.
The first morning I was in the tower, having spotted that smoke cloud—that was the most adrenaline I’d ever felt in my life at work.
There weren't exactly high stakes moments being a church receptionist; at least, there hadn’t been for me.
Now, this job gave me a greater sense of purpose than I’d ever experienced in anything.
“I bet you do. I did a summer in a lookout tower once, myself, you know.” Don looked over at me matter-of-factly.
“Oh really? Which one?”
“Tower Four. It’s since been sold off, and now I think it’s one of those fancy Airbnb’s. People rent it out for a few hundred dollars a night for the views. They must really love vault toilets and no running water.” He sneered and let out a small laugh.
“Well, did you enjoy it?” He shrugged.
“It was a complicated time in my life. My brother had just gotten married and… Well, complicated.” I nodded.
I knew all about complicated times. Especially with weddings.
I considered that, in just a few days from now, I was supposed to have been getting married.
The wound was closing, though. The longer I spent out here, the less it felt like it was ever even real.
“I was supposed to be getting married in a few weeks from now,” I blurted out. It was the first time I had ever told anyone that didn’t already know. That didn’t know my story, and most importantly, didn’t think that Ray walked on water.
“Oh,” Don said, shooting me a look. “I’m sorry?” His smile was infectious. Clearly, he didn’t know if this was a good thing or a bad thing, and I let him off the hook.
“Thanks,” I smiled, and for the first time, started to think it was almost funny, too.
What are the five stages of grief, anyway?
Anger, denial, contagious laughter? I didn’t know what it was, but I started to chuckle about it slowly, then that turned into a five-alarm laughter that I couldn’t stop.
“He must have been a total clown,” Don added, as I laughed myself silly.
Through it, I nodded, trying to tell him through the joyous tears rolling down my face that he was in fact, the biggest clown ever.
Everything after that was funny. Don pointed out a squirrel, holding a nut, and it was hysterical.
He asked if I wanted to listen to the radio, and I couldn’t breathe.
It was part hysteria, part nervous breakdown, but every bit necessary on my journey to healing.
By the time we reached the base of the hike to my lookout, the laughter had calmed down.
That was the first time I had laughed hard like that in years.
Both exhaustion and happiness fought for their place in my mind.
I jumped out of the truck and started gathering my supplies and loading them into the wagon.
Once we reached the top, which seemed a lot easier with Don with me, I ran up the stairs that I had been initially too scared to go up.
Now, I took them two at a time, sending down the pulley system, while Don loaded it up from the bottom.