Chapter 10 - Ethan
I’m finding it hard to think of anything to say. We get in the black pickup truck without a word, and I start driving towards the old hotel grounds.
Towards the scene of the crime.
My crime.
We ride in silence for a long time. Or at least, it feels like a long time. Finally, Zoe clears her throat.
“So, this is unexpected,” she says. “Meeting you here.”
I glance over at her, running my eyes down the curve of her neck to her body and then back towards the road. I’m not quite sure what to respond.
“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t know you were ‘Randall’. I thought it would be a guy.”
Zoe chuckles. “That’s what everyone calls me back home. I can understand the confusion.”
I turn down a narrow gravel road and we bounce along for a few minutes. It’s awkward. I glance at Zoe again and then turn towards the road. It’s just another half mile up this slope and we’ll be getting to the old, burned-down remains of the hotel
“Why did you say you didn’t know me?” The question almost falls out of my mouth almost by accident. I can feel Zoe turn to look at me, and she sighs.
“I’m not sure. I panicked. If we said we knew each other, what would we say? I just... I didn’t want to start off like that.” I can hear the tension in her voice and a lump forms in my throat.
Before I can respond, we round the last corner and the trees clear. Zoe inhales sharply as I park the truck to the side of the road. She opens the door immediately and I watch her jump down and walk towards the burned-out husk of building. There are small saplings and plants growing all over it, with moss and grass creeping up the rubble. Slowly, the forest is reclaiming the construction site. In a few years it’ll be easy to miss.
I follow Zoe and we walk in silence. I watch her climb over old beams and rocks, inspecting burn marks and looking around at the devastation. She turns back towards me and shake her head.
“This could have turned into a major forest fire,” she says. “You guys were lucky.”
“It was at the beginning of the summer last year, when everything was wet,” I deflect. “It wasn’t like it is now.”
“Still,” she says, picking up a charred piece of wood. “Look at the trees along the edges. You can tell the closest side of them has been damaged.”
I glance over towards where she’s pointing. She’s right. The trees that line the clearing are off-balance, like the branches on this side of them have been stunted.
“I read the police report. It said there were three points of ignition, which means there were at least three people here. Whoever did this were real scumbags,” she says, pursing her lips. She kicks a rock out of the way and puts her hands on her hips. “It could have been a disaster.”
“Could have been,” I answer, trying to keep my voice steady. Scumbag. That’s not exactly the view I have of myself. “The development would have been much more destructive than the fire,” I say. Zoe turns towards me and tilts her head to the side. My eyes dart to her lips, and for an instant I remember what they taste like.
I continue. “It would have brought so many people here that wouldn’t respect the forest like we do,” I say. She stares at me, her face blank. “If you ask me, the fire was a good thing.”
She snorts. “A good thing? Aren’t there better–you know, legal–ways of opposing these things?”
“Legal?” I say, glancing around the overgrown site of the fire. “What chance does our tiny town have against multi-million dollar investors? Against people money and power that don’t care about anything except profit?” The anger inside me is rising as I think of Margaret McCoy, the woman who masterminded the whole project. The woman who disappeared when it all blew up in her face.
Zoe surprises me when she agrees. “That’s true. But I can’t condone arson.”
We’re quiet for a while, and I watch her walk through the wreckage. I show her the places where the fire started, remembering how it felt to splash gasoline over the ground and strike the match to light it up. Zoe crouches down near the spot where I dropped my match.
“So what happened after the fire?” She asks. “No one’s really given me a straight answer. It sounds like it all sort of went away.” Her bright blue eyes are boring into me, and I know I have to choose my words carefully. It all went away because the Sheriff started the fire with us.
I sigh. “Lang Creek is a funny kind of town. Change isn’t really encouraged here.”
“But arson is?” She retorts. The corner of her lip is curled up into a grin. I chuckle.
“I guess it is,” I answer. “More so than razing a huge swath of virgin forest to develop it, just for tourists to come destroy the land that we’ve cherished for generations.”
“You sound like you agree with the people who burned this down.”
My chest tightens. It feels wrong to lie to her, even though I hardly know her. I thought this whole business with the hotel and the fire and the McCoys was over! I thought the town had moved on from the fire, and I wouldn’t have to worry about it.
Now there’s this woman sniffing around, and I know she won’t be as forgiving as the Sheriff’s office or the townspeople. Sure, she’s just here to consult on new safety procedures, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t get the authorities to re-open the investigation. I wonder how long it’ll take for her to hear the rumors that it was my brothers and me?
“Maybe I do agree with them. I mean, look around,” I say, sweeping my arm across the landscape. “The forest is taking over again. If the hotel had been built, this whole area would be filled with people and cars and trucks and noise and garbage.”
She makes a noise and nods, looking out at the forest.
She sighs. “It is very beautiful up here. You’re lucky to have lived here all your life.”
I snort. “I’m guessing that’s a ‘grass is always greener’ situation, because I sure didn’t love living here when I was a teenager.”
She laughs. For the first time since she walked through the office door, she really laughs. She laughs like she did our first night together, like she did in the bar when we didn’t know anything about each other.
Zoe is still smiling when she takes a step and loses her footing on some loose rock. She yelps, stumbling. I jump towards her, crossing the few feet of distance between us and lunge to catch her. I just about make it, but instead I land with a thud on the rocky ground with Zoe tumbling on top of me.
“Unf,” she groans as she lands on top of me. It takes a couple confused seconds for us to disentangle ourselves from each other. She puts her hand on my chest to lift herself off me, and raises her eyes up to mine. She stops and my hand drifts to her waist.
The moment only lasts a second, maybe two, but in her eyes I see something that she hasn’t shown me at all today: desire. Her eyes flash, and her body almost trembles on top of me. She parts her lips ever so slightly as her pupils dilate.
I can feel her pulse, and when my hand lands on her waist she makes the tiniest of noises.
Then, the moment is over. She lifts herself off and extends a hand to help me up. She brushes herself off and pats her hair down before blowing the air out of her lungs.
“Wow, I, uh,” she says, shaking her head. “Thanks.”
I grunt, feeling the spots where a rock dug into my lower back. “I think Sandy would kill me if I let you get injured on your very first trip outdoors.”
Zoe laughs. “It doesn’t look like it would take much to set her off.”
“She’s alright,” I say, grinning with her. “Tough woman, but a good boss.”
Zoe looks over once more at the forest. There’s a bird chirping nearby, and the wind rustles gently through the leaves. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes before turning to me and smiling.
“I like it here,” she says.
I’m not sure why, but it makes me feel good to hear her say that. My heart thumps and I nod, clearing my throat and turning back towards the truck.
“That’s the site of the fire, anyway. I’ll take you back along the old logging roads and show you some of the campsites we have.”
Our boots crunch on the gravel as we head back to the car. The breeze sweeps by us and the leaves rustle some more. Another bird starts singing.
My head is spinning. I know I need to be careful with Zoe, for my sake and my brothers’. I know it would be best to keep my distance, to keep her at an arm’s length.
But when we slide back into my truck, we fall into a comfortable silence, and despite my best efforts to ignore it, I feel good having her beside me.