There's a main stage at the south end and the competition grounds to the north — I can see the log-rolling pool from here, a long rectangular tank of dark water with a log floating in it. Beyond that, what looks like the axe-throwing range. Beyond that, the chainsaw carving area, where a man in ear protection is already working and a small crowd has gathered to watch.
I scan the grounds.
He's tall. I remember that. Broad through the shoulders. Dark hair, or light-dark, the kind that could go either way in the memory. He laughed easily. He had a way of standing that made the space around him feel calm, like weather moving around a mountain. I spent one night with him and I've spent three years with the shape of him in my peripheral vision every time I look at my daughter.
Macie spots the log-rolling pool and makes a break for it.
"Hey — no!" I catch her around the middle and she goes stiff with outrage. "That's water, sweetheart. Not for us."
"Wantwater."
"I know you want water. We're going to look, okay? We're going to walk around and look."
She thinks about this. "And snacks?"
"If we find some, yes."
She relaxes in my arms, satisfied. I carry her toward the competition area because the crowd is thinner there and I can see more of the grounds from the elevated viewing platform to one side. The platform is wooden, temporary, bolted together for the week. I climb the three steps and Macie grabs the railing and leans out over it, pointing at the log in the pool below.
"Log," she announces to nobody in particular.
"That's right."
"Big log."
"Big log."
"Biggestlog." She looks at me for confirmation.
"Probably the biggest log," I agree.
She nods, satisfied, and then looks back at the grounds. And I do too. I'm watching the festival staff — the people moving with purpose, the ones carrying clipboards or wearing lanyards or directing competitors toward the staging area.
One of the vested men from the entrance is talking to a group near the axe range. Two women are setting up a judging table near the log-rolling pool. And a man is coming around the corner of the staging tent on the far side of the competition grounds.
He's tall. Broad through the shoulders. Dark hair, just a bit long, curling at the back of his neck. He's wearing a grey shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows and he has a lanyard and a radio clipped to his belt.
It's HIM.
I know it before my brain finishes the confirmation, the way you know certain things in the body before the mind catches up. The same man who sat across from me at a picnic table three years ago and smiled and made me feel, for the first time in months, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
He's thirty feet away. Maybe thirty-five.
He looks up, scanning the grounds, doing whatever a festival coordinator does when he needs to see the whole picture at once. His gaze sweeps the platform.
It stops.
Thirty feet away, he goes still.
I watch him see me. I watch the recognition move through his face — the way it changes from professional assessment to something else, something much older and much more specific. He knows me. Three years and a different life, but he knows me the same way I know him.
Then his gaze drops to Macie.
She's still leaning on the railing, pointing at the log, narrating her observations to anyone who will listen. Dark hair, same dark-light shade as his. Stubborn jaw, she got from somewhere that was not me. His eyes — that exact particular grey-green, the color of river water in shade.
He looks at her. He looks at me. He looks at her again.
I don't move. I don't look away. I stand there with Macie on the railing between my hands and I let him look, because this is the moment I drove eight hours for. This is the thing I've been rehearsing. I was wrong that it would be hard to find him — he was the first person I saw. I was wrong that I'd feel afraid. What I feel is something I don't have a clean word for. Like standing at the edge of something enormous and knowing you're about to step off.
