Rayford Pruitt is 61, retired high school woodshop teacher, now runs a tiny custom cutting board business out of his two-car garage in the hills outside Ithaca, New York. His biggest flaw, if you ask his only sister, is that he’s clung to the same rigid daily routine for the seven years since his wife died: wake at 6 a.m., black coffee, three hours sanding lumber, lunch of peanut butter toast and a banana, two more hours of finishing, then a beer and a baseball game on the couch until bed. He avoids local events like the plague, hates small talk, hates the way neighbors tsk and ask if he’s “seeing anyone yet” like he’s a broken appliance that needs fixing. He only agreed to man a booth at the annual fall harvest festival because his 16-year-old granddaughter begged him to, said she’d help him set up and sell, then bailed at the last minute to go to a concert with her friends.
The air smells like fried apple donuts, cinnamon, and the sharp, sweet tang of pressed cider. The October wind nips at the tips of his ears, and he’s got a thermos of black coffee tucked under the booth table, half gone already, when he hears a laugh he’d know even after 12 years. He looks up from polishing a walnut cutting board streaked with creamy amber grain, and there’s Maren Hale.
She’s 58, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a thick braid slung over one shoulder, wearing a faded red flannel, scuffed work boots, and jeans with a smudge of paint on the knee. Crumbs from a cider donut dust the corner of her mouth. He’d met her once before, back when he was still teaching, when her 14-year-old son had accidentally snapped a blade on the school’s lathe and she’d showed up to his classroom with a handwritten apology and a jar of her famous peach jam, her face pink from rushing in from the rain. He’d thought then that she was the warmest thing he’d ever seen, but he was married, she was married, and they’d run in the same small-town circles, so he’d shoved that thought down so deep he’d almost forgotten it.
She leans her hip against the edge of his booth, closer than any other customer has stood all day, and runs a finger along the edge of a cherry wood board, her nail polish chipped the same pale blue it was 12 years ago. “These are even nicer than the little birdhouse you helped Jax make for my birthday that year,” she says, and her voice is low, rough around the edges like she’s spent the last week laughing too hard. When she reaches across the table to pick up the walnut board he was polishing, her knuckles brush his, and he feels a jolt run up his arm like he touched a live wire. She holds eye contact for two beats longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up like she knows exactly what she just did.
He’s torn, instantly. Part of him twists with that old, familiar guilt, like he’s doing something wrong, like his wife is watching from somewhere, like every person wandering the festival is staring at them, gossiping already. The other part of him can’t stop staring at the way the sun catches the silver in her braid, the way she licks the donut crumb off her lip like she doesn’t care who sees, the way her thumb brushes the grain of the walnut board like she’s touching something delicate, something worth taking care of.
They talk for 40 minutes, he realizes later, even though he usually cuts small talk off after two minutes max. She tells him she got divorced two years ago, moved back to town last month to take over her grandma’s old farm, is planning to grow peaches and sell jam at the farmers market next summer. She asks him how long he’s been making the cutting boards, listens when he rambles about the difference between white oak and red oak, doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t give him that pitying look people get when he mentions his wife. When a group of loud teens runs past the booth, she steps closer to him to avoid getting knocked into, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep, and he doesn’t move away.
“I brought you something,” she says, when the crowd starts to thin and the sun dips low enough to paint the tops of the maple trees pink. She pulls a glass jar out of her canvas tote, the label handwritten in loopy cursive, peach jam, same as the one she brought him all those years ago. When he reaches to take it, their fingers wrap around the jar at the same time, and she doesn’t let go for three whole seconds, her palm warm against his. “I was thinking you could walk down to the creek with me after you pack up. It’s quiet down there. I haven’t seen the fall foliage up this way in years.”
His first instinct is to say no, to tell her he has a frozen meatloaf waiting at home, that the Yankees game is on at 7, that he doesn’t do spontaneous things. But he looks at her, at the crinkles around her eyes when she smiles, at the jam jar warm between their hands, and he nods.
He packs up his booth in 10 minutes flat, faster than he’s ever packed anything, tucks the jam jar into the inner pocket of his flannel jacket so it’s pressed against his ribs. They walk down the dirt path to the creek, leaves crunching under their boots, the only sound the distant chatter of the festival and the gurgle of water over stones. She sits down on a fallen oak log half-buried in moss, pats the spot next to her, and he sits, their legs brushing from knee to ankle. She tells him she used to skip class to come down here when she was a kid, that she carved her initials into one of the oak trees along the bank. He tells her he used to bring his wife here when they were dating, that they carved their initials into the same tree. It doesn’t feel awkward, doesn’t feel like he’s betraying anyone. It feels like a secret they’re sharing, not a weight.
She reaches up, swipes a fleck of sawdust off his cheek with her thumb, and holds it there for a beat, her skin soft against his stubble. “I always liked you, you know,” she says, quiet, like she’s afraid the trees will hear. “Back when Jax was in your class. I thought you were the kind of man who pays attention to the small stuff.” He admits he liked her too, more than he ever let himself admit back then, and her smile widens, so bright it makes his chest feel light.
The sun slips below the hills, turning the sky deep orange and purple, and she stands, brushes moss off her jeans, holds out a hand to pull him up. “I made pot roast for dinner,” she says, her fingers laced through his, warm. “Got a bottle of that bourbon you used to bring to the school staff holiday parties, too. You wanna come over?”
He squeezes her hand, tucks the jam jar tighter in his jacket pocket, and follows her up the path, their boots kicking up crumbs of red and gold maple leaves as they go.
