Roland Voss’s work boots stick a little to the VFW hall’s scuffed linoleum, caked with boat grease and pine sap from the mile hike he takes every morning before he fixes small outboard engines for local fishermen. At 62, he’s spent the last three years since retiring as Isle Royale’s lead lighthouse keeper avoiding small talk like it’s a sudden squall on the lake. The air smells like fried walleye, vinegar coleslaw, and the cheap Pabst Blue Ribbon the group of retired loggers sip while they bicker about state park access fees. He’s got a crumpled $20 in the front pocket of his worn flannel, planning to grab a takeout container and hightail it back to his cabin before anyone corners him to barter free engine repairs for a six pack.
He turns toward the takeout counter, and his shoulder brushes someone’s arm. Soft, warm, and the scent hits him first: lavender and lemon Pledge, the exact same cleaner his late wife Ellie used to polish their lighthouse kitchen counters every Sunday. He looks up, and his throat goes tight. It’s Mara Hale, Ellie’s half-sister, 58, the last time he saw her was his wedding reception 19 years ago, when she’d been fresh out of nursing school and had snuck him a shot of tequila after Ellie told him he couldn’t drink before the first dance. She’s leaning against a folding table stacked with public health pamphlets, stethoscope looped around her neck, dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, and she smirks like she’s been waiting for him to notice her.
“Roland Voss. You still sneak out of public events like you’re trying to avoid a Coast Guard safety inspection,” she says, and her voice is the same warm, raspy tone he remembers, like she laughs too loud and smokes the occasional menthol. His first thought is that he needs to leave, right now. This is wrong. She’s Ellie’s sister, the small town gossip mill will run wild if anyone sees them talking for more than 10 seconds, and he’s spent 12 years carefully cultivating a reputation as a permanent loner so no one tries to set him up with their widowed cousin or their divorced neighbor. The disgust curls tight in his chest first, at himself for even noticing how her jeans fit just right, how the silver hoop earrings she wears catch the light of the fluorescent overheads.
“Just here for food,” he mumbles, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and she shakes her head, nodding at the folding chair next to her. “C’mon. I’m doing free blood pressure checks for the county, part of the new rural men’s health initiative. Yours is probably through the roof from all that fried fish you eat every Friday. No charge, no barter for engine parts, I swear.” He sits before he can talk himself out of it, and she rolls up the sleeve of his flannel, her cool fingers brushing the thin, silvery scar on his forearm from when he sliced himself on the lighthouse’s fresnel lens during a winter storm 15 years ago. He flinches, not from pain, from the sharp, unexpected spark that shoots up his arm to his chest.
She pauses, her thumb brushing the scar for half a second before she wraps the blood pressure cuff around his arm. “You still have that. I remember you telling Ellie about it at your wedding, said you were lucky you didn’t go blind from the flying glass.” Her face is 12 inches from his now, and he can see the flecks of gold in her warm brown eyes, the faint laugh line crinkling at the corner of her mouth when she smiles. The jukebox in the corner is playing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” loud enough that no one at the adjacent tables can hear them talk, and the smell of her lavender lotion mixes with the fried fish in the air in a way that doesn’t feel wrong, not really.
She checks the gauge, then deflates the cuff, tucking her stethoscope back into her bag. “148 over 92. That’s too high, Roland. You need to cut back on the fried food, and you need to stop hiding away in that cabin all by yourself. Isolation’s worse for your blood pressure than any amount of grease.” He blurts out before he can stop himself: “Everyone in this town only talks to me to ask about Ellie, or to gossip about who I’m seen with. I’m tired of being Ellie’s widower instead of Roland.”
She leans in a little closer, her voice so low he has to lean forward to hear it over the clink of beer mugs. “I didn’t move up here three weeks ago to talk about Ellie. I requested the VFW slot specifically because I knew you came here every Friday. I’ve thought about you every year since that wedding.” He freezes, then reaches out, brushing a stray strand of hair that fell out of her braid behind her ear, his calloused finger brushing her cheek for half a second. No one notices. The loggers are still yelling about park fees, the cook is yelling out order numbers, the Johnny Cash track bleeds into a Hank Williams Sr. deep cut.
She tears off the back of a blood pressure information pamphlet, scribbles her cell phone number on it in blue ballpoint, slides it across the table to him. “My place is the little blue cabin on the north end of the lake, the one with the sunflower bird feeder hanging from the oak out front. Come over tomorrow at 7. I’ll make grilled salmon, no fried anything, and we can talk about lighthouses, or boat engines, or the time you snuck that tequila shot at the wedding, or nothing at all. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
He tucks the paper into the inside pocket of his flannel, grabs his takeout container of walleye from the counter, and walks out to his beat up 2008 Ford F150. He sits in the driver’s seat for 10 minutes, the heater blowing warm air on his cold hands, staring at the crumpled pamphlet in his hand. He pulls out his beat up flip phone, the one he refuses to replace because smartphones are “too much trouble”, and types the number in, saving it under “Mara” instead of “Ellie’s sister” like he would have a week ago. He pulls out of the parking lot, doesn’t head straight home, drives slowly past the blue cabin on the north end first, sees the sunflower bird feeder swinging in the wind, the kitchen lights on, and he smiles, the first real, unforced smile he’s had in 12 years. He turns onto the road leading to his own cabin, already mentally grabbing the bottle of pinot noir he’s had stashed in the back of his pantry since last Christmas to bring with him tomorrow.
