Chapter Text
Edie Diaz was bored.
Small town Minnesotan life as a retired English woman of a certain age (that is, seventy and above, but she would never divulge the specifics) worked for her just fine in the summer.
She had no problems filling the long, warm days with her also-retired husband Luis. Road tripping to the national parks that were within driving distance and admiring the bounty of stunning flora and fauna they had to offer. Picnicking in the lush fields surrounding their home, enjoying finger foods and flasks of iced tea or something a little stronger (the latter of which often led to a quick roll around on the picnic blanket as if they were both still in their twenties). Lounging on the old bench in the garden and simply enjoying each other’s company as they got caught up on the gossip disclosed by the fellas at the golf club or the ladies at Monday night book club.
But the winters were a different matter entirely. Having lived much of her life in bustling cities – which saw her grow up, graduate, marry, move overseas, smash the glass ceiling, lose the love of her life and then find another – Edie had always craved excitement and adventure. She needed it like she needed air. Unfortunately, that air didn’t include the excruciating chill of Minnesotan winter, in which you could see your own breath in front of your face for several long and depressing months.
Edie and Luis settled on Minnesota as the destination of their retirement to be closer to Luis’ family. He’d met his first wife there, and together they’d raised three beautiful children, who combined gave him a total of nine wonderful grandchildren. But now most of those grandchildren were at college in other states, or travelling the world, as Edie still longed to do.
Between dull neighbourhood committee meetings, tiresome book clubs and brisk walks around snowy fields before giving up and turning back for the warmth of home and a spiked beverage, Edie killed the time until spring arrived in any way she could.
Luis had recently purchased her a Mac, a huge, shiny chrome beast of a thing, so they could keep up to date with the modern world or risk becoming some of those pensioners. The kind who’d vote away others’ rights so they could, what, pay less in tax? Get cheaper fuel? No, thank you.
The Diazes had also not long become the proud owners of a smart TV. Edie had never much been one for television while she was working. She’d always preferred taking in a play or concert, and pouring over good literature in her favourite armchair as a means to broaden her mind.
But since she had started to have a lot more time on her hands, she realised just how ignorant she’d been. A new Netflix subscription and a penchant for scandal and romance had led her from big studio dramas to soap operas to the unexpected joys of reality TV. She was addicted. It wasn’t long before the spirit of Andy Cohen inhabited her body and signed her up for Hulu, Prime, HBO Max and, her favourite, Peacock too.
Not liking to do anything by halves, Edie had also started navigating Reddit, with Luis’ youngest grandchild Theo talking her through signing up over the phone. Also a Real Housewives viewer, they’d told her that’s where people generally went (after TikTok, but she wouldn't go that far) to discuss the latest episodes and theorise about who was next to divorce or be audited by the IRS.
Edie was engrossed in a thread about Lisa Vanderpump’s net worth one particularly frigid Wednesday evening when she heard the familiar ‘ding’ of an email landing in her inbox. Edie and Luis had both signed up for their own email addresses when they’d purchased the Mac, and they had come in very handy for Edie’s new reality TV addiction.
(They also used them to keep up with the grandchildren while they were on their travels, but Edie often secretly wished she wasn’t CC’d in — the photo attachments of them posing in front of the likes of Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and even the World's Largest Ball of String often left her with a pang of jealousy in her stomach that she couldn’t shake.)
After logging out of Reddit for the night, Edie switched over to the tab labeled ‘Inbox (1)’ and was faced with a name she didn’t recognise.
Evan Buckley | Subject: Hey :)
Theo had warned her countless times about internet safety and how older people are more susceptible to being scammed. She opened it anyway.
To: E Diaz ([email protected])
From: Evan Buckley ([email protected])
Sent: Tuesday 14 January 2025, 21:36 PM
Subject: Hey :)
Hey Eddie,
Before you’re all like, ‘what the hell, why is this idiot emailing me, we speak everyday’, I just thought it would be nice, okay??? It’s hard recapping your life to your best friend over text when you’re pinging each other all day without time to think or react or whatever. So I thought I’d start sending you emails as well, like writing you a letter like in the olden days, but instantly and without having to go and find a mailbox. I’ll use proper punctuation and everything for you.
So hi.
I would ask what life is like for you in El Paso, but I pretty much know already. BUT if there are any gold nuggets (or even some mundane nuggets) that you’ve left out in our texts and calls, please please please send them over when you reply. I just want a full picture of your hometown and your family and what cowboys like yourself do for fun. If you find yourself on a mechanical bull any time soon, make sure someone films it and then sends me the video IMMEDIATELY.
This week has been a bit of a slow one for me. We had a few weird calls at the start (have you ever seen a guy get his foot stuck in a toilet? Me neither, and he wouldn’t reveal how it happened…) but now it’s really starting to drag.
I went for Thai food with Maddie yesterday but she’s been kind of busy lately. I get it, but with her occupied and no Diazes around to entertain me I’ve not really known what to do with myself. I did get really into sudoku recently though. I’m getting pretty good at it. Chim also gave me a list of films that he insists I need to watch before I die, so I’ve been working my way through those since Christmas. I’ve so far got through 2.5 (I fell asleep in one of them).
Not to be too maudlin but the fire house is so weird without you. I know you’ve been gone for almost a month now but I’m still not used to it. I can barely remember how we used to entertain ourselves during quiet shifts (I’m at home right now now so the jinx doesn't count!).
Hen and Chim kept being really nice to me for the first few weeks after you left, and it kind of freaked me out a bit. They kept letting me choose what we watched on TV, and then Hen kept giving me the good bunk by the filing cabinet even though I know it's her favourite one. She used to call dibs on it all the time. I think they were just trying to distract me or something. They've both gone mostly back to normal now but it still feels weird.
I guess I just really miss you. I obviously know why you left and that it was the right thing to do but everything feels a little empty without you guys here with us.
You won’t believe this but as soon as I typed that it started full-on pouring outside. I can’t really see from here but it sounds like hail. Kind of poetic. What do they call that again, when the weather matches the mood? I just googled it: it’s pathetic fallacy if you even care. (I’ll show you a pathetic phallus-y.) (I nearly deleted that but I’m leaving it in for your entertainment. I know you’re probably rolling your eyes right now.)
Wow, this message got kind of long. I guess they had to make letters long in the olden days because it took weeks for it to get there.
I’m going to go now. I know you don’t check your email often but update me on your life when you can, and enjoy the mechanical bulls, if any!
Miss you.
Buck x
It certainly didn’t seem like a scam, but if it were then Edie had no idea what their endgame was.
Intrigued, she clicked on the little round circle next to Evan Buckley’s name and the picture expanded. It showed a black and white photograph of an extremely large man in what looked like a firefighter's uniform. She leaned forward in her seat to squint at his face. He was very easy on the eye.
She clicked out of the image and examined the message again. It didn’t take a genius to work out what had happened here: a man that large would surely have girthier fingers than your average internet user. He must have stumbled over the keys a tad too quickly and missed out a ‘D’ from his friend’s email address. Was he Eddie’s friend? Perhaps an ex struggling to move on? Or, more likely, Edie had been watching too much reality television.
She was swiftly yanked out of her own thoughts when she heard Luis fumbling around in the kitchen.
‘Honey, you want to join me for a night cap?’ he called from behind the saloon-style swing door.
‘Go on then, darling, I’ll be right there,’ she called back.
Edie closed her emails and shut down the computer, making a mental note to google search ‘Evan Buckley firefighter’ when she next got the chance. But by the time she joined Luis at the kitchen table and had a glass of whiskey in her hand, she’d forgotten all about him.
Edie hated book club and everything about it.
She hated the awful women from the neighbourhood that attended. She hated the terrible pompous books they chose to read and discuss. She especially hated the cheap boxed wine that had become traditional to serve, no matter who hosted.
And yet, she read, she drank and she nattered.
Edie had never been one to struggle with making friends, but the problem was that most of her dearest friends were in London, or New York or, now, Florida. No one from London, New York or Florida wanted to visit the frigid arse-crack of Minnesota in winter. So, from around November to March, she was forced to endure the people around her. And one thing the ladies from book club always delivered, alongside baked goods with the consistency of wet sand, was drama.
From her very first book club meeting three years ago, she knew she was in it for the long haul. A few of the regular ladies were quite unassuming, but most of them had a shared habit of divulging sensitive information about each other in front of the group and then playing coy about it. They'd casually slip earth-shattering truths into conversations like they didn’t realise they weren’t common knowledge, and then smile sweetly from behind their wine glasses. They’d insult each other but disguise it as a kindness, which, being English, Edie herself was also very good at.
She quickly became accustomed to the drama. In fact, she might even go so far as to say she was addicted to it. She’d tried to stir a few pots herself in her time, but it had always felt a bit mean. Besides, she also found it was far more fun to stay out of it, and watch the mess unfold around her. It was probably a large part of why she enjoyed the Real Housewives so much.
However, the more recent book club scandals just weren’t hitting the spot like they used to. Last autumn, it was revealed that the neighbourhood postal worker was stealing people’s mail, Hayley had been cut of her father’s will for her recreational drug use, and Rebecca was cheating on Samuel with a man twenty years her junior (Rebecca hadn’t been back since that particular revelation came out). The juiciest scandal they’d had since the start of December was when Alice asked Isabella for the gift receipt after turning her nose up at a very obviously handmade scarf at their Christmas gathering.
It had been a while since anything in the drab winter version of Edie's life got her pulse racing (except for Luis, of course).
Which is why her cavewoman fight or flight response appeared to kick in when a ‘ding!’ interrupted a late night Reddit session, and the name ‘Evan Buckley’ flashed up on one of those little corner banner things that she couldn’t figure out how to get rid of, a few days after the first.
Barely hesitating, she switched tabs and opened the email with a flourish.
To: E Diaz ([email protected])
From: Evan Buckley ([email protected])
Sent: Thursday 16 January 2025, 00:24 AM
Subject: Re: Hey :)
Hi again,
I doubt you’ve read my first email yet but I just really need to get some stuff out and I don’t want to wake you up. No rush to read or reply!
I can’t sleep. We had a tough call today and I just keep thinking about it over and over again on a loop. It was just a regular house fire. The neighbours called it in because the family weren’t home so it should have been a pretty simple hose job. But the neighbours didn’t know about the annex. It turned out the family used it as a vacation rental, and staying there were these two guys and their kid.
We only found out there was someone still in there when one of the guys and the kid came back from the grocery store and started screaming. The annex restoration was a bit of a hack job and the other guy had been trapped in there for a while after a wall had come down. Bobby and I managed to get him out in time and Chim and Hen started working on him. Last we knew he made it to the hospital so hopefully he’ll pull through, but I can’t get those screams out of my head.
It’s brought up a lot of different stuff for me, I guess. After a difficult call, you can’t help but think about your own life, you know? Something I’m thinking about a lot tonight is the lightning strike. Just a freak accident that almost ended with me not being here anymore and leaving loads of people I love behind. I can’t bear the thought of causing that much pain, but I also can’t bear the thought of no one screaming like that for me.
Sorry, this got kind of heavy. Sort of debating not sending it at all actually. But I do feel better… fuck it, I’m just gonna send it, just so you know you help me feel better even when you’re not here. :)
Love,
Buck x
A shiver ran all the way up Edie’s spine. She didn’t know what she was expecting but it certainly wasn’t that. The ‘cheeky chappy’ version of Buck she had in her head after his first email was replaced with someone a lot more delicate.
Should she email him back? She felt like she should email him back. He clearly needed to talk to someone about all this, and it probably shouldn't be a seventy-something-year-old British lady that he had no idea existed. She should let him know about his error so he could forward these emails onto the intended recipient. But she was hesitant.
She considered the things she knew about Buck:
- He was an extremely handsome firefighter who, judging by his email address, lived in Los Angeles
- He seemed to feel very deeply about this Eddie he’d been emailing, but Eddie was elsewhere and didn’t seem to be coming back any time soon
- He was funny and had a good heart, but appeared to be constantly paranoid that he was inconveniencing people
Edie once again considered google searching him for more intel, but that felt like cheating somehow. This currently-one-sided conversation needed to stay within the confines of her inbox, she knew that much.
Following a lengthy deliberation she decided not to reply. She felt terrible for it but also needed him to send more emails so she could find out how it all ended.
She clicked the star next to Buck’s name, favouriting the email chain, before finally joining Luis in bed.