Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
SILAS
The road is clearing.
I know before I check. The drainage patterns on this mountain are predictable after three years, and last night's dry sky means the mud has had twelve hours to firm up.
When I walk the access road at dawn, alone because Wren is still asleep in my bed with Ash curled at her feet, the ruts have hardened enough.
By afternoon, a car with decent tires could make it down to the forest road.
By tomorrow morning, even a rental sedan could.
My stomach drops. Which is wrong. The whole point of living up here is that people leave. People are supposed to leave. The road clears, the hikers go home, the lost drivers find their way back to wherever they came from. That's how it works. That's how I built it to work.
Three days ago, a woman showed up on my access road soaking wet with a camera bag and a sharp mouth.
Now my cabin smells like her. There's a wildflower she picked sitting in a coffee mug on the kitchen table.
Her sundress is dry, folded on the armchair, but she's still wearing my flannel because she likes it.
Her laugh lives in every corner of this place.
Last night we made dinner together. She talked about wedding shoots gone wrong, the groom who fainted, the flower girl who threw petals at the officiant's face.
Her stories are physical. She acts them out, uses her whole body, waves her hands until she almost knocks things over. My cabin has never been this loud.
After dinner, on the couch, she sat in my lap and kissed me while the woodstove burned low.
Slow, deep kisses that turned urgent. Her hands on my chest, my hands on her hips, then under the flannel, then pulling it off.
We didn't make it to the bed. She rode me on the couch with her head thrown back, my mouth on her breasts, my thumb on her clit.
When she came, she whispered my name, and something inside me cracked apart.
The same thing that cracked when she kissed the scar on my shoulder.
The same thing that cracked when she said I wasn't broken.
But I am broken. And broke things cut the people holding them.
Bobby Callahan had a wife. Jenny. She used to send banana bread to the crew in a tin foil loaf pan with his name in Sharpie on the bottom.
After the burnover, Jenny called me. I didn't answer.
She called again the next day, the next week, for a month straight.
Eventually she stopped. I heard through a mutual friend that she moved to Boise to be closer to her parents.
Bobby was the best crew boss I ever had. Calm under pressure, funny as hell, obsessive about safety protocols. He read weather better than anyone on the line. The day of the burnover, he read it right. Called for retreat. We just didn't have enough time.
The fire doesn't care how good you are. Doesn't care how careful, how prepared, how much you love the people standing next to you. It takes what it takes.
And I survived. Which means the debt is mine.
Three years on this mountain, paying it. Quiet, controlled, alone. Growing tomatoes in rows Bobby would've laughed at. Sleeping in a bed nobody shares. Not asking for anything because the men who died that day can't ask for anything ever again.
Then Wren Halloway washes up on my doorstep, and in three days I'm laughing at dinner. Sleeping without nightmares. Pulling a woman into my lap and burying myself inside her while she says my name like it means something good.
Bobby doesn't get that. Bobby gets a headstone in Twin Falls and a wife who had to start over.
The guilt is a fist in my chest. Tight and familiar.
When Wren comes out to the porch with two mugs of coffee, hair loose around her shoulders, freckles bright in the morning sun, wearing my flannel buttoned wrong so it shows the curve of one breast, I can barely look at her.
"Morning." She holds out my mug. "The light on the garden right now is insane. Can I shoot it?"
"Road's clearing."
She pauses with the mug extended. Studies my face. "Okay. How soon?"
"Tomorrow morning, probably. You could get the rental out if you take it slow."
"Right." She sets both mugs on the porch railing. "That's good. My Saturday shoot." A beat. "Silas, what's wrong?"
Nothing. Everything. The fact that she's standing on my porch in my shirt looking like she belongs here, and the thought of her leaving guts me, and the thought of asking her to stay guts me worse because wanting her feels like forgetting them.
"Nothing's wrong. Road's clearing. You've got a job to get back to."
"I do." She watches me. Reading me again, that photographer's eye that misses nothing. "But that's not what you're saying."
"It's exactly what I'm saying."
"No. You're telling me to go. There's a—" She stops herself. Crosses her arms. "Why."
"You live in Reno. You've got a business. I live on a mountain with no cell service. This was three days."
Her jaw tightens. "Three days that meant something."
"Three days that were good. But they were three days."
"You're scared."
"I'm realistic."
"You're scared." Louder. Her chin lifts. "You risked your life for so long running into fire for strangers. Now you've got a woman standing on your porch telling you she's falling in love with you, wants to make that same risk for you and you can't handle it."
Falling in love. The words land in my chest like something heavy. Because I feel it too. Every minute of the last three days, building and building. But Bobby felt that way about Jenny, and Bobby is dead, and the only thing I know for certain about love is that it makes the loss worse.
"Wren."
"Don't." She holds up a hand. "Don't say my name in that voice. That's the voice you use to be gentle when you're about to be cruel."
She's right. She's been right about everything since she got here. About the garden. About the scar. About me. And I hate it, because being known by someone means they can hurt you, and more importantly, you can hurt them.
"You should pack your things. If the road firms up by tonight, you could leave at first light."
The silence stretches. Ash is on the porch between us, head swiveling back and forth. Even the dog knows this is bad.
"Okay." Her voice is quiet. Controlled. The fire has gone out of it, replaced by something worse. Dignity. "I'll pack."
She takes her coffee inside. The screen door closes behind her with a soft click. Not a slam. Somehow that's worse.
My hands grip the porch railing until my knuckles go white.
Inside, sounds of movement. The camera bag zipping. Drawers opening and closing. She's folding the flannel, probably. Putting it back where she found it. Removing herself from my space like I asked her to.
Ash whines at the door. Looks at me with brown eyes full of judgment.
"Don't."
He whines again. Louder.
"She's leaving. That's how this works. People leave. The mountain stays."
But the mountain has never felt this empty, and she hasn't even gone yet.
An hour passes. She comes out dressed in her sundress, the dried one, camera bag across her body. Hair braided. Locket visible against her skin. She looks beautiful and put together, and the only sign that anything happened is a slight redness around her eyes.
She cried. In my bathroom, probably. Running the water so I wouldn't hear.
"I checked the road again." Her voice is steady. Professional. The voice she probably uses with difficult clients. "You're right, it's firming up. I'm going to try it now. If I get stuck, I'll walk the rest."
"Wait until morning. The mud's not—"
"No." Clear. Final. "I'm going now."
She's not asking permission. She's telling me.
"At least let me drive you down in my truck."
"I'll manage."
She walks down the porch steps. Ash tries to follow. She crouches, takes his face in both hands, presses her forehead to his.
"You're the best boy." Soft. "Take care of your dad for me."
When she stands, her eyes are bright but steady. She looks at me one more time. Three days of memories in that look. The storm, the kitchen, the garden, the couch. My mouth on her body. Her fingers in my hair. Falling asleep with her tucked against my side.
"For what it's worth, Silas, you're wrong. About yourself, about this. When you figure that out, you know where to find me." She pulls a business card from her camera bag. Sets it on the porch railing, weighed down by a pebble. "Halloway Photography. My cell's on there."
Then she walks down the access road toward her car, sundress swaying, camera bag on her hip, never looking back once.
Ash presses against my leg. Stares down the road.
The business card sits on the railing. White with gray script. I don't pick it up. Can't make myself throw it away either.
The cabin is silent. No humming. No camera shutter. No voice asking questions I haven't answered in years.
Just the mountain. The garden. The dog.
Everything I asked for. Everything I chose.
It's never felt like less.