Wildfire

by Allison Martin

  I ran into her dad maybe six months after Briggs left. He told me she got into a private school and wanted a fresh start. That Raston wasn’t a good place for her given all that had happened. He told me to respect her space. I ate it up. I thought I was doing the right thing. Her fucking mother had died, of course I wasn’t going to hunt her down. I did love her and more than anything I wanted her to be happy. I forced down my pain and carried on throwing myself into baseball, into college, then I got arrested and lost my scholarship. Was completely lost until I got a job at Wildland Fire.

  “What do we do now?” I ask as Briggs drained her beer and set it in the stones at her feet.

  “I do what I always do. Whatever is best for Millie.”

  “And that is?”

  “She deserves to know her father. Given the truth that has come out, I think she deserves to know you. But do you deserve to know her?”

  Her words are biting but it’s the thing that drew me to Briggs in the first place. You never have to guess or decode what she wants. It’s right there on her lips. She speaks her truth always. She was the calm in the midst of my storm. It always inspired me to my own honesty.

  “I truly hope to.”

  I need to deserve to know my daughter. Because now that I know about her, I’m certain I’ll never be able to go back to life without her.

  Chapter Five

  BRIGGS

  The sincerity etched into his dark features is enough to convince me, but not without a small skip in my chest. That blip that tells me I’d trusted him before and he didn’t pull through.

  I match his gaze and remind myself that it’s my mother that convinced him to not show up that night. But it doesn’t make it any less painful to think about. How young and dumb we were. How easily manipulated.

  But it’s not like that anymore. We’re adults. We can make this work for all of us.

  Somehow.

  “We need to go somewhere neutral but informal. Millie doesn’t like when all eyes are on her. She’s plenty outgoing but on her terms.”

  “Okay, Neutral.” Xan pauses to think, and I study his face. His gorgeous face that went from boyishly handsome to ruggedly sexy in the last decade. Damn him and damn my body for betraying me so soon. We’ve occupied the same space for ten minutes and he has me shifting back into his orbit.

  “What about the school’s spring barbecue? People, kids, hot dogs...”

  “And a whole town of Rastonites who see you walking around with a kid that looks like you. The gossip mill will be spinning out of control by noon.”

  “You’re right. What about Morleau? They have that little sports restaurant there. The one where you can draw on the tables.” Xan scratches the stubble on his jaw and the breeze swirls around us, wrapping me up in the scent of pine and damp dirt that tangles with his smell—spice and crisp laundry.

  “That could work,” I say, forcing myself to scoot further away from him.

  Morleau is the ski resort town about twenty kilometers up the road and the bitter rival of Raston, a real BC town. There are no busses of arrogant and rude travelers passing through here to take a few pictures and pick up a few trinkets to be able to say they ‘experienced’ the wild. No horde of wealthy skiers and groups of drunken snowboarders crowd the streets of Raston.

  Morleau is a manicured town. A town my parents loved for its perfectly painted houses and quaint little downtown where everything matches and everyone wears the same painfully artificial smile.

  Welcome to the wild heart of British Columbia. They would say.

  Raston is a run-down—divided and mismatched. It’s imperfect and truly wild—real and messy. A place that used to make my feet itch to move.

  “Yeah, Morleau is good. Tomorrow for dinner then?” I say, suddenly needing to get out of here. The sun disappears behind the tall mountain range and darkness stretches across the sky. I stand and dust off my pants, but Xan stays seated.

  “I need to get home before Millie heads to bed.” I continue and Xan startles as if I interrupted a thought.

  “Right, of course. I’m going to stick around here for a bit.” He leans forward to rest his forearms on his knees, his broad shoulders stretching out his old t-shirt. His arms flex with the strain and a whole new sensation floods me as I realized that while I was busy being pulled in by his familiar Xan energy, I’d completely missed the changes in his body. No more lanky frame and string bean muscle. He is solid, strong, and fucking sexy. He’s also watching me gawk at him with a quirk of amusement on the edge of his mouth.

  I shift my gaze to the multicolored stones that line the shore of the rushing creek and clear my throat.

  “You okay to drive?” I nod to the beer at his feet.

  “Yeah, just going to hang out here and let everything settle.”

  I shift through my discomfort, one foot to the other. I move away as if an invisible wind is guiding me, whispering to keep moving. To run. Because even though my daughter deserves to know her father, doesn’t mean I want her to.

  Because Xan is fire. He lures you in with the perfect mix of charm and brokenness. He keeps you warm and safe, but get to close...

  “See you tomorrow then,” I say and swallow the rush of attraction I felt moments earlier. Those feelings are completely off limits. We need to make this work for Millie.

  Striding over to him, straddling his lap, and crushing my lips to his is not the best thing for our daughter.

  So, I walk away.

  #

  I sit on the back porch and hold a steaming cup of coffee in two hands. There’s nothing but me and a beautiful little songbird hidden in the tree line chirping a pretty song. It could have been a calming way to spend my morning but the bags under my eyes indicate my lack of sleep and the bounce of my knee holds all the nervous energy I’d been building up since yesterday.

  Beside me lay my tackle box of jewelry making supplies, strewn across the tiny sun table and not helping to keep me steady one bit. The intricate work of my pieces keeps me focused on a narrow task, taking all my creativity and concentration so I can’t worry about things like introducing my daughter to her dad for the first time. Because what could possibly go wrong?

  The sun stretches across the lawn and peeks over the mountain range casting a long shadow of my mother’s greenhouse on the trees that surround our yard. I used to sit out on this porch every Saturday morning and do my homework while she worked in that greenhouse. It was actually a nursery. My mother loved trees. More than anything else, sometimes even me, especially after Xan. She could never walk through a forest without her arms outstretched, caressing each tree as we passed and stopping to tell me what kind it was and the extent of its root systems weaving together beneath our feet. She was a tree scientist, studying the boreal forests of Canada and the Northern USA.

  All day she’d be outside talking to the trees, all night inside talking to herself as she wrote her articles and poured over her data.

  Tears gather at the edge of my eyes and sting right down the back of my throat. All of the reasons I’ve been missing my mother in the last few moments begin to transform in my chest. Her nurturing care and passionate love twist and morph into what I now see as manipulation and control. Her plans, and data, and elaborate experiments shift from the little fragile trees in her nursery to me, her own daughter.

  She saw me like she saw her trees. An organism with a predetermined set of chemical compounds that caused me to behave in certain ways. If she wanted to change the behavior, she had to change the environment. If my environment was infested with a noxious weed, she would protect me by removing the weed at the roots.

  Xan was the weed.

  Before I truly connect with my body I’m already moving—slipping on my rubber boots and cinching my sweater tighter around my body. The sound of my feet slamming on each wooden step echo into the morning sky as I descend on the yard with no real clear understanding of what I’m doing.

  A surge of superhuman energy powers through my li
mbs as I bend to pick up a heavy stone that lined the overgrown path. I hurl it through the glass door with a guttural yell. It feels so fucking good to hear that smash and watch those shards fall. Yesterday I threatened Jet over this last bit of my mother I had left. Today I want it gone. I want her gone. I want to set a match to the place and watch her lies and manipulation burn to ash.

  Over and over I scoop up stones and launched them at fresh panes of glass, letting out harrowing cries each time the smooth cool stone leaves my palm. By the time I release the hold on my anger I can feel eyes on me. I spin around, my chest heaving with exertion, and see my daughter standing wide-eyed and still in her pajamas on the porch. Next to her my dad leans on his crutches. I can’t read his expression, but I sense his discomfort.

  “Mom?” Millie asks and I let the stone in my palm roll off my fingers and hit the grass with a thud.

  “Morning, sweetheart,” I say, ignoring my actions like some psychopath.

  “What are you doing?” Millie’s dark brows pinch together, and her young eyes hold no understanding. I jog up the stairs and wrap her up in my arms.

  “I was angry. I needed to vent it all out. Pops is having the greenhouse tore down anyway.” As I tuck her under my arm, I realize that all the glass had scattered around the lawn. Back in my right state I know that what I did was a terrible idea. But goddamn did it feel good.

  “Maybe don’t play on that side of the yard until the glass is cleaned up.”

  Dad takes a long sip of coffee as I pass. “Feel better?” His tone is accusing.

  “Much better.” I lift my chin and move right past him.

  #

  Millie tugs her fingers through her ponytail and takes her baseball cap off for the fifth time. “What if he doesn’t like me?” she asks.

  “Then I’ll kill him,” I joke, and she rolls her eyes at me.

  “Mom, I’m serious.”

  I yank the cap from her hands and put it back on her head, threading her ponytail through the strap at the back. Her cheeks are warm and as I cup them in my hands, I know she’s embarrassed. Or nervous. Or both.

  Hell. So am I.

  “Sweetheart. You are strong and smart and funny and the most beautiful human I’ve ever known. He is going to fall at your feet and adore you.”

  “Mooooom,” Millie groans trying to turn away, but I hold her steady and she’s forced to look at me.

  “I love you. You are my world. No matter what happens today it’s you and me okay.”

  She nods, her eyes glazing over.

  “This isn’t going to be easy, but I think it will be worth it. You deserve to know him.”

  “Okay,” she affirms and takes a deep breath like she did before she swings a baseball bat. Taking her to the batting cages all over the country is how I keep her happy when I know I can’t offer her a team to play on. We move around constantly. Never in the same town more than a few weeks, maybe a couple months but never during baseball season. Summer is my busiest time other than Christmas.

  “Be yourself, Sweetie. That’s who he wants to meet.”

  After I’m done pep talking my kid, I turn on myself in the mirror and the narrative changes immediately. Because my reflection doesn’t feel strong or smart or any of the things I told Millie. The woman in the mirror is terrified, like a little girl herself. People are always shocked to find out Millie’s my daughter. I don’t seem old enough to be a mom, but what does appearace really have to do with it is always my question. I copy Millie’s deep breathing exercise closing my eyes and trying to will this whole thing to go smoothly.

  “You coming Mom?” Millie asks and I nod straightening my flowing pale green tank and placing my charcoal pendant in the center of my chest. The black chunk of burnt wood had been one of my first and favorite pieces I’ve done. I sourced about fifty from a forest fire in Northern BC, dipped them in resin and fashioned them into simple pendants. It reminds me of what I’ve made of myself out of the ashes of my past. That burnt, and broken, and charred, that wood could still be something important. Something beautiful. Something new.

  I wipe my palms on the front of my snug jeans, the fraying knee tickling my flesh as I turned to the door.

  She deserves this, I say to myself, the phrase quickly becoming my mantra.

  Even if it causes pain, she needs to know her father.

  Chapter Six

  XAN

  I’ve never known how uncomfortable it can feel to be nervous, but the entire thirty-minute drive to the neighboring town of Morleau I move through hundreds of scenarios of how this meeting will go. Most of them are not good.

  It all stems from no good. There’s a little girl in this world that believes she isn’t wanted. The thought crushes my chest beneath my old t-shirt. Briggs said not to dress up or make it formal in any way. I may have taken it too far wearing this ratty thing from high school with the logo of the Raston Wildcat’s baseball team on it. Something my brothers and I all shared, a talent for fastball. None of us made it. I lost my scholarship, Jet tore his shoulder in senior year and had to quit, and Zeke is an asshole.

  My youngest brother squandered every bit of potential he ever had. If it weren’t for his mechanics shop, which Jet and I bought for him last year, God knows where he’d be. And little Del, our sweet wide eyed and big toothed little sister was a monster on the field. She still plays women’s softball in the summer with my other sister Pricilla, and her competitive spirit rivals Jet’s. If that’s possible.

  My pride vanishes as soon as Millie pops back into my mind. If she hates me, Briggs would take her away again, she’ll never get to meet my siblings, her aunts and uncles.

  What if she hates me?

  I grip the wheel tighter as I turn into Morleau. This place is a bad idea. There’s nowhere that makes me feel like I don’t belong as much as Morleau. The entire place is set up to look like a kitschy adventure community. I’ve lived twenty minutes away for my whole life and I still don’t know how many people actually live here. In the midst of summer heat and winter snow the tourists pour through the streets by the thousands. The mountain is overrun by skiers and snowboarders. I worked at the hill for a bit when I was sixteen and it’s where I learned one of many life lessons...Good little rich girls have a serious thing for guys like me. Guys who grew up on the wrong side of town, with the wrong parents, in the wrong circumstances. Angry, broken boys. All of those girls saw what they wanted to see in me, and I let them. The only one who ever saw straight through my bullshit was Briggs. She never bought it for a second.

  The little sports restaurant is tucked in between a jewelry shop and a souvenir stand, the carved wooden sign held up by two oversized baseball bats. My mind shifts abruptly to Millie. To meeting her. To every fear I’ve ever known stacking up one atop the next until there are things I didn’t even know to be afraid of in the mix.

  Like my shoes.

  I step out of the truck with ratty old work boots that clomp when I walk, and what if Millie is embarrassed by me and my old shirt and ugly boots.

  A short laugh stirs in my chest. Am I worried about being an uncool dad right now?

  I course correct, reigning my thoughts back in. Maybe I should just worry about the Dad part for now. The uncool part can come later.

  Using the side mirror, I check to make sure I don’t have anything stuck in my teeth or a weird fly away hair and I can see the nerves through my wide eyes and rapid blinking. I have no clue what to expect and that is something that a guy like me doesn’t like. I grew up in unpredictable chaos, I fight forest fires for a living, and I single handedly made sure my five younger siblings made it to adulthood.

  One might say I need to have a clear understanding of what is happening around me. At all times.

  As soon as I move through the restaurant doors, I feel the wave of calm pass through me like it does after I suit up for a fire. It’s too late to turn back and once I’m committed to something there’s no need to worry about anything else. It’s the switch I r
ely on to survive.

  Briggs sits in a booth almost at the back of the place and I roll my shoulders back to make my way there with confidence.

  “Hi,” I say, and she smiles with tight lips. Panic played behind her eyes, but she held herself together really well. She’s beautiful despite her tight shoulders and rigid posture, holding my gaze captive.

  “Hi Xan,” she says and her gaze darts over to Millie sitting next to her with her head angled down and her hands in her lap. Briggs nudges her and I see under the brim of her hat when she lifts her chin. Eyes like Del’s, reflective and untrusting.

  “Hi Millie,” I say with only a slight shake to my voice. “It’s Millie, right?”

  She nods.

  “I’m Alexander, but I like to be called Xan.” I slide into the booth across from her and reach across the table to shake her hand. Millie stares for a moment and then hesitantly slips her small hand in mine. As soon as we make contact, I have an overwhelming urge to tug her straight into my arms and give her ten years’ worth of hugs. Instead I give her hand a short shake.

  The buzz in the restaurant from the busy tables around us helps to ease my nerves but I’m still at a loss for what to say. Briggs studies me, most likely waiting for the moment that I fuck this whole thing up, but I ignore her scrutinizing and focus on this girl that is my daughter. It’s strange to even think it.

  Millie scans me and when her gaze lands on my shirt a beaming grin scrunches her cheeks. She has her mother’s smile.

  It takes the half second of witnessing her joy for me to fall completely head over heels for her. In a single gesture nothing else in life matters.