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Shannon throws up her hands. “Thank you.”

Janet squints. “And I think his stomach got bigger.”

“It did not.”

“I think it did.”

With Janet here, we make one serious attempt at repair. We manage to lower the high side and, in the process, shorten one foreleg until even Shannon has to admit it was probably better before we touched it.

That ends the rescue effort.

By sunset, the official woven representation of the Hollis Springs Black Bears looks like it has survived a prolonged illness and recently received very bad news.

Blair backs up and considers our work. “That thing isn’t going in the middle of the Harvest Festival with our names attached to it.”

“He isn’t finished,” Shannon insists. “He just needs more…”

Blair looks at the bear. “I’m afraid more wicker is how we got here.” She narrows her eyes at him. “He looks like a possibly diseased woodland cryptid.”

That breaks all of us. Even Janet is still laughing after the rest of us begin to settle, her shoulders finally dropped, her phone forgotten.

I light the bonfire mostly for mosquito control. The evening is warm enough to leave the back of my neck damp, but the smoke gives us a fighting chance.

We abandon the bear and drag our chairs closer to the fire. Janet passes around bug spray, Laura eats dump cake, and Shannon finally gives up pretending anyone will touch the vegetable tray.

I settle deeper into my chair and stretch my feet toward the flames. Smoke catches in my hair, my bare calves are warm on one side and cool on the other, and behind me is a cottage where every lock belongs to me.

The screened porch runs across the back of the house, facing nothing but woods. Beyond the yard, the trees close around the property, hiding every other house and the road from where I’m sitting.

Nobody is waiting for me to come inside. Nobody cares how loud I laugh or whether I drink another glass of wine.

A year ago, Trent called because I was twenty-three minutes late.

Tonight there is nowhere else I’m supposed to be.

For months, everything has been about getting out, getting safe, and getting finished. Tonight I’m sitting in my own yard with women I chose, and I don’t need to know what comes next.

For now, that’s enough.

Conversation wanders through work, Janet’s mother, and a teacher Shannon is trying not to strangle before Shannon mentions her teenage daughter wanting to hike with two girlfriends.

Blair asks, “Do they know what to do if they run into a bear?”

“They’re going to a state park,” Shannon says. “They’re more likely to run into somebody’s off-leash Labradoodle.”

Shannon shifts in her chair. “Have you all heard the man-or-bear question?”

Janet frowns. “The what?”

I turn toward Shannon. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re alone in the woods. You have to encounter either a strange man or a bear. Which one would you rather run into?”

Janet’s forehead wrinkles. “What kind of bear?”

Blair gives Janet a tiny salute with her cup. “Good question.”

I laugh, but I don’t have to think about my answer.