Page 90 of Stuck With the Smokejumper

“You knew,” I say.

“Maybe,” Annie says.

I turn to Russ. He's failing spectacularly at looking innocent. Then Reid, standing by the kitchen island with an expression that gives him away.

“You all knew. How many people knew?” I ask the room.

Tessa, halfway through pouring a drink, looks genuinely confused. “Knew what?”

I hold up my hand.

The noise that follows is immediate and total, Tessa nearly drops her glass. Annie hugs me so hard I lose my breath for a second. Russ shakes Beck's hand with the kind of grip that means more than words would. Reid looks at the ring, then at Beck, something unreadable passing between them.

“You actually did it,” Reid says.

“And she said yes.”

Dinner is loud but warm the way it always is at this table, everyone talking over everyone else, Tessa demanding every detail of the proposal. I sit here with my hand resting on the table where I can see it, Beck beside me, and think about a house a few miles from here, mostly empty, but waiting.

thirty-five

Epilogue – Beck

Ten Years Later

“Iam doing pizza!”

“That's not pizza.”

“It looks like pizza.”

“It looks like two french fries.”

Nora glares at me from inside her helmet, skis wedged into the least convincing snowplow I've ever witnessed and at an angle that will not slow her down. I ski backward in front of her, watching her try to correct it.

“Beck, stop insulting her pizza.” Ivy skis up beside us, ten years of practice showing in every motion, which still catches me off guard sometimes, considering she spent most of a summer insisting skiing sounded like a terrible way to spend a winter.

“I'm not insulting it. I'm evaluating it.”

“Honey. She likes square cut slices.”

“Oh. I forgot. Make pie sweetie.”

Nora finally gets her skis into something resembling the shape I've been asking for, and I tell her so. She beams like I've handed her a medal instead of mild approval, which is the right amount of encouragement for an eight-year-old according to several parenting books Ivy's made me half-read.

Wyatt arrives a few minutes later, towed along by my father, moving with considerably more confidence than skill, which is a combination I recognize uncomfortably well.

“Dad said I could try the black diamond,” he announces to my father.

“I did not say that.”

“Uncle Reid said I could.”

I add call Reid to a mental list that's getting uncomfortably long this trip. “Uncle Reid isn't your father.”

“He said you're too cautious.”

I point at his helmet without breaking stride, right at the sticker. “That's the same Uncle Reid who convinced half of Timber Creek he saw Bigfoot. I wouldn't build a ski plan around his judgment.”