Elias Voss, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, stood behind the county fire safety booth at the Missoula summer street fair and wished he’d said no when the parks department called. He’d spent 32 years chasing blazes across Idaho and Montana, had outrun two crown fires and a 2009 lightning strike that took out three of his crew, but crowds of screaming kids and overperfumed tourists still made his skin crawl. He sipped lukewarm seltzer from a plastic cup, picked at a frayed edge of his fire-retardant work shirt, and handed out cheap plastic fire helmets to toddlers whose parents barely made eye contact. His wife Karen had died eight years prior from ovarian cancer, and he’d spent every day since clinging to rigid routine: 6 a.m. coffee, county carpentry jobs until 3, a single bourbon on the rocks at the dive bar off Highway 93, bed by 9. He’d turned down every invitation to fish with old crew mates, every half-hearted set-up from the church ladies down the street, convinced letting anyone new in would be a betrayal of the 27 years he’d had with Karen.
The smell of fried dough and charcoal from the grill nearby hit his nose right before he saw her. Lila Marlow, 58, mother of Jake Marlow, the rookie on his last fire crew before he retired. He’d only seen her twice before: once at Jake’s fire academy graduation, where she’d brought a tin of chocolate chip cookies so good the rest of the crew had stolen half of his share, and once at the 2017 end-of-season cookout, where she’d laughed so hard at his story about a baby moose wandering into fire camp she’d snort-laughed beer out of her nose. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts, a faded Tom Petty t-shirt, flannel tied around her waist, silver hoops glinting in the late afternoon sun, a smudge of cherry pie filling on her left thumb. She walked straight for the booth, no hesitation, and leaned in for a hug before he could react. Her perfume was cedar and vanilla, her shoulder warm where it pressed against his chest for the two seconds the hug lasted, and he felt a jolt run up his spine he hadn’t felt since he was 19 kissing a girl for the first time behind his high school gym.