Roland Voss, 61, retired fire marshal from Akron, has spent every October since his wife Diane died 12 years ago bouncing between small-town Michigan beer festivals. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2007 residential blaze he pulled a toddler out of, a worn Carhartt vest he refuses to replace even though the zipper sticks, and an 18-year-old grudge against Diane’s younger cousin Elara that he’s carried so long it’s started to feel like a physical weight in his chest. He’d blamed her for bailing on Diane’s final months of ovarian cancer treatment, for vanishing without a word when Diane needed her most, for never answering the letter he sent her two weeks after the funeral.
Crisp October air nips at his cheeks as he leans against the rail of a craft beer tent outside Grand Rapids, crunching a roasted cinnamon almond between his teeth. The smell of wood smoke and fried cheese curds hangs thick over the fairgrounds, a local bluegrass band picking a fast, twangy set on the main stage a hundred yards away. He reaches for the hazy IPA the bartender slides across the counter at the same time a woman two spots down reaches for her spiked cider pour, their knuckles brushing. Her skin is cold, dotted with a faint smudge of charcoal, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned before he even looks up.
It’s Elara. She’s 58 now, streaks of silver running through her dark wavy hair, a tiny silver hoop in her left nostril, the same crinkle at the corner of her hazel eyes that Diane used to get when she laughed. He tenses, ready to mumble an excuse and walk away, but she says his name soft, like she’s been expecting to run into him eventually, and he can’t make his feet move.
They end up at a splintered picnic table off to the side of the tent, away from the crowd. He sits as far from her as the bench will allow, arms crossed tight over his chest, jaw set. She doesn’t push him to talk first, just sips her cider, tells him she runs a small pottery studio ten minutes away, has a 10-year-old rescue pit bull named Mabel that sleeps on her pottery wheel when she’s working, has been sober for 17 and a half years. The explanation hits him slow, then all at once: she didn’t bail because she didn’t care, she bailed because she was deep in a pill addiction from a 2004 ski accident, didn’t want to bring her messy, strung-out chaos into Diane’s final weeks, didn’t think she deserved to be there. She pulls a crumpled, water-stained copy of the letter he sent her after the funeral out of her canvas tote, edges frayed from being carried around in her purse for a year, says she finally worked up the courage to open it last Christmas.
The sun dips lower over the nearby lake, wind picking up, and she shifts closer to him on the bench to get out of the gusts, their shoulders pressing together through their flannel shirts. He can smell lavender lotion on her skin, mixed with the faint tang of cider on her breath and the wood smoke clinging to both their coats. The anger he’s carried for nearly two decades melts fast, softer than the wax on the candles he keeps on Diane’s grave every year, and he realizes he’s not mad anymore—he’s just glad she’s okay, that he’s not the only one who still misses Diane so bad it hurts some days. He reaches for his half-empty beer on the table, his hand brushing hers where it’s resting on the splintered wood between them, and he doesn’t yank it away this time. She holds his eye contact for three long beats, no look away, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a tiny, teasing grin that makes his chest feel light, like he’s 22 again, sneaking Diane into his parents’ basement after curfew.
He asks her if she wants to get pie and meatloaf at the neon-sign diner he passed on the drive into the fairgrounds, the one with the handwritten sign advertising apple pie baked fresh every hour. She nods so fast her hair falls in her face, laughs when he reaches out to brush the strand behind her ear before he even thinks about it. He holds out his arm to help her stand up from the bench, her hand wrapping warm around his scarred forearm, and they start walking toward the parking lot, the sound of the bluegrass band fading behind them, crunched maple leaves sticking to the soles of their work boots. When she tucks her cold hand into the crook of his elbow as they cross the icy paved lot, he doesn’t even think to shift away.
