Page 77 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

We're evacuating the town. I'm staying with the crew. I'm okay.

Still okay. Cell service is basically gone.

Neither one has gone anywhere, as far as I can tell. Just sitting in my outbox, unsent, useless.

I think about my original text, the one I sent before everything collapsed. We're okay. I'll keep you posted. I have no idea when Beck received it, or what he thinks now that I haven't followed up the way I promised. If he's learned Timber Creek is under threat and can't reach me, I know what that's doing to him. There's nothing I can do about it from here. I put my phone away and go back to work.

At some point, straightening up from a crouch, I catch sight of my boots, caked in mud and soot, and think, absurdly, of the pedicure a few weeks ago, toes painted a color I can no longer see or remember, buried under four days of this. Beck would be deeply disappointed in the current state of his favorite legs. The thought makes me laugh, short and tired, and then I'm back to work.

The afternoon stretches on. Smoke stays visible over the ridgelines. Aircraft passes overhead more than once. Nobody's talking about residents coming home yet. But sometime in the late afternoon, I notice something shift, subtle at first, more resources moving with less urgency, radio traffic changing tone, Russ's shoulders loosening by some small fraction I can barely define but do recognize.

An hour later, Russ gathers us. “Conditions are cooperating,” he says. “Line's holding on the sections that matter most. Structure protection's held everywhere we needed it to.” He pauses, careful. “Timber Creek looks like it's going to be okay.”

Nobody cheers. It's too early, too tenuous, and everyone here knows better than to celebrate before the incident's truly resolved. But something in the group eases, a breath collectively let out.

There have been losses. Russ tells us straight, no softening it more than necessary. Two homes outside town, a handful of barns and outbuildings, gone. Families who'll come back to find something missing that can't be replaced.

But no injuries. No fatalities.

And Timber Creek itself, the town, the streets, the businesses, the crew house we've all called home for a summer, is still standing.

I let that register, standing with soot on my hands, and feel something like grief and relief tangled together too tightly to separate. The town survived. People will grieve what they've lost. But there's a Timber Creek for everyone to come home to. That matters more than I have words for right now.

Not long after, Blackpine gets rotated back. Not because it's over, but because we've been working too many hours on too little sleep. We need food. Rest. A shower, if the universe is feeling generous.

We're directed to a staging and logistics area set up outside the worst-affected zone, tents and vehicles and portable equipment clustered together in an open field that's become, temporarily, the nerve center of the whole response.

“Cell service should work here,” someone mentions, gesturing toward a portable tower rigged up near the command tent. “They brought in a mobile unit.”

I have my phone out immediately. It takes a few seconds. Searching. Connecting. Then everything hits at once, a flood of notifications stacking up on the screen faster than I can read them, several days of silence breaking open all at once.

I sit down right where I'm standing.

Missed calls from Beck, several of them, texts stacked below.

Just got your message. Are you okay?

Call me when you can.

Missed calls from Reid too, and texts, timestamps crawling backward through the last two days.

They know. They’ve known for a while something's wrong here, and they’ve been sitting somewhere hundreds of miles away not knowing if I'm all right.

I don't hesitate over which number to call first.

Beck picks up on the first ring.

“Ivy?”

Something in his voice catches me off guard, the strain of it audible even in one word, two days compressed into the way he says my name.

“I'm okay.”

There's a pause, long enough I can hear him breathing on the other end. I let him have whatever this moment is for him after not knowing.

Then, from somewhere near him: “Put her on speaker.” Reid's voice, unmistakable. “Define okay,” Reid says.

“Tired. Filthy. Probably going to sleep for twelve hours the second someone lets me. But fine. Unhurt. Everybody's fine, Reid. Russ, Tessa, all of us.”