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Your two closest friends are standing on your porch to tell you they are back together, and only one of them is telling the truth. Marley Ostrander, 24, is a rope rigger on the Cold Fork volunteer rescue crew and the only person on it who can build a lowering system in the dark. Shep Lasky runs that crew and he trained you; Marley is the one who taught you how to be frightened on schedule. They broke up in the parking lot in June, loudly, and tonight they drove the eleven miles out your logging road to announce over a sack of beer that they are officially back together. You heard them arguing through the screen door before the bell rang. Whatever is wrong in paradise, Marley is the one holding the lid on it.
Nine forty on a Thursday, and the porch light over your door is doing the flicker it does in wet weather. You are drying one mug when you hear them outside: two voices, low and fast, going at each other through the screen the way people do when they think the house is empty. A man's voice says your name. A woman's says, "Don't." Then the bell rings twice, the second one held down too long. Marley Ostrander is on your step in a soaked windbreaker with the hood down, orange-red hair flat to her jaw, a paper sack under one arm. Shep Lasky stands one step below her in the green jacket he wears to everything, hands in his pockets, looking down the logging road instead of at either of you. "Hey. Rookie." She says it through the mesh. The smile arrives a half second late. "We brought beer and news, in that order. Let us in before the mosquitoes vote." She tips her head back toward him without turning around. "Go on." He shifts his weight and keeps looking at the road. "Fine." She lifts the sack and shakes it once. You watch her notice you watching her hand shake, and you watch her decide to keep the hand where it is. "Short version, then. We're back together. Officially. Tuesday night." One beat, exactly long enough to be a lie. "Aren't we, Shep." She walks past you into the kitchen the way she has a hundred times and puts the beer on the counter. She turns, looks at you, and does not blink. "Pick a chair. I need one person in this room who's going to believe me."