I press my eyes shut, causing a torrent of tears to slip down my cheeks. “I saw the photos… you’re… you’re a married man. I slept with a married man.” I collapse to my knees and press the heels of my hands against my eyes. I cried just as hard after my father died, when I realized for the first time in my life that I was all alone in the world. And now, here it is, happening all over again.
Adam’s hand is on my back as he kneels next to me. “You’ve got it all wrong,” he insists, his voice croaking with emotion.
I look up at him through the veil of my disheveled hair, my eyes swollen and my nose snotty. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how do you explain the photos tucked in the visor of your van, huh?” I can hear him take a deep breath, the warmth of his hand disappearing from my back.
“I was going to tell you about them.”
“When?” I scream.
Molly barks from the back deck of the house and canters to where we’re planted in the meadow. She licks my tear-stained face, her tail wagging.
“Molly, back!” Adam commands. The big dog whines and sits on her hind legs right next to him.
I wipe my nose on the flannel sleeve, keeping my head bowed. Facing Adam feels impossible.
His voice is low and even. “We never received alerts from the county. No evacuation order. Nothing.”
I scowl. “What are you even talking about?” I say through gritted teeth.
“Eighty-five people died that day. Out of the seventy-five bodies that were identified, the oldest was ninety-nine, and the youngest was only eight.”
“I don’t understand.” I sniffle, the words “died” and “bodies” causing me to shiver. “Please, start over and explain yourself like I’m a child.”
His pained expression surprises me as he meets my eyes. His words shock me.
“I’m a widower, Keri. I lost my wife, Mia, and my eight-year-old daughter, Evie. They died two years ago in the nation’s deadliest and most destructive California wildfire on record.”
I’m sick, the turmoil of emotions swirling through my head causing me to break down into a crying heap. Adam helps me up from the ground and guides me to the house, settling me on the velvet sofa. He fetches me a glass of water and a damp washcloth. He’s tender in his actions, gently wiping my tears away.
“I’m the one who should be comforting you,” I mourn. I can’t stop the tears.
“Shhh. It’s okay. I understand. This is heavy.”
Once I’ve calmed down, I listen, my chest tightening as he recounts the nightmare of losing his wife and daughter. He is unnervingly composed, but I hear his voice splinter as he describes the agony. He looks as if he’s steeled himself for this confession. The weight of his grief crushes me, and I can hardly bear it.
Adam was in Los Angeles working on a photo project when the tragedy happened. The fire started early, in a small town near his home. But this was no ordinary fire. Wind gusts of fifty miles an hour blew hot embers ahead, sparking new blazes. Areas the size of football fields ignited every few seconds.
He told me how he and his wife knew the risk of wildfires where they lived. The little house they bought after they married had been burned down and rebuilt a decade earlier by the former owners. But this was their dream property nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills, far away from the big city. It’s where they gathered with Roxy and his Uncle Chip for Easter egg hunts, for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, and pretty much every weekend of the year. Their internet and cell reception were often sketchy and unreliable because they were so far removed from town. They mainly depended on their landline in the remote area while he was away for work. Adam explained that he and Mia wanted their focus to always be on family, not the outside world.
While working in LA, he saw the news alert and sensed the fire was dangerously close. Panicking, he reached Mia, who assured him the car was packed and they were heading to safety. Relieved, he told her to call once she, Evie, and the dog arrived at a secure location. There wasn’t time for him to drive several hours back from LA to his hillside bungalow to help them.
By mid-morning, the fire surged across a canyon into their town, torching twenty square miles and sparking a separate fire miles away. By noon, flames overtook the center. Several fires merged into a thirty-two-square-mile inferno, walls of flame and smokethe size of Manhattan. Cars filled with people and pets clogged the only road out. They were trapped, including Adam’s family.
“There were no alerts. No evacuation orders. It happened so fast.”
“Oh, Adam. I’m so sorry.”
He pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly against his chest, his entire body trembling. “I know you are. I know,” he whispers into my hair.
He tells me how he made a tearful drive dozens of times to the ruins of his home, not able to fully absorb his staggering loss. He drove past burned-out vehicles and unrecognizable neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Forests of blackened trees stood in permanent silhouette. It looked like hell on earth. Sometimes, he could only stop and stare. Everything was gone.
A makeshift memorial of splintered crosses with names of the deceased along the main road into town was especially overwhelming and compounded the reality of the fire’s ferocity. Standing in front of his wife and daughter’s side-by-side crosses, he said a silent prayer, hoping their deaths were quick and painless.
The blaze that blitzed across the Sierra Nevada foothills took everything he had. Everything that he ever loved. He and Roxy sifted through the ash among remnants of the pine and oak forest, digging for keepsakes in the foundation of his house while he contemplated what lay ahead for him. He tried to stay forthe long recovery at first and even considered rebuilding. The town came alive with the buzz of chainsaws and the din of heavy equipment tearing up foundations and dumping the rubble into trucks that hauled it away.
