Canyon Sacrifice. Scott Graham

he said as he leaned the piece of wood against the metal wall of the fire pit and angled a gentle stroke down its side. A reddish-hued sliver peeled from the chunk of wood and the air filled with the pungent aroma of cedar. He flipped the hatchet in his hand and held it out to Carmelita by its handle. “Take it easy. It’s not about blunt force. The idea is to let the sharpness of the blade do the work.”

      Carmelita took the hatchet while Rosie, on her toes, looked on.

      “Can I do it, too? Can I? Can I?” she begged.

      “Afraid not,” Chuck told her.

      “Awww.”

      “For now, Carm will have to take your cuts for you.” He turned to Carmelita. “All set?”

      She nodded, dead serious. Chuck steadied the chunk of cedar and stepped back.

      “Spread your feet so there’s no chance of hitting your leg if you miss,” he instructed.

      She took a couple of practice swings, then let the hatchet fall so gently against the piece of cedar that the blade didn’t even bite into the wood. She shot an embarrassed look at Janelle, who raised her eyebrows in nervous encouragement, still talking to Clarence on the phone.

      Carmelita licked her lips and lifted the hatchet for another try. She swung the hatchet downward with a little more force, breaking a small piece of kindling free from the chunk of cedar.

      “Yippee!” Rosie cheered.

      “Now you’re getting it,” Chuck said.

      Carmelita set herself again and took several light chops at the chunk of wood, her confidence growing with each blow. Over the course of a few minutes, she reduced a third of the piece of cedar to a pile of kindling. Chuck showed her how to arrange the kindling pieces and larger chunks of firewood in a pyramid over the wadded-up newspaper in the center of the fire pit. He helped her put a lighter to the base of the pyramid. The flames licked upward, illuminating her face.

      “You did it, Carm!” Rosie squealed, dancing around the fire.

      Carmelita crouched in front of the flames and held out her hands to the growing warmth. “Yeah,” she said softly. “I did.”

      “Way to go,” Janelle praised Carmelita, lowering her phone.

      “And she’s still got all ten fingers,” Chuck said.

      “You didn’t tell me my daughters would become ax-wielding pyromaniacs if we came here.”

      “Daugh-ter,” he corrected, pointing at Carmelita. “She’s a natural.”

      Carmelita straightened her back but did not look up from the flames.

      “Agreed,” Janelle said. She set her phone on the picnic table. “He’s two hours out. Almost to Flagstaff.”

      “Good to hear.” Chuck found himself looking forward to Clarence’s arrival. He’d missed working with him since the completion of the fieldwork portion of the transmission-line contract a month ago. Janelle’s brother had been fun on the job; he’d be just as fun here at the canyon.

      Before bedtime, the girls enjoyed their first-ever marshmallow roast, during which Rosie slimed her hair with a long string of melted white sugar. The sliming precipitated a trip with Janelle to the hot-water tap in the sink of the nearest bathroom. Just as Janelle and Rosie returned to camp, Carmelita said that she, too, needed to visit the bathroom.

      “You can’t be serious,” Janelle said in response to Carmelita’s ill-timed announcement.

      “You don’t need to go with her,” Chuck said, gesturing at the well-lit bathroom building little more than a hundred feet away. “She’s seven. She’s a big girl.” He pointed at the fire. “She proved it.”

      Carmelita’s eyes grew large at Chuck’s proposal. “Can I, Mamá?”

      Janelle looked from Carmelita to Chuck and back. “I guess,” she said hesitantly. “Straight there, straight back, got it?”

      “Got it,” Carmelita said with a solemn nod to her mother. Then she looked at Chuck for reassurance.

      “I meant what I said,” he told her. “You’re a big girl. You can handle it.”

      She nodded again, this time to herself. Chuck held a flashlight out to her from his seat by the fire. She dusted her hands on the sides of her striped sweat pants and looked out at the darkness. Then she accepted the flashlight and set off. Janelle watched the beam of light bob away up the gravel road.

      “Oh, Chuck,” she said, her voice small.

      She reached for him from her chair. The fire crackled and popped. A tendril of wood smoke drifted between them. Chuck took Janelle’s hand in both of his. How incredibly brave—or foolhardy—she was. Her life as a single mother in Albuquerque had been fine—decent apartment, steady job as an office receptionist, built-in babysitters in her parents—yet she’d sacrificed it all for a lifelong bachelor who didn’t know a thing about raising kids, or how to be involved in a fully committed adult relationship either, for that matter. Late last month, she’d left her friends, her family, her whole world behind in New Mexico to embark on an entirely new life for herself and the girls in the mountains of southwest Colorado, far from everything and everyone she’d ever known. Now here she was, trusting the well-being of her oldest daughter to a man she’d known only a few months. If Chuck was nervous about his new life with Janelle, then Janelle had every right to be terrified of her new life with him.

      “No te preocupes, esposa mia,” Chuck told her. He liked using bits of Spanish with her, just as she did with the girls. In this case, the word esposa didn’t feel as odd coming off his tongue as the word wife had with Donald earlier in the day.