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“How attractive,” Devon said.
“In forty-eight hours, you’ll have to shower with an antibacterial soap and then see your doctor in the morning. Your burns look pretty good; even the full-thickness burns look okay. They’re crusted over.”
“Yummy,” Devon mumbled, his nostrils flared.
Aisling giggled, hoping the nurse didn’t think she was inappropriate, and then wondering why she cared. Her husband had just died. She could be inappropriate if she wanted.
After the nurse left, Devon got a bottle of wine out of the fridge.
“You probably shouldn’t be drinking,” she said.
Devon looked down at the bottle. “I probably should have been drinking a lot. Follow me. You’d better grab a blanket.”
He nodded toward the couch, where a pile of woven blankets were stacked just for times like this. “Mike would love this. Even when my dad was alive and monopolized every conversation, Mike would sit out here with a beer, wrapped in a blanket, hanging on his every word.”
“Did your parents like Mike?”
“They loved him,” Devon said. “My parents were snobs, don’t get me wrong, but they embraced Mike. I was a little put out that they didn’t do more for him.”
“You did a lot for Mike,” Aisling said. “I know about you paying off his debts and giving him the money for a car.”
Devon felt like the conversations they had kept coming back to him and Mike. Was Aisling doing that on purpose so she didn’t have to think about how much she missed him?
A bat flew by, distracting them, and after Aisling screamed and ducked, Devon laughed again. Although the sun had set, a line of yellow and orange lingered at the horizon. It was chilly out, the night sky as clear as glass.
“What do we do now?” Devon asked. “What do we do?”
Aisling drank her glass and held it out for more wine. Pouring it for her, Devon vacillated between disbelief—how in the hell did they get to this place—to magically thinking Mike was deployed and Aisling would stay there with Devon until he returned.
“We keep asking it, but the question never gets answered. What are we going to do now? Let’s start with you. What are you going to do?”
“Remember, we said one day at a time. But I can think ahead about work. If you agree, I’ll stay here and recover until this Sunday. Then Ralphie and I will leave for home. I might go on twelve-hour shifts. If Ralph can stay here when you’re home, it’s doable. I never did twelve hours before because Mike would be gone three days in a row, and I didn’t want to leave Ralph for twelve hours.”
“Of course you can bring him here. I’m not sure our schedule will always work out though. Unless we plan it. You take your days off when I’m working and vice versa.”
“Yes! Let’s do that. I could even stay up here when you’re gone for your shifts.”
“I’m liking this. We have a plan. We’ll never see each other again, but the dogs will be safe.”
“There will be one day a week our days off might coincide,” Aisling said, laughing. “The rest of the time we’ll do it one day at a time.”
They turned their gaze back to the valley below, the black sky with more stars appearing as the darkness increased. The sounds of tree toads back in the woods competed with an owl’s solitary hoot.
“There’s Orion’s Belt,” Aisling said, pointing at the sky. “Mike always picked that constellation out. ‘I don’t know any other stars,’ he’d say, and we’d laugh.”
“You bought him a telescope last Christmas, didn’t you?”
“I did. I’ll bring it up the next time I come. We were always talking about setting it up here where there’s so little light pollution. Down by us is really urban sprawl now, the constant traffic noise, someone else’s TV. It was one of many things we meant to do that he never got a chance to do. Oh God, Mike was so young to die. I still can’t believe it.” She flicked a tear off her cheek.
“I can’t either. I know we’re going to be saying that for the rest of our lives. I’ll never forget Mike. Ever. He was such a great guy. I’ll never have another friend like Mike, either. There’s no way. We knew each other all our lives.”
“All your life,” Aisling echoed. “He’ll always be my first husband. Mike, my husband, who was killed in a wildfire.”
“Lila said they’re still talking about it on TV,” Devon said. “I won’t turn it on.”
“No, I don’t want to hear about it, either. I wonder when our conversations will stop leading to the fire.”
“It just happened,” Devon said. “You can talk about it for the rest of our lives if you want.”
