Roy Pacheco, 62, retired wildfire hotshot crew supervisor, leans against the dented bed of his 1972 F-150 outside the Taos County Fair, sipping a root beer that’s already gone lukewarm in the late September sun. He’s avoided the fair for seven years, ever since his wife Elaina died of ovarian cancer, but his neighbor’s 7-year-old begged him to come watch her mutton busting run, and he’d never been able to say no to that kid. His left knee throbs, a souvenir from a 2019 blaze outside Flagstaff where he’d slipped on a fallen charred pine, and he shifts his weight to his right leg, calloused fingers brushing the frayed hem of his Carhartt work pants.
He doesn’t notice her until her shoulder brushes his, the scent of lavender and lemon cuticle oil cutting through the surrounding smells of fried dough, cow manure, and charred hamburgers. “Roy Pacheco. I’d know that beat-up Stetson and those scuffed work boots anywhere.”
He turns, and his throat goes dry for half a second. It’s Lila, Elaina’s second cousin, 58, who he hasn’t seen since the funeral, when she’d hugged him so tight he thought his ribs would crack, then slipped out before he could thank her for the loaf of sourdough she’d left on his porch every week for three months after Elaina passed. She’s cut her hair short, silver streaks catching the sun, and she’s wearing a faded denim jacket with a lavender sprig pinned to the lapel. He’d forgotten she moved back to the area six months prior to run a small farm outside Questa, heard it through the grapevine but never worked up the nerve to reach out.
They make small talk first, awkward at first, then looser, as they wander past the livestock barns, the 4-H craft tables, the chili cookoff tent. She teases him about the chipped ceramic mug peeking out of his truck cup holder, the one she got him for Christmas 12 years ago, printed with a terrible pun about hotshots and fire breaks. He’d carried that mug to every fire he worked for the last decade, never even thought about where it came from, not until now. When they stop to sample green chili at the cookoff tent, she takes a bite of his portion, burns her tongue, and he hands her the crumpled napkin from his pocket, their fingers brushing when she takes it. The jolt that runs up his arm is so sharp he almost drops his own paper bowl, and guilt slams into him hard enough that he almost excuses himself and leaves right there. He’d spent eight years convincing himself even looking at another woman was a betrayal of Elaina, let alone feeling that spark, the kind he’d thought died with her.
They end up on the empty bleachers at the far end of the fairgrounds, watching the sunset paint the Sangre de Cristo mountains a deep, bruised pink, the distant sound of the rodeo announcer fading into a low hum. She turns to him, her brown eyes steady, no flirting, no pressure, and says she never would’ve said anything if she didn’t know Elaina would’ve been fine with it. “She told me, a year before she got sick, that if anything ever happened to her, she hoped you’d find someone who put up with your stubborn ass. Someone who knows you hate cotton candy because the sticky gets in your calluses, who knows you only listen to 70s outlaw country when you’re working on trucks, who doesn’t get mad when you track mud into the house after a rain.”
Roy sits frozen for a full ten seconds, his knee throbbing so bad he can barely feel his foot, the ghost of Elaina’s laugh ringing in his ears. He’d spent so long clinging to his grief like a shield he never even considered she’d want him to be happy, not just going through the motions. Lila doesn’t push, just rests her hand lightly on his forearm, her thumb brushing the thin, pale scar on his wrist from a chainsaw accident in 2015, the one he got when he’d driven up to her old house to cut up a fallen oak after a storm.
He doesn’t kiss her. There’s too much history, too much to unpack, too many years of grief tangled up with the quiet, unspoken spark they’d both ignored for decades. But he does ask her if she wants to come over to his place the next afternoon, says he’s got a pork shoulder smoking on the pit since 5 a.m., and he’s fixing up a 1968 Camaro for a kid down the street that she might get a kick out of seeing.
She grins, the same crinkle at the corners of her eyes that Elaina used to get when she was amused, and says she’ll bring a jar of her homemade lavender honey for the cornbread. She leans in, presses a soft, quick kiss to his cheek, her lipstick leaving a faint pink mark he doesn’t bother to wipe off, then waves and walks toward her beat-up Subaru parked three rows over.
Roy stays leaning against the bleacher rail for another ten minutes, watching the fair lights flicker on one by one, before he walks back to his truck, taps the faded photo of Elaina taped to the dashboard twice, and turns the key in the ignition.
