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Juno Divine hung up the phone and sighed.
Duck had sounded sleepy and frantic when he answered, and she hated having to tell him about Rick. His voice was distant on the other end of the line, and she hadn’t quite caught his mumbled response, but she had the distinct feeling he was planning to go directly back to sleep when he hung up.
She wished she too could just go back to sleep. Even for a little while. She glanced at the clock again. 6:26. It was still so early, and the sun herself wouldn’t be up to greet the day for a few more hours. Juno rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck.
She’d been woken by her ringing phone a little more than an hour ago, when Deputy Dewey had found Rick’s car off the embankment west of town. Brain muddled with sleep, she processed the painful news with reversed priorities: her mind all but skipped over the terrible news of Rick’s passing, and focused on the extra administrative burden of the fact that he’d been driving a forestry service van; Juno would have to file paperwork first thing when she got into the office. She only hoped she hadn’t run her half-asleep mouth to say as much to Dewey in the course of the call.
She was awake now, though, and she kept sticking on the notion that, for whatever reason, Rick had had her listed as his next of kin. His first point of contact in case something went wrong. Her heart ached to think that Rick-- a work friend, an acquaintance, nothing more-- was no closer to anybody else than her.
Juno stood up from her kitchen table, carrying her parents’ old cordless phone back to the old-fashioned secretary desk in the hallway where it usually sat collecting dusk. She would have to think of a way to mourn him properly. To give his spirit a send-off that respected her newly discovered role as his most trusted … friend? Kin? Point of contact? She rolled her shoulders again. First things first, she thought, and then, probably another coffee would do just fine.
Passing back into the kitchen she caught her reflection in the picture window that faced the backyard. Taking on her parents’ old place while they lived out their golden years in a senior living complex in Fort Lauderdale had been pretty dreamy, all up, especially given that the mortgage was altogether paid. Moments like this, however-- when her sleep-rumpled form and nearly-thirty face juxtaposed against the view of an old oak beyond their back deck that she’d been staring at for the better part of three decades-- well, in moments like this it still felt a little surreal.
Juno gave herself a moment to appreciate the brightening blue and mauve shadows of the pre-dawn gloom as they pooled against the patchwork of December snow. Through the bright kitchen window her old oak loomed shadowy and black, almost ominous, but she knew the sun’s rising would reveal the same friendly branches she’d spent so many summers memorizing-- climbing on, swinging from, sitting in, all the ways a lonely kid could find to befriend a tree. Juno smiled.
She’d gotten into bullet journalling (well, her friend Jane had gotten her into it, or tried to) and once or twice she’d gone and sat on her old tire swing, legs pulled up criss-cross applesauce just like how she used to do her homework, and tried to let the journaling magic Jane had talked on at such length sweep her away. Mostly she had just felt foolish and chilly sitting out there. Still, maybe she could give it another go.
Not today, though, she thought. She smoothed a hand over her hair as the espresso machine she’d bought for her own birthday whirred out a double shot. Her hair felt like it was getting long; she might have to cut it again soon. She’d been maintaining the same bob for a few months now and she liked the way it made the natural waves of her blonde hair spring to life as if they were reporting for duty. She added hot water to her espresso from the old blue stovetop kettle and clicked off the kitchen light behind her.
Feeling self-indulgent and a little morose, and being up much earlier than she usually would for her typical 9 o’clock report, she wandered into the bathroom with her coffee and stood in front of the mirror for a minute, assessing. She liked the way she looked, really; as a teenager she had resented the olive skin and hazel eyes she’d inherited from her dad and the wide, thick hips she’d gotten from her mom, but as she got older she rather liked her overall effect. She stood out in Kepler, for sure, half-Puerto Rican amid a population that much more closely resembled her Norwegian mom's side of the family. Aside from a few grade-school jabs of being called "Puertowegian," and the occasional overly-fascinated tourist, folks were friendly.
Juno herself was probably the one resident who took longest to come to terms with her looks and her lineage. She'd gotten there in the end, making small and slow concessions to her natural appearance, and in time came to see herself almost as nice-looking as her mom always said. She had even stopped highlighting her hair to death after college and the dark blonde now shot through with silver was, she thought, pert near attractive.
With her generous curves and a name like Juno Divine, it had been just about impossible for her to evade attention after puberty. It was worst in college when she had to take a mythology class for her university’s core requirements; it had been taught by a creepy old literature professor whose tenured history apparently mattered more than her reports of his continuous lewd comments.
Not that he had been the only one. All her life she’d gotten more male attention than she wanted-- which, specifically, was none. Most guys weren’t even deterred by her insistence that they weren’t her type. Not very often, but sometimes, she leaned on the fourteen years of tae kwon do her parents had put her through to help get her point across.
Luckily for her, there were more kind and beautiful women in Kepler than there were lecherous men.
Juno turned the water on for a shower and waited for the water to warm up, letting her mind linger over a few favorite exes-- Suzanne, an unhappily married tourist who had been Juno’s first kiss when she worked at the ski resort one winter break; Lydia, a college friend who came out to her immediately after freshman orientation who loved making out but had zero interest in anything unclothed; Christie, who-- Juno stopped that line of thought in its tracks. It still hurt too much to think about Christie. The good times they’d had did not, could not, overshadow the lingering ache of Christie’s disappearance.
Juno sighed, wriggling out of her pajamas and stepping into the water. Thinking about Christie reminded her again of Rick, and she felt sad and somewhat embarrassed to have let her mind wander from him so quickly after getting the call. Shouldn’t she be reminiscing on their good times? And… shouldn’t they have shared some good times, probably, seeing as she was apparently his closest friend? She tried to let the guilt she was feeling wash away in the hot shower. It nearly worked.
Later, after a grueling morning finding the ancient photocopies of the six different forms she needed to register and report Rick’s van as totaled, and the much more emotionally taxing work of gently but efficiently filling in the rest of the rangers on what had happened (she’d tried to call most of them that morning, but most folks didn’t pick up their phones at six a.m.), she decided she’d treat herself to lunch.
Juno paused at the driver’s door of the truck she’d been issued to use for official Monongahela Forest business, and hesitated for a moment before deciding to take her own rusty Jeep. It was snowing faintly, shyly, just a few sheepish flakes floating down from the leaden sky, but it was enough to put her on edge thinking about Rick and his unfortunate and unlikely end.
Not for the first time, she wished Jane was home, or at least in the same time zone. Juno would love to be able to talk to her about it, get her friend’s perspective on whether there was something she might have missed or misread in what she would have called a very neutral friendship with Rick. Jane had known him, too, she realized. Jane was always showing up to office parties either as her brother’s plus-one or as Juno’s and she had rubbed elbows (if not more) with the entire Monongahela Forest Service.
Juno blew out a long breath before starting the car. She missed her best friend. She missed the gossip sessions that turned into deep conversations about the complexities of life. She tried to summon Jane’s voice, to think of what her advice would be in this situation, but her mouth quirked into a grin at the realization that Jane would probably just tell her to put it in her journal, anyway.
She maneuvered gingerly out of the lot and down the road to town. There was plenty open in Kepler at this time of year. Options weren’t an issue. If she wanted to head up to the lodge at Mount Kepler she could hit up some soup at the Wolf Ember Grill. Then again… Maybe the cute girl she’d been eyeing would be working the deli counter at the co-op. Juno blushed, even in the solitude of her car, but she didn’t have to make the conscious decision to head there before she realized she’d already pointed her car down the route to town.
Kepler was beautiful this time of year. Juno had always loved Christmas, but with her folks moved away she hadn’t exactly kept up the family traditions. Despite the lack of a tree in her own house, her heart lifted to see the giant pine set up in front of City Hall, boughs weighed down with baubles in bright reds and gold, strings of lights encircling it so thickly so as to almost obscure entirely the evergreen needles beneath. She smiled at the streetlamps wound with red and white streamers around their poles, charading as candy canes-- her memories of decorating those same lamps with her Girl Scouts troop were nearly two decades old but still felt fresh.
The Wildflower Natural Foods Co-op had been painted a garish green by its previous owner but the color was almost beautiful behind the ropes of tinsel and plastic bells the staff had decorated it with in the spirit of the season. Juno parked her Jeep discreetly out of view of the picture windows in the front of the building; if Dani was working, there was no need for her to know what a hunk of junk Juno drove. At least, not yet. Juno blushed again.
She straightened the khaki shirt of her ranger uniform, grateful for the tailoring she’d splurged on that allowed the fabric to lay neatly over the ample curves of her breasts without pulling or straining. Stepping out, she shook her dark green pants loose, letting the wide hem fall over her boots, and tugged the lapel of her big winter coat. She’d closed her door almost all the way when she stopped, leaned in, flipped open the glove compartment, and shook out the Peruvian wool scarf Jane had brought her after her last mission trip. It was thick and fringed and still smelled a little like alpaca, but it had a cute pattern worked in greens and pinks-- Juno’s favorite colors.
She wound it around her neck, nestling into it up to her nose, and welcomed a jolt of affection for her absent friend. Maybe it will bring me luck, she thought, and with that she shut the door.