“With George, huh?”
“With Miranda.”
An irritating knowing look flashed across Chance’s face and he dropped into the chair beside me. “Thinking of bagging the help?” He bumped my shoulder with his own and I had to work hard to keep from decking him. The problem was that he’d win in a fight. Chance always won. Everything.
“Miranda’s not ‘the help,’ asshole. You’ve known her your whole life. She’s smart and sweet, and…” And I’d said way too much.
“And you’ve been in love with her for as long as either one of us can remember.”
The anger and frustration I felt escaped me in a rush, like I’d been punched in the gut, and I settled back into the hard leather of the seat. “Maybe.”
“Do something about it.”
“I can’t.” I was staring at the bottle between my hands, which was easier than looking at my big brother, a guy who had everything I’d ever wanted and didn’t even know it or care.
Chance got up and went into his office, and for a minute I thought we were done, but he returned with a beer of his own. “So what’s stopping you from telling her how you feel?”
My brother was watching me, and for once his expression was clear, open. I didn’t see the competitive nature I was so used to, didn’t see him waiting for an opening to show me how he was better. He was just Chance in that moment, and I let my guard down. After all, it had been just my brother and me for a long time now—since Dad had died three years ago, certainly, but really since our mother had died a decade earlier. Chance had looked out for me, and I’d looked after him in some ways. It had only been lately—since he’d come back with his graduate degree—that I’d felt less than bonded to my big brother.
The truth was that I hadn’t wanted him to come back, and there was so much guilt and shame bound up in that knowledge I just ended up defaulting to asshole mode instead of trying to figure it out. If Chance wasn’t here, at least maybe I’d have had a fighting chance with Miranda. But standing in his shadow? No possibility.
“Why won’t you tell her how you feel?” he repeated.
I risked honesty. “I already know the feelings aren’t reciprocated.”
“Maybe it’ll just take her a while to come around,” he suggested, eerily echoing my own words to Miranda just a few minutes before.
The echo continued. “She’s not coming around. Besides, she’s had her eye on someone else for as long as I’ve had mine on her.”
It was Chance’s turn to exhale and sink into the chair. “I know.”
What? “You know?” He’d never said a word or let on that he had the slightest idea Miranda had been in love with him for years.
“I keep thinking that if I don’t acknowledge it, just treat her as a friend, she’ll figure it out and give up.”
“Figure what out?”
He looked up at me through narrowed eyes, his mouth pressed into a line as if the words he was considering were hard to release. “I just don’t think of her that way.”
“Because you’re insane.” There was no part of me that understood how any man could look at Miranda George and not fall head over heels in love. She was gorgeous, with those big blue eyes and long blond hair, with her perfect little cupid’s bow upper lip and upturned nose, and that smooth soft skin. She was smart and funny, and there was something about her that just told you she was good, too. Maybe it was growing up in such a small town, though it hadn’t had the same effect on me or Chance. But Miranda? The very air around her changed, became charged with optimism and positivity. She was light and good, and being near her made other people feel that way. At least it made me feel that way—like there was a chance I could be good, too.
“No. Miranda’s gorgeous and sweet. But my heart isn’t exactly available, because I’m in love with someone else,” he said quietly.
That caught my attention. “Since when? Who?”
He looked at me like he might be about to tell me something, to divulge a truth he’d kept buried. But then he changed his mind. “Nah.” He shook his head and the cocky grin slid back into place—Chance’s cover for letting anyone see his actual feelings. “Never mind. The point is, you’re free and clear to move on George.”
“Don’t talk about her like that. I don’t want to ‘move on’ her.”
He shrugged and sipped his beer.
“What happened?” I tried. “With the person you love?” Chance had never told me much about his personal life, his feelings. He’d gone away to college and grad school and had a whole life away from Kings Grove, one I knew nothing about. And then he’d come back. And it’d been pretty clear he didn’t want to be here. Now I realized maybe it was because he’d left something, or someone, behind.
“Just wasn’t meant to be, little bro.” Chance stood up then and went into his office, clearly ready to end sharing time.
“Good chat, Russ,” I said, quoting one of our favorite movies into the empty space he left behind.
He didn’t respond. I dropped my empty bottle into the garbage can and stepped out into the night, exhaustion flooding my body even as my mind turned like a hamster in a wheel. The air smelled of smoke and a knot of dread formed inside me. The next few days were probably going to suck.
Chapter 16
Miranda
Mom was pacing with worry when I arrived home, and she rushed to me for a hug the second I stepped through the door.
“Hi Mom,” I managed, though she seemed to be trying to squeeze me to death. She’d been alone here all day, I knew, with updates trickling in from Dad and the television news showing only the very worst possibilities for our small town. I looked at the coffee table, which was covered with a sheet of butcher paper divided into columns, each holding a list of items with checkboxes next to them. There were Post-It notes stuck to the lists in various places, and every color of the rainbow must’ve been represented in Mom’s tidy hand. Next to the table were Mom’s collection of planners, each spread open to various pages with tape flags sticking out in all directions. When Mom was stressed she planned.
“You’ve been busy,” I said.
She fluttered her hands in front of her chest, as if waving away my concerns about her manic planning. “This is bad, Miranda,” she said. “But I’ve got the car all packed up. We’re ready to go at a moment’s notice. Just need to grab the last few things on the last-minute list I’ve got right…over…” Mom wandered to the coffee table and lifted the huge sheet of paper, and then began scrabbling around on the floor beneath it. “Oh, Glory. What did I do with the last-minute list?”
I watched Mom for a minute, exhaustion overtaking me and making me unable for once, to join her on the floor and help her find whatever she’d lost.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, holding the list over her head. “Last-minute list.”
“Good,” I said, dropping my purse on the round table in the center of the room where a jigsaw puzzle lay in the same state of half-completion it had been in for months. “The guys cleared a firebreak on the east side of the hill. If it comes over the ridge, they might have a chance of getting it under control from the fire road.”
Mom wrung her small hands and went to the kitchen. “I saved you a plate.” She pulled a foil-topped plate from the oven and put it on the table. We mostly pretended the puzzle wasn’t there at this point, covering it with placemats when we ate.
“Thanks.” I took a few bites of meatloaf, but didn’t taste anything.
Mom sat next to me and neither of us spoke, but the air around us was thick with our dual worries and cycling fears.
“It’ll be okay, Mom,” I said. “Either way.”
She nodded and stood to turn on the late night news. Dad still hadn’t come home, so neither of us had heard much since the men had come back from the ridge.
“The fire has destroyed two structures at this point,” the newscaster was saying. “An old hunting cabin long abandoned, and the historic Canyon Ridge Lodge.” Mom gasped at this, and my mi
nd immediately went back to the numerous times I’d sat at the ice cream counter at Canyon Ridge, eating sundaes with my grandparents years ago. I hadn’t been there since high school, and hadn’t thought of the place in years. It was situated down in the bottom of the canyon all by itself on a long stretch of the highway leading north. “The family that owned the Lodge had been evacuated this morning, and while they expressed sadness at the loss of the historic property, they were comforted by the knowledge that everyone had gotten out in time and that they’d had enough warning to save the things they loved. The fire continues to move west and south, and the tiny mountain community of Kings Grove lies directly in its path. If the fire doesn’t shift directions, or the firefighters don’t get it contained, there could be devastating impacts to this little town in the coming days.”
Tears rolled down my mother’s cheeks, and I got up to wrap my arms around her shoulders, leaning my head on hers and trying to transfer some hope, though I didn’t feel a lot myself. “We’ll be okay either way,” I said again.
Mom cleared my plate and as the clock inched toward ten PM, the door opened and my father came in, wrinkled, dusty, and exhausted. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head at us, and we understood. We were poised to lose everything. Mom went to him and they stood in the middle of the living room for a long moment, hugging one another. I kissed them each on the cheek and went upstairs to bed.
The sky was orange the next morning and bits of ash fell from the sky like apocalyptic snowflakes. The air was dry and parched, and the whole village seemed flooded with hopelessness, like a ghost town just waiting to be vacated. I stood on the front steps of the cabin, wishing for a miracle as I prepared myself to go into work.
I pulled into the main parking lot in town to find Adele and Frank standing in front of the diner, locking the doors. “Closed until further notice,” Adele said, her voice bitter.
“They’ve shut down the highway coming up,” Frank said. “Except to residents.”
That was bad. The fire hadn’t shifted during the night then, and was still heading our way.
Frank dropped a big hand on my shoulder and gave me a half-hearted smile. “Thanks for everything you’ve done here, Miranda.”
“Don’t do that,” I warned him. “I’ll be back at work before you know it, and you’ll be cursing my clumsiness just like always.”
Adele almost smiled at that.
We stood without speaking for a moment, staring up at the eerie sky, and Connor’s big white car pulled into the lot before us. Maddie and Connor joined us on the sidewalk.
“Looks pretty bad,” Maddie said, looking around. “What do we do?”
“Be ready to head down the hill,” Frank said, and Maddie and Connor nodded and pointed to the SUV, which was clearly stuffed to the gills.
Dad had been at work since early that morning, and I excused myself now to visit him at the station next door, hoping maybe there would be some good news I could share, but his face was grave. “Can you ask the Palmers if they’ll help get the back ring of structures wrapped?”
“Wrapped?” I had a wild vision of cabins wrapped in Christmas paper as flames overtook them.
“The firefighters wrap them in foil—it can help repel the fire. The forest service is out behind the meadow getting started.”
“I’ll get some people to help,” I promised.
Dad gave me a weary smile and I kissed him on the cheek and left the office, heading back to where the small group still stood on the sidewalk. Craig Pritchard, the grumpy old man who ran the Post Office had joined them and they all looked around themselves helplessly.
“The Forest Service needs some help wrapping cabins behind the meadow,” I told them. “I’m going to get the Palmers and head back that way.”
Connor nodded and Maddie looked relieved to have something to do.
Adele and Frank were looking at one another and something seemed to pass between them. “I”ll get the coffee on,” Frank said, moving back to the locked doors of the diner.
“This is no time to be closed,” Adele said. “You all are going to be hungry when you’re done saving the village.” A smile lit her face for a brief second, and I had a glimpse of what Adele might have been like in her youth, happy and maybe even pretty. I wondered, not for the first time, at the way her personal tragedies had changed her, and wished there was some way I could help. She turned and bustled into the diner, and I hugged Maddie and Connor and then turned to go to Palmer Construction. Both trucks were parked outside, so I knew the brothers were already in.
Sam stood as I entered the office, coming around his desk and standing in his doorway.
“Hey.” His face was serious this morning, and there was no hint of the smirking jerk I was used to being on my guard around. In fact, it felt like something had shifted a little bit between us, like our conversation the night before, the experience of talking to Sam—really sitting down and talking—had cleared some of the ages-old hurt I’d allowed to build a wall between us.
Stranger than Sam’s friendly greeting to me was my own reaction to him. My skin warmed and my heart surged just a little bit, and I found I was happy to see him. As much as I had once dreaded running into Sam Palmer, I realized that in the wake of the hurt I seemed to be finally getting past, I took comfort in his constant presence in my life. Moreso now that I saw him every day at work.
It was possible I’d judged Sam unfairly. For years.
“Hey,” I returned, feeling oddly conscious of Sam’s physicality as his muscular frame filled the doorway of his office, one of his large hands wrapped around the jamb as he leaned into it. His jeans looked good on him as he crossed one ankle casually over the other, and the corded muscles of his arms, exposed by his gray T-shirt, led my mind to wander idly beneath it, imagining for the first time what he might look like without it on. It was an unfamiliar line of thought for me—at least in relation to this particular Palmer brother—and I pushed it away as heat filled my cheeks.
I looked into the other office, where I could see Chance hunched over his keyboard, typing furiously, and I realized that today I’d checked to see if Sam was here before I’d even thought about Chance.
“How are your folks holding up?” Sam asked, from where he leaned in the doorway of his office. Dark circles made his eyes look bruised and they held a haunted look. I wondered if I looked as tired as he did.
“Dad’s busy and tired. Mom…” I dropped my eyes and tried to smile. “She’ll be okay.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “We need to get the trucks down to the valley today. We’ve started calling in some folks to drive.”
“Good,” I said. “But the trucks will have to wait.”
“Gotta get ‘em out, Miranda,” Chance called. “Better than letting ‘em burn.”
“Of course,” I said. “That’s not what I meant.” I shook my head, irritated for a moment that Chance really seemed to believe I was a moron. “I just talked to my dad. The Forest Service and firefighters are wrapping cabins with foil, and they need help out behind the meadow loop.”
Sam’s face brightened for a second, and I knew he was relieved to have something productive to do, just as everyone else was in the face of a potentially hopeless situation.
Chance stood and stepped into the doorway. “Good. That’s good.” He looked uncertain, and I realized I’d never seen him look anything but utterly confident. “We’ll send the drivers out to help with that then, and we’ll just have to watch it carefully. We can’t let the trucks burn, if it comes to it.”
“I’d rather save houses,” Sam said.
“Hopefully we don’t have to choose,” I told them. “I’m going to go help.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sam said. “Send the drivers when they check in,” he told Chance, and together we went back to the parking lot in front of the diner, and without speaking out loud about it, we both climbed into my little pickup truck.
I guided my tinny little truck out o
f the main town parking lot and onto the bumpy one-lane roads of the village where Sam and I had both grown up. Having ridden these roads since we were tiny, we both knew when to tense up over a particularly big dip to keep ourselves from bouncing with the car as it jolted around the poorly kept roads. We bounced and swerved, and after a few minutes, Sam turned and looked at me. I could feel his eyes on the side of my face, and even though most of me wanted to turn and look back at him, there was some part of me that was frozen in embarrassment. “What?” I hissed finally, darting my gaze to his and then shooting it back out the front windshield.
“I just…I guess I’m trying to figure out if I owe you an apology.”
“For years of tormenting me? Yeah, you probably do.” I was half joking, hoping to get Sam off whatever strange train of thought was leading him to look at me so intently. My stomach jumped and churned, and I wasn’t certain if it was from the roads, or from Sam’s sudden and intense scrutiny—or maybe his proximity.
He blew out a breath and lifted a hand to rub across the back of his neck as he shook his head. “Deserved that, I guess.” His voice was low, almost sad.
“It’s fine,” I said, suddenly feeling bad about hurting his feelings. He’d been nice to me the last few days. He’d actually argued with Chance to get me the job at Palmer, said complimentary things that had surprised me more than once, and even offered to help me catch Chance’s eye. Now that I thought about it, he’d been uncharacteristically nice for a while.
He still smelled a little like licorice, though. The odd thing was, I didn’t even mind today.
“No,” he said, his voice deep and serious now. “It’s not fine. Look, Miranda. I’m sorry if I ever gave you the impression that I didn’t like you. Or that I thought you were…”
“Ditzy? Clumsy? Moronic?” I was pushing forward with the relationship I was used to having with Sam—the one where we treated each other like siblings who knew each other too well and didn’t get along. Even though I usually hated it, that was what I was used to from him, and whatever was making his voice sound sincere and his eyes darken when he looked at me, whatever was making my blood rush and my cheeks heat, was putting me completely off balance.
Love Reimagined Page 10
