Roman Voss, 62, spent three decades as an air traffic controller at Cleveland Hopkins International, talking down hundreds of flights a day without ever raising his voice or cracking a smile. Stubbornness was his best asset on the job, and his worst flaw off it: he still held grudges against people who’d wronged him in high school, kept a tattered list of slights tucked in the back of his wallet he’d added to since he was 17. He moved to northern Vermont after his wife died eight years prior, bought 12 acres of sugar maple, tapped every tree himself every spring, sold syrup out of his beat-up Ford F-150 at the county farmers market every Saturday. His golden retriever, Gus, rode shotgun everywhere, shedding all over the flannel shirts he wore 11 months out of the year.
He’d avoided Elara Mendez for three months straight, ever since she moved back to town to take over her late mother’s apple orchard. She was the reason he lost his Air Force ROTC pilot scholarship senior year, the reason he spent three days suspended, the reason he took a job bagging groceries instead of heading to flight school that fall. He spotted her at the first farmers market in August, waved off her attempt to say hello, turned and walked the other way before she could get within ten feet. He didn’t care that she was newly widowed, didn’t care the whole town thought she was a saint for caring for her ailing mother in her last year, didn’t care her honeycrisp apples were the best anyone had tasted in a decade.
She laughed, low and warm, and passed him a crumpled paper napkin. “Figured I’d run into you eventually, Voss. You’ve been dodging me like I’ve got a contagious case of blight.”
He grunted, wiping at the sticky syrup on his denim, not looking at her. The air smelled like wood smoke, wet oak leaves, and something soft and warm, like cedar and vanilla, that he realized was her perfume. She was wearing a sleeveless black knit dress even though the temperature hovered in the low 50s, her dark curly hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, a tiny scar slicing through the left edge of her eyebrow he remembered she’d gotten crashing his dirt bike on that stupid skip day. Their knees were pressed together under the table, the fabric of her dress thin enough that he could feel the heat of her calf through his jeans.
“Still mad about senior year, huh?” She leaned in a little, her shoulder brushing his, and he finally made eye contact. Her eyes were dark brown, crinkled at the corners like she smiled a lot, and he felt a stupid flutter in his chest he hadn’t felt since he was a kid. “You know I only ratted you out because I thought you were drunk, right? You had that six pack on the dash of the principal’s pickup, I thought you’d been drinking the whole drive out to the lake. I didn’t want you to crash and kill all five of the idiots you had crammed in the cab with you.”
Roman froze. He’d left that six pack on the dash as a joke, hadn’t touched a drop that day, had been the designated driver for the whole group. He’d never thought to ask why she’d told the principal where they were, had just assumed she’d done it to be a snitch for extra credit in civics class. He opened his mouth to say something, and Gus trotted over, tail wagging, and pushed his wet head into Elara’s hand. She scratched behind his ears, laughing, and pulled a crumpled, yellowed envelope out of the purse slung over her chair. “I found this in my old yearbook when I was cleaning out my mom’s attic last month. You stuffed it in there the day of graduation, didn’t you?” She slid it across the table to him, and he recognized his own messy 18-year-old handwriting on the front, addressed to her, never sent. It was the apology letter he’d written after he calmed down, realized he’d been an idiot to steal the principal’s truck, had been too proud to hand it to her. “I’ve read it 20 times already. I felt guilty for 40 years, thought I’d ruined your life. The town librarian told me you were an air traffic controller, had a good career, had a wife you loved. I was relieved.”
The rain slowed to a drizzle, and a faint rainbow arched over the maple groves at the edge of the valley. Roman stared at the letter, then at her, 40 years of resentment melting so fast he felt silly for ever holding onto it. She still wore the same silver ring on her index finger she’d worn in high school, her hands calloused now from pruning apple trees, same as his were from tapping maple. He thought about all the years he’d spent alone, all the stupid grudges he’d held onto that didn’t matter, all the time he’d wasted being mad at people who hadn’t meant to hurt him.
She stood up, slinging her purse over her shoulder, and held out a hand to him. “I pressed 20 gallons of hard cider last week. It’s still fermenting a little, but it’s good. You wanna come taste it? I’ve got all our old yearbooks too, we can make fun of how bad our hair was back then.”
Roman hesitated for half a second, then took her hand, her palm warm and rough against his, their fingers lacing together for a beat longer than necessary. He grabbed his half-eaten plate of crisp, whistled for Gus, and followed her across the muddy field toward her beat-up pickup truck parked by the road. He could already taste the sharp, sweet fizz of the cider on his tongue before they even climbed into the cab.
