Page 78 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

I hear him exhale, long and shaky, and I understand what that breath means.

“Timber Creek's still standing,” I say, before either of them can ask. “The immediate threat's passed, as far as anyone's telling me. We lost a couple of outlying homes, some barns. Nobody hurt. Nobody missing. It's not over yet, but the worst part looks like it's behind us.”

“Thank God,” Reid says, quiet.

“I tried to reach you both,” I say. “My messages weren't going through. I kept trying.”

“We tried to reach you too,” Beck says. “Same problem.”

Neither of us apologizes, because there's nothing to apologize for. We did what we could, all the way through days of a poor telecommunications refusing to cooperate with our intentions.

“That scared me, Ivy,” Beck says, quiet, no accusation in it at all. Just true.

“I know,” I say, and I do know, because I've spent years feeling this on Reid's side of things. Now Beck's felt it too.

We don't stay on long. Beck's still at his own assignment, still has people around him waiting, and I need to eat and rest before I’ll really be able to think straight. We agree to talk again when we can, no promises beyond the ones we've already made.

We'll try. We already know that part.

When the call ends, I sit here a moment longer, phone still warm in my hand, letting the relief settle in properly. Reid's okay. Beck's okay. They both know I'm okay now too.

But what stays with me, longer than any of the practical details, is the sound of Beck's voice when he first answered. Ivy? And then, quieter: That scared me, Ivy. I heard what was underneath both of those, more than he probably meant to show me.

My mind drifts back to the porch, the night before he left. To the moment I'd almost told him everything, three words sitting right there, ready, before I swallowed them and said three different words instead.

At the time, it felt like the right choice. I didn't want to hand him something that enormous the night before he left, not knowing when we’d see each other again.

But the last few days have taught me something I didn't fully understand before. There's no perfect moment coming. Life doesn’t generally work that way. Fires happen. Service disappears. People leave with no warning and no return date. Waiting for the ideal time to tell someone you love them just means the words sit there unsaid, indefinitely, while life keeps moving.

I'm not going to say it over a phone call from a staging area, though, not with Reid listening and both of us exhausted and neither of us anywhere close to the other. Some things deserve to be said face to face.

But the next time I see Beck, I'm going to tell him.

The last time I had the chance, I let the words go unsaid.

I won't do that again.

thirty

Beck

“You know we could spend our days off actually resting,” Reid says, watching the mile markers go by like he's personally offended by each one.

“I’m the one driving. You can sleep.”

He doesn't argue further, mostly because he knows where this is going and why, and there's no version that ends with me not in Timber Creek when I have the option to be there.

This drive feels nothing like when we first headed to Timber Creek in June. Blackpine was just where we'd been sent because our regular unit didn't need us, one temporary stop among however many I've had over the years. Nothing about it expected to be different from anywhere else.

This time I've been counting miles since we left. Not just toward Ivy, though she’s most of it. Toward the crew house. The Grangers'. Streets I know now. People I know now, a whole small stretch of Montana that stopped being a temporary assignment and started being somewhere I think about, especially when I'm not there.

I've spent my whole life being good at arriving somewhere new. I don't think I ever understood, until this drive, what it might feel like to want to come back to somewhere instead.

“You going back to Colorado this winter?” Reid asks, somewhere past the halfway point.

“I've got an offer. Haven't accepted it.”

He considers that for a second, watching me instead of the road now. “That have anything to do with Ivy?”