I open a window and lie down on the unmade bed, press my face into the sheets to smell him. They’re cold. The scent of him makes him real to me, and I sink into the bed. But I smell someone else there, too. It takes a moment of shock for me to realize it’s not some other woman I’m smelling, but my own scent, from before the days at the lookout, bathing in the river. There’s a fermented odor to me now, an activity in the cells that wasn’t there before. I inhale the remnants of us on the sheets, and there’s a clarity to it, a certainty, if just for a moment. It’s the sanest I’ve felt in weeks. I need to bathe.
Cellar spiders have woven webs in the bathtub; he’s been showering at work. And I realize how alone I was all those nights at the lookout — how much farther he was from me than I realized. I wonder how Katie found me at all — how she would have known that I was up there, and not here, at the cabin. I grab the broom and collect the spiders, shake them off outside, let the water run in the tub until it’s only lukewarm and get in anyway. It feels like a hot tub compared to bathing in the river.
Night falls before Carey comes home. I heat some soup and cut the mold off a log of Tillamook cheddar, salvage what I can to eat with crackers. The radio is on, tuned to the only station that comes in out here, which favors old country and country-gospel. I fall asleep on the couch, waiting for the sound of his truck.
It’s almost ten when he comes in, dropping his overnight bag and gear by the door. I sit up sleepy-eyed, but I am anxious to see him.
“Don’t get up,” he says. He comes over and picks me up, carries me to the bedroom, lays me on the bed, and sits next to me.
“You smell like a campfire,” I say.
“Biggest campfire you’ll ever see,” he says, kissing my knees open. I’m wearing underwear and one of his T-shirts and nothing else. He puts his face in my crotch and inhales.
“The hell?” I say, laughing.
“I’ve been spent the last twelve hours running interference between a raging fire and the BLM, state and federal forestry, and the fire chiefs of three counties.”
“That’s quite the weenie roast.”
“You smell amazing.”
“I took a bath.”
He crawls up next to me and kisses me, closes his eyes and falls back on the pillows. I unbutton his shirt, loosen his belt. He grunts as I undress him down to his undershirt and briefs.
“Oh, hey,” he says as I’m pulling his shirt off.
“Yes?”
“Before I forget: that hiker you saw.”
I drop his shirt to the floor.
“Yeah?” My heart pounds in my chest.
“I think I found her when I was evacuating the campground.”
“You did?”
“Brown hair, red bandanna. Mid-twenties. I didn’t talk to her, but somebody else in the group said they had all been out hiking near Cougar Lake.”
“You saw her up close?”
“So that mystery’s solved,” he says.
“Maybe…”
He turns around and kisses me.
“Are you still worried?”
I look into his eyes and wonder if it’s too late. Even if I tell him, what could he do? She’s gone two days now.
I nod.
“Did she look like Katie?”
“What?” He pulls back.
“She looked like Katie.”
He looks confused, then there’s pity in his eyes, his voice.
“No, not really. Not up close, Luce.” He wraps his arms around me. “Is that why you’ve been acting so weird? You thought you saw Katie?”
“I really did see her.”
“I’m sure you did — in your mind. You wanted to see her, so you did. From a distance, with the dark hair, her height… this woman could’ve looked like Katie.”
We lay down and he holds me for a while.
I say, “Do you want a beer?”
And he says, “Sure.” Eyes closed.
When I get to the kitchen, I take deep breaths, open a bottle, and take a swig. Back in the bedroom, he’s asleep on his side, facing the room. He falls asleep like that — instantly — like a giant knocked out by a clever village boy. I stand there drinking the beer in the rim of lamplight, an owl marking the hour out in the trees somewhere.
In the night the fire slows down, the containment lines on the west side are holding. We decide I should go to Prairie City, though. Carey wants me to take his truck, but I refuse.
“Your car is falling apart, Lu.”
“It’s falling apart, but it runs. I drove it to Spokane, didn’t I?”
“And you haven’t driven it five miles since. It’s fifty miles to Prairie City. These roads are dangerous, especially during a fire. I just want to know that you’re safe.”
“You need your truck more than I do. I’ll stay on the paved roads. I’ll be careful.”
He pulls on his jacket and kisses me, heads out the door. I don’t hear his truck starting up, so I open the front door again. He’s fussing around with something in my car. He sees me in the doorway and sticks his head out.
“CB radio,” he shouts.
I walk out to the car. He’s duct-taping the radio to the top of the dashboard.
“I worry about you, too, you know,” I say, staring him down.
“I’m a pencil-pusher now, not a fire jumper.” He steps out of the car and looks back at me, hard.
“I am not going to die.”
I bring his hand to my face, resting my cheek in his palm. I am sure my father believed the same thing every time he left for work. I should tell him I’ve missed two periods, but it seems so dramatic.
“Call me when you can, so I can hear your voice.”
Carey warned me that the roadside motel in Prairie City was booked with Missoula hotshots, so I end up reserving the same room we stayed in for my birthday, at the inn. I think about calling my mom back but decide I’ll do it from the hotel.
I find my suitcase in the closet and throw it open on the bed. Stand over it, bewildered, not remembering what I filled it with when I came out here. I look around the room. My dirty laundry is in the canvas bag and ready to go. I have two drawers of the dresser, so I pull them out and dump them over the suitcase. A hairbrush in the bathroom. A small, cluttered bag of makeup and toiletries. A few books. I take everything, right? I pack it all, just in case? In case I never come back. In case there’s not a cabin to come back to.
I turn on the radio to settle my nerves. The country-gospel station doesn’t seem to have a DJ or advertising of any kind, no interruptions in the broadcast for weather or news, no emergency broadcast alerts. As far as I know, it’s broadcast from outer space. I wash the breakfast dishes and the coffeepot, watching out the window, thinking of Katie. I look down at the soapy water, my hands doing circles around the inside of a coffee cup. When I glance back up to the window, for a second I let myself believe she will be there, limping up to the cabin. I dry my hands and force myself to walk away from the window.
I should have told Carey everything. I will tell him all of it. When the fires are out.
I wander the cabin, opening cupboard doors and drawers, marveling that I have nothing else. Nothing. I left everything behind. Everything I ever loved is in Seattle, collecting dust in my apartment. I sink into the couch. What if it all burned down? My soft gray sofa covered in pillows, my shelves of vinyl records, books, the closet full of decent clothes (the ones I knew I wouldn’t need out here), my French press and my favorite coffee cup, pictures of friends, of my parents when we were all still together, on the islands, the jar of agates collected from the windowsills, the latch-hook rug by my bed that Grandma Lucia made, Grandpa Whit’s old coat, the photograph of the two of them, standing next to the cottage, the other things I asked my mother to collect from the cottage before I sold it back to the Swensons.