5

The Cottage

The horned lizard tickled Mari’s palm as she carried him away from the construction site. Jack’s men were making good time disassembling the backward tower, and his grouching had eased considerably after he’d eaten the protein bar she gave him. She made a mental note to add snacks to her biologist’s tool kit. Whatever she could do to make the crews more cooperative, it only benefited the animals.

“Find your way home, little guy,” she whispered to the horned lizard as she stooped to let him scurry off her hand. It was a baby, no bigger than a quarter, and it stopped to cock its little head at her when her phone rang. “It’s not for you,” she informed the lizard, a hint of a smile curving her mouth. She was riding high after chasing off Jack’s terrible boss.

She straightened and checked on her workers before she answered the phone. It was Lisa, from the other tower assembly crew.

“How did you not tell me you got the biologist-in-residence job?” she half shrieked.

Mari flinched, pulling the phone a little away from her ear. “Hold on, it’s loud here.” She walked a little farther from the workers so that the blast of impact wrenches and beeping of the forklift wouldn’t interfere. There was no background noise coming from Lisa’s end, though.

“Is your crew at lunch?” she asked, checking her watch. Two o’clock, far too late for lunch. “Or is it just mine who can’t do a thing without making enough noise to wake the Yellowstone supervolcano?”

Lisa snorted. “On Junior’s crew? They started lunch at ten forty-five and haven’t managed to put in a single bolt since. Though he did lose about two hundred bucks on some kind of tailgate dice game. And don’t think I didn’t notice you changing the subject.”

Mari kicked at the dirt. “It’s not final yet, so I can’t say I got it.”

“Bullshit. Hotaka interviewed for the botanist-in-residence job, and he said the national park staff mentioned your name and said they’d offered it to you, so there’s no need to be modest. Don’t worry, I’m not jealous at all. Even though it pays better. And goes year-round. And comes with free freaking housing.”

Mari almost smiled, even though her stomach still squirmed. “If you’re so not jealous, why don’t you apply yourself? The program doesn’t officially roll out for three months, so they don’t have to make a final decision until then.”

“Well, they weren’t exactly looking for two biologists in residence, and I’m not sure Marcus would appreciate me dumping him for a job. Even one that comes with an adorable little cottage. Did you see the houses when you were there? Hotaka showed me pictures on his phone. I guess it was some kind of postwar religious commune that was donated to the park system, and they remodeled them for the interpretive team.”

“They might have mentioned something about it.” Mari stopped to pick up a scrap of trash so it wouldn’t attract the ravens that preyed on the hatchling tortoises.

“So?” Lisa practically squeaked. “You’re single. You need the money—I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to know about that, but come on, Mari. This power line will wrap up before June, and I haven’t heard of any work coming up after that. No work means no rent money, which means no AC. It’s gonna be a long, hot summer in the truck. Again.”

Her fingers tightened on the phone. Lisa had come by one time when Mari had papers all spread out on her tailgate under rocks, trying to reconcile her health insurance statements with the amounts on the medical bills. In the moments before Mari had managed to snatch up all the papers from their makeshift paperweights, Lisa had gotten an eyeful of all the injuries Mari was paying off. Which meant she knew more about Mari’s past than Mari ever would have shared, and she didn’t exactly appreciate Lisa’s bringing it up now.

Her voice was a little sharp when she said, “Well, maybe I didn’t think Marcus would like me taking it, either. This job came up at the same time, and he said he was really short-handed. He was so sweet, taking me hunting last year, and I didn’t want to let him down.”

“You mean you were so sweet, going hunting with him when everybody else bailed, even though you don’t even hunt. Marcus would have understood if you turned this gig down for permanent work.”

She fought the urge to make an excuse and hang up on the other woman’s prying. Lisa had her faults but she’d been friendlier than any of the rest of the bios, and Mari didn’t take that lightly. Her friends had never stuck. Not the ones from high school, and not the ones from her old job in an insurance office, who used to avoid her with such discomfort every time she turned up with long sleeves in the middle of the summer.

After her car accident, when Brad wanted her to stay home and let him take care of her, she’d been happy not to go back to their stares and awkward silences. By the time she reinvented her career as a biologist, she’d been too worn out to try again, and Lisa was the only one who continually tried to drag her off the sidelines.

Mari took a breath and tried to explain, without getting too personal. “Turned out in the interview they’re not just hiring a bio. It’s a full interpretive team: botanist, artist, writer, and historian in residence, all living side by side. ‘Interpretive team’ meaning they expect me to give speeches and interact with tourists, which would mean I would have to be good with people.”

“You’re great with people, when you’re not avoiding them.”

“Oh yeah?” Mari turned back to sweep the construction site with her gaze, ignoring the workers in favor of searching for the telltale coil of a snake or the bump of a tortoise. “Who was it who had to write their crew up yesterday because she couldn’t get them to follow one of the simplest rules? And who took a week to get the crew to accept the training we’re supposed to carry out on the first day? Because as they say, I had one job . . .”

“Wyatt doesn’t count. I’ve met badgers with sweeter personalities. We’ve all had months to work on him, and he’s never let us give the environmental awareness training before. Seriously, though, Mari, the park asked Hotaka to put in a good word with you. I think they really want you to say yes.”

“Seriously, though, Lisa,” she echoed, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Lisa may have been the friendliest of the bios, but she was also the nosiest. “I didn’t specialize in the most remote species in the lower forty-eight because I wanted to settle down and have neighbors.”

What she did want was that sunshine-yellow cottage, with vanilla-creamy trim, and a little porch with its own rocking chair. A table just big enough for a paperback and a sweating glass of iced tea.

Even though she’d told them she probably couldn’t take the job, her interviewer had insisted on showing her inside. The kitchen was perfect, with counters so much wider than the tailgate she was used to cooking on, and walls so she could make pumpkin pancakes without dust blowing into the batter, or could even bake a cake. The whole thing would be perfect, if it had stood alone instead of arced along a circular driveway with four other cottages.

It wasn’t just a house, it was a home, and as soon as she had seen that, she’d turned it down.

When she’d left Brad, she promised herself everything would be different, that she could have a whole new life. Freedom, space, quiet. But not a marriage, or a home. There was peace in knowing and accepting your own limitations, and those were hers. The wind and the open land were where she’d found her place, and fantasies of soft throw blankets and cozy rocking chairs were just that: fantasies.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to settle down?” Lisa asked softly. “I mean, all of us dirtbags have lived in our trucks for years, but you were the first to sew curtains for the windows of your camper shell instead of taping up newspaper to keep out the sun. You were the first to put a little mat under your tailgate so you wouldn’t track in dirt. You were the first to hang Christmas lights so you’d have more light inside than just a headlamp.”

“Just because I fixed up my truck a little doesn’t mean I want to sign up for a whole house.” Or a permanent, traceable address.

Lisa was quiet for a beat longer. “Okay.”

Mari found herself scowling and tried to smooth her face.

“Well, anyway, a bunch of us are going to the Barn for beers after work tonight, if you want to come.”

“No, thanks,” she said automatically. She liked beer, though Brad always teased her that she looked masculine when she drank beer. He thought it was more attractive when women drank wine from delicate little glasses. But it was too easy to screw up in a group, especially if they’d all been drinking, and she didn’t want to be the pity invite.

She heard the sigh Lisa tried to stifle. “I’ll wear you down one of these days. Anyway, good luck with Wyatt. Only a few more days left on your sentence and I bet you can get Marcus to let you skip your next turn, since you held out for two rotations.”

They hung up, and Mari just stood there, holding on to her phone. She felt off-balance, and she checked her safety vest and hard hat, scanned the site for any animals she might have missed during her call. But still the feeling persisted. She’d been trying so hard not to think about that damn cottage. It had teased tears at the corners of her eyes to leave it, even during the interview. But she couldn’t risk Brad finding her, and she didn’t want to live with other people ever again. Not even in separate cottages, because they’d all have to work together as part of the park interpretive team, and she couldn’t stand seeing the looks on their faces when she disappointed them but they were still stuck with her. She’d seen it too many times.

But there was a pain in the center of her chest, sharp like a stab, when she thought about it.

Jack looked up from the tower plans on his tailgate, and caught her staring at the site. She blinked and started to look away, but before she could, he gave her a little nod.

She nearly dropped her phone. Jack Wyatt had nodded. At a biologist.

It was hardly the Nobel Peace Prize, but as far as she knew, he’d never said a single word to one of the bios that hadn’t come out as a shout or in four filthy letters. And she’d lasted more than a single week.

Her toes curled inside her shoes, holding on hard to the warmth of the desert sand beneath her. She felt a little dizzy, or maybe sick. Or hungry.

What if she could take that other job?

Move into that cottage and sew new curtains, close the front door and have a quiet place all to herself, where she didn’t have to worry about her habits annoying anyone else. Be part of a team. She really loved the national park that was hiring. They had the habitat for all her favorite animals, and the most beautiful cactus.

If she could get Jack Wyatt to let her train his men, and earn a nod from him, was it so crazy to think she could get along with live-in coworkers?

Her heart raced, even though she was only standing still with the sun pouring heat down on her suddenly heaving shoulders. Here was the perfect place to practice. None of her coworkers on the interpretive team would be as hard to please as Wyatt, and if she stumbled like she always used to, no one would even notice if she ticked him off. The man existed in a perpetual state of ticked off.

She could even, maybe, try a little with her fellow biologists. It was a small group, the only odd ducks who were rootless enough and tough enough to live in the desert year-round, with only the fragile protection of a hat brim from the sun that ruled brutally over everything. They all had their secrets and reasons why they drifted from one temporary assignment to another. It was why, she’d always suspected, they gave her space.

Rajni never talked about why she left the marines, and there was a rumor she’d lived in a cave in Italy once, for four straight months. Jorge slept on the ground in every kind of weather, because the back of his truck was stuffed full of bike parts and different copies of Shakespeare plays, even though she’d never seen him bike, or read. Hotaka refused to speak of anything but plants, and he whittled. Ferociously. All the time.

They certainly weren’t ordinary, well-adjusted citizens, and maybe they could be the training wheels she needed. After all, if she fell flat on her face, the job would end in a few months. She’d see most of the same people again on the next job, but she could get certified for different species and try to get work outside the desert if she had to.

That yellow cottage burned in her memory. Yellow had always been her favorite color. How could the park employees have known that?

Mari flipped her phone over and texted Lisa before she could lose her nerve.

Too busy to make the Barn tonight, but maybe we could do coffee sometime?

As soon as she sent it, she felt ridiculous. The other woman was so nice, she’d probably feel obligated to say yes even if she didn’t want to. What would they even talk about? How many lizards they’d seen that day? Thirteen side-blotches, eight whiptails, and a double handful of zebra-tails.

Thrilling.

Her phone dinged and the message flashed before she could even decide if she had the courage to look.

Absolutely! Just tell me when.