Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired Split Rock Lighthouse keeper, had been dragged to the Duluth summer street fair against his will by his 16-year-old niece, who’d begged him to come watch her dance with her high school drill team. He’d spent 28 years working 10-day shifts alone on the cliffside, talking more to gulls and lake freighters than other people, and the crowd made his shoulders hunch up to his ears. He’d peeled off from the family group 20 minutes prior, hovering by a craft root beer truck, scuffed work boots sticking to asphalt spotted with melted cotton candy and spilled soda. The air reeked of grilled brats, fried dough, and the faint iron tang of Lake Superior rolling in off the shore, and a steel drum band playing Bob Marley covers blared three booths over.
He was half considering sneaking out to his truck and driving up the shore to his old overlook when he spotted her. Clara Bennett, 58, ran the used bookstore downtown, and she was his late wife Ellie’s former sister-in-law, divorced from Ellie’s older brother three years prior after he’d left her for a realtor half his age. Ronan had avoided every family event she’d been at since Ellie died eight years ago, too guilty for the stupid, lingering spark he’d carried for her since the first time Ellie brought him home for Thanksgiving in 1992. She was kneeling behind the Friends of the Library book booth, stacking vintage pulp westerns on a folding table, a strand of graying auburn hair falling in front of her face, chipped deep red nail polish peeking out from the cuffs of her frayed denim jacket.
A kid in a neon baseball cap came tearing past the booth, chasing a golden retriever with a cotton candy stick stuck to its collar, and slammed into the edge of the table. Half the stack of westerns went tumbling. Ronan moved before he thought, stepping forward to catch three of them before they hit the sticky ground, and when he knelt to grab the rest, his hand brushed hers as they both reached for the same tattered copy of *The Searchers*. His hands were crisscrossed with calluses from decades of cranking the lighthouse’s Fresnel lens, patching roofing shingles in gale-force winds, and her skin was softer than he expected, still cool from the iced coffee she’d been holding in her other hand. She smelled like lavender laundry soap and old paper, the same scent that had clung to the copy of *Lighthouse Island* she’d lent him back in 2011, the one he still had on his nightstand.
They sat back on their heels for a beat, neither of them pulling their hands away, and she looked up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, the corners crinkling when she smiled. “You still have that western I lent you when Ellie was going through chemo? The one with the cowboy and the lighthouse keeper?” she asked, and Ronan’s throat went tight. He’d expected her to bring up Ellie, to ask how he was holding up, the same question every other family member had asked him 100 times, and she didn’t. He nodded, and she laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the noise of the fair. “Knew you’d hold onto it. You’re the only person I know who returns books with their spines still intact.”
He stayed there leaning against the edge of the booth for the next 45 minutes, talking while she rang up customers, passing her books when she couldn’t reach the top of the stack. Their arms brushed every time she leaned past him to grab a paper bag, her knee pressed to his when they both knelt to restock the lower shelf, and neither of them moved away. He told her about the last winter he’d worked at the lighthouse, when a blizzard knocked out power for 36 hours, and he’d spent the night playing old Johnny Cash records on his battery-powered turntable, watching freighters creep through the snow. She leaned in when he talked, her face 12 inches from his, and he could feel her breath on his cheek when she asked him what the lake looked like at 3 a.m. when the sky was clear. A group of parade marchers went past blowing plastic trumpets, and for a second no one was looking at the booth, so her hand rested on his forearm for three full seconds, her thumb brushing the scar he’d gotten when he fell off the lighthouse catwalk in 2017.
Guilt hit him sharp in the chest halfway through the story, hot and heavy, and he almost stepped back. He’d spent eight years telling himself he’d never look at another woman again, that Ellie was the only one he’d ever want, and here he was, leaning into a woman who’d once been married to her brother, feeling like a kid with a crush at a high school dance. But when he looked at Clara, she didn’t look guilty. She looked like she was listening, like she actually cared what he had to say, the same way she’d been the only person who left casseroles on his porch after Ellie died without sticking around to make small talk, without forcing him to talk about how he felt.
When her shift ended, she wiped her hands on her jeans, tucked the stray strand of hair back behind her ear, and tilted her head at the fried cheese curd truck 20 feet away. “You wanna split a basket? Extra ranch, like you used to get at the family Fourth of July picnics?” she asked, and Ronan almost said no. Almost made up an excuse about needing to get home to feed his cat, almost said he had to get back to the cabin before dark. But then she smiled at him again, and he nodded.
They walked over to the truck side by side, his hand brushing the small of her back when a group of teens darted past, and she didn’t pull away. He ordered the curds, she ordered a pink lemonade, and they found an empty picnic table under an oak tree, out of the sun. She told him she’d been driving up the north shore every weekend for the last six months, parking at the overlook by his old lighthouse, hoping she’d run into him there. He popped a warm, squeaky cheese curd into her open palm, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel the weight of the empty lighthouse waiting for him when he got home.
