Page 89 of Honeyfires

"Tri-tip and jalapeño sausage. My wife's marinade." He looked at the tongs, then back at Vera. "She sends her apologies for not being here. Book club conflict."

Vera's eyes lit up and I almost laughed. "What are they reading?"

"Something about a woman in Scotland. There are apparently standing stones involved. And time travel. I don't know."

"Outlander," Vera said immediately.

Rodriguez pointed the tongs at her. "That's it."

"Tell her I have opinions when she's done. Strong ones. Tell her specifically to find me before she reads the second book."

Rodriguez looked at her. Then at me. Then back at her with what I could only describe as visible approval. "I'll tell her."

He returned to the grill, and Vera turned to find Jackson standing directly behind her, his wife Cassie at his elbow. They were both grinning ear to ear, dressed in matching fire-engine red outfits. It was no wonder they'd ended up together.

"Vera Montgomery," Jackson said. "This is Cassie, who has heard about you specifically in the context of a chocolate chip cookie and has been wanting to discuss it."

"The brown butter," Vera guessed.

Cassie pointed at her husband. "He won't tell me how it works. He says it's a technique that requires in-person demonstration."

"It's not—" Vera glanced at Jackson, who chose at that moment to observe something nonexistent on the ceiling. "Jackson. I explained it."

"I know how it works," Jackson said. "I'm not telling her because then she'll make them twice a week and I'll eat seventeen in a sitting. Again."

"Again?" I said.

"The cookie afternoon," Jackson said, with the gravity of a confession. "I don't want to revisit it."

"He ate seventeen cookies," Cassie said, and I could tell by her tone that she'd counted.

"It was a high-stress week—"

"It was a Tuesday."

Vera took Cassie's arm casually, as if they'd been friends for years. "Let me tell you everything," she said, and they moved off together, already whispering and giggling hysterically.

Jackson watched them go. "She's going to tell her about the brown butter."

"You did this to yourself," I said.

"I know," he said. "It's fine. I'm completely fine."

The seasonals filtered in over the course of the next hour, which was its own kind of event.

The seasonals at Station 19 were all a specific type of person. Most of them came back year after year, which was a condition of this kind of work, where you started as a Type 2 trainee, did your pack test and your guard school, earned your red card, and then came back to the same station the following spring because you knew the terrain and you knew the crew and the crew knew you could be trusted on the line. Some of them were college students working summers. Some of them were making their way toward permanent positions, building the hours and certifications you needed to move up the ladder toward squad boss, toward crew boss, toward a permanent slot. Some of them just liked the work and the season and went home in October and did other things until March.

Davids was in his fifth season. He knew the equipment bay as well as any permanent member, ran his rescue harness with the expertise of a firefighter who had done it several hundred times, and had been involved in three significant saves over the years that Rodriguez mentioned when he talked about the crew's record. He was, by all operational measures, a person whose judgment you trusted on a fire line.

Emerson was in his second season, twenty-five or so, still building the instincts that took years to develop. He'd grown up outside Flagstaff, had family in the fire service, and had the combination of physical confidence and genuine humility that meant he'd probably do well if he stayed at it.

Both of them greeted me with the easy familiarity of an acquainted crew before fire season. Both of them clocked Vera.

Emerson's reaction was the starstruck kind. You know, the wide-eyed stare of someone who hadn't been expecting this specific person at this specific barbecue. He recovered quickly, because he was twenty-five and reasonably self-aware, and then spent the first twenty minutes of the afternoon looking at his beer with considerable concentration whenever Vera laughed at something.

Vera caught him at it twice, and both times said something that made him laugh and released him from his own awkwardness, which was a skill I'd noticed she had. The ability to take the charge out of someone's admiration before it became a thing.

"She's good at that," I murmured to Jackson, during a lull near the drinks table.