“Is this the first time she reached out?” I asked. I already knew the answer from my mother’s perspective, but I needed to know how he’d answer this.
“No, it’s not. I’m sure you know that. But again, that was cowardly of me.”
This time, I cleared my throat. There seemed to be a surplus of that in this conversation. “I appreciate your honesty about everything. I think we could do a video call. I’m about to leave to go out to a fire, this afternoon, actually. I’ll probably be out for a couple of weeks.”
I glanced toward my mom. “I’m sure she’ll set something up when I get back.”
She beamed at me. Once again, I could hear the rattle in my father’s breath when he chuckled. “I’m sure she will. It’s good to hear your voice, Kincaid.”
After that, we ended the call. I honestly don’t remember how we said goodbye.
My mom was all misty-eyed across the kitchen table from me. She reached for both of my hands and held them in hers, squeezing hard. “I’m proud of you, honey.”
My brows hitched slightly as I tilted my head to the side. “I know you’re proud of me, Mom, and that’s the only reason I was able to make this call. You have been and are the best mom anybody could ever ask for.”
“Do you really mean it? Will you do a video call with him?” she pressed.
“I mean it, Mom.” I squeezed her hands again. My heart ached a little. As close as I was with my mother, I wasn’t ready to process this fully just yet. I needed time. It worked out that this happened the same day I found out we were traveling to a fire, which gave me some built-in time to think.
“Now I gotta go.”
“I know, I know. Thank you for making that call before you left.”
“You got it. Love you, Mom.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kincaid
A week into the fire
“Ah, hell,” Graham muttered as he sat down, dragging his sleeve across his face.
I glanced sidelong toward him. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”
“This fire is an asshole,” Hudson chimed in.
I barked a laugh just as Parker reached us. He set a chainsaw on the ground and sank onto the wide fallen log that Graham was already perched on. “You found the only tree,” Parker said.
Graham glanced down at the charred hunk of tree he was seated on. “Well, most of them have been burned,” he pointed out dryly.
Within the hour, the rest of our crew had gathered. This was officially a safe zone now, because there was nothing left to burn, no fuel left for the fire. Nothing of worth anyway. Fire has to have fuel to keep burning.
We’d been out here with another crew from Willow Brook, along with a crew from Fairbanks, fighting a massive wildfire in the interior of Alaska. Just like most of the West, fires were becoming more common because summers were hotter and winters weren’t as cold.
“How much longer do you think we’re gonna be out here?” I asked Graham, who was the superintendent for our crew.
He let out a breath. “Maybe a week. We’ve got this section under control. The Fairbanks crews are gonna move around to the other side, and we’ll stay over here to establish safety lines. The river a few miles away gives us a natural barrier, and apparently, some rain should be rolling in within the next few days. After that, we head back.”
That evening, we actually got to relax a little more than we had so far. When fighting wildfires, we had a lot of gear to carry. The work was grueling. We ate light and slept light until the fire was enough under control that we could relax a bit.
Tonight, we played cards, traded jokes, and gradually spread out to sleep. I lay awake for a little while, staring up at the sky, which felt so vast here in Alaska. There was zero light pollution out here. The nearest town was over one hundred miles away. It felt like I could stretch a fingertip up and touch the stars.
Tori sashayed into my thoughts. I missed her. Fuck, I missed her. That was a new feeling for me. I thought about my mom’s hopefulness—for me to have a relationship, to build something lasting.
A fuzzy, gray emotion floated through me. I didn’t know how else to describe it. It wasn’t black or bitter, not resigned or angry either. That used to be how I felt about my dad. But those old feelings were sort of neutralized a little. Maybe.
If he hadn’t been so honest, I wasn’t sure I would’ve believed a word he said. But he had acknowledged the reality, and that mattered. Honesty was something my mom had drilled into me from the start. Tell the truth. Own your choices. I trusted people more when they admitted they’d screwed up.
