"I know you are," he says. "Hand it over anyway."
There's no edge in his voice. He's not being dismissive. He just says it the way someone says something that isn't worth arguing about, and before I've made a conscious decision, I'm sliding the straps off my shoulders and handing it to him. His fingers brushmine as he takes it, warm against my cold skin, and he slings it over one shoulder like it weighs nothing.
"I'm Cal," he says.
"Alice."
He repeats it once, quietly, as if he's filing it somewhere. Then he turns and starts walking, his headlamp throwing a clean line of light across the trail ahead. "Ground's uneven in places. Stay close."
I fall into step behind him. I watch the steady way he moves and feel the tension in my shoulders ease by degrees. Above us, the stars are extraordinary, thick and white across a sky that has no competition from any artificial light for miles in any direction.
We walk in silence for a while after that. The kind of silence that doesn't need to be filled.
The cabin appears through the trees without much warning: low and solid, a covered porch, a woodpile stacked neatly against one wall. Cal unlocks the door and steps inside first, sweeping his flashlight across the room before reaching for a lamp.
Warm light fills the space. A woodstove, a small kitchen, a table with two chairs. Everything practical and in its place.
"Sit down," he says. "I'll get the fire going."
I sit.
I watch him crouch in front of the stove and build the fire the way someone does who has done it thousands of times. Within a few minutes the wood catches and warmth begins to push into the room.
He disappears through a back doorway and returns with a sweatshirt, which he holds out without preamble. "Put this on."
It's large and soft and smells like smoke and sandalwood, decidedly and pleasantlymale. I pull it over my head and the sleeves fall well past my wrists. I push them up and find him watching me with an expression I can't quite read. Not guarded,exactly. More like someone who has just noticed something he wasn't expecting.
"Tea," he says, turning toward the kitchen. "And then you can tell me about this fictional fox of yours."
Chapter Three
Cal
Ishouldbeirritated.
That is the usual shape of it when someone wanders off a marked trail after dark. A little paperwork. A firm word about checking the weather and telling someone your route. A reminder that the Smokies are not a theme park. Most lost hikers are embarrassed. Some are defensive. All of them are grateful to be found, and by the time I hike them back to their cars, the whole thing feels like a minor inconvenience that will become a good story.
With Alice, I am not irritated. I’mintrigued.
It’s not just that she’s a gorgeous woman. She’s also creative and spirited and the way her face lit up like the Fourth of July when she started to talk about the fox in her children’s book made her look evenmorebeautiful.
Now she sits at my table with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, wearing my sweatshirt, telling me about that fox with that same look of absolute joy on her face.
“He lives at the edge of a meadow,” she says. “The other animals have a whole community in the hollow—dens, shared paths, the whole thing. He watches from a distance and tells himself he prefers being alone. That it’s quieter in his den. Less complicated.”
“Does he?” I ask, leaning against the kitchen counter, my own mug warm in my hands. “Prefer it, I mean.”
She thinks about it. I appreciate that. She doesn’t reach for the easy answer.
“I think he’s convinced himself he does,” she says finally. “But there’s a difference between preferring something and just being used to it.”
This fox is sounding a bit too much like…me.
The fire settles into a steady rhythm, wood ticking as it burns, heat spreading slowly through the small room. Outside, the wind moves through the pines in a low, continuous sound I stopped hearing years ago and only notice now because she seems to be listening to it.
I’ve been in this cabin for six weeks. I take the backcountry assignment in September because my supervisor offers it and I don’t have any real reason to say no. The work suits me. The solitude suits me. I wake early, run my patrol routes, eat my meals, sleep well. I’m not unhappy.
I’m not much of anything, I realize now, looking at her.
