Page 39

The storm hits ten days before the festival.

I smell it at dinner, a sharp, heavy scent that rolls down from the north ridge, and I’m out the door before the first raindrop lands.

I check the gate. I check the culverts. I tie down the tarps over the gravel piles at the trailhead, and then I stand on my porch with Wren and listen to the creek rise all night.

By morning, it’s over. The sky is washed clean and blue.

And the old logging track is gone.

I drive Wren out to see it, and we stand at the edge of the creek road and stare. Where the track used to cross the gully, there’s just a raw brown gash in the hillside, six feet deep, with creek water still running through the bottom.

The culvert pipe is lying on its side fifty yards downstream like a dropped soda can.

Dale took his digger back to town last week for another job. He was due to bring it back for the Lookout footings, right behind the truck from the lumberyard, which carried every plank for the deck and boardwalk.

That’s the good news. The digger is safe. Unfortunately, neither vehicle can get in now. Neither can anything with wheels.

How do you pour footings with no digger? How do you build a deck with no road?

Wren’s phone rings. It’s Prue. Wren puts her on speaker, and I hear the bad news before Prue even says it. Her voice sounds exhausted.

“The county’s pulled the crew,” Prue says. “The storm took out half the roads on the east side. They need everyone they’ve got on that. They said they’re sorry.”

“For how long?” Wren asks.

“Two weeks. Maybe three.”

The festival is ten days away.

Nobody says anything. The creek runs brown through the bottom of the gully, right where the road used to be.

“If the trail doesn’t open,” Prue says quietly, “I’ve got nothing to take to council. I’m so sorry, Wren. I know what this means for you.”

I know what it means too. No trail means no visitor numbers. No numbers means no funding. No funding means no permanent second officer.

And at the end of September, Wren will go where the work is. That’s my fear, anyway, since we’ve never talked about what happens next. I look down at her. She’s standing very straight, chin up, hands jammed in her pockets. I imagine the wheels turning in her mind. She’s calculating how many trips it would take two people to carry an entire boardwalk in by hand.

How many trips would it take? Hundreds. How many days do we have? Ten. I already did the math, and it doesn’t work.

“Thanks, Prue,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.”

She hangs up. Then she turns and walks back to the truck, not saying a single word the whole way home.

It’s the longest she’s ever gone without talking.

She falls asleep on my couch at nine, still in her boots, with her plans spread across her chest and a pencil in her hand. I take off her boots. I slide the plans out from under her fingers and roll them up. I cover her with the blanket and tuck it in around her feet, because her feet are always cold.

Then I stand and watch her for a long time.

What would she do if the situation was reversed? If it were my job, and my trail, and my one shot?

I know the answer. She’d have half the town on the phone before breakfast.

For years, I’ve done everything in this forest alone. I fixed the culverts alone. I fixed the fences alone. I carried my secret alone. It was easier than asking for help. But this isn’t about me.

This is about the woman I love, asleep on my couch. She designed the best trail this town has ever seen. She deserves to stand on that Lookout on festival day and watch the whole town see what she saw.

And I’m not losing her over a hole in the road.