Rudy Marquez, 62, spent 32 years as a Los Angeles County park ranger patrolling the Angeles National Forest, retired last spring after a blown knee from a 2021 hiker rescue left him struggling to hike the steeper backcountry trails. He’s stubborn to a fault, still fixes his own roof, chops his own firewood, refuses to ask anyone for help even when his knee swells so bad he can barely climb the steps to his tiny Wrightwood cabin. He’d avoided the town’s annual apple festival for 17 years straight, ever since his ex-wife walked out with a recreational vehicle salesman she’d met at the festival’s beer garden, but this year the beekeeper he buys raw local honey from only sells at the festival booth, so he dragged himself down the mountain, work boots crunching over half-rotted apple leaves scattered across the fairgrounds.
The line for the honey booth snakes past a new pie stand, and the wind shifts, carrying the thick, warm scent of baked cinnamon and spiced apple right into his face. He stops short, and a woman leaning over the stand’s wooden counter to hand a kid a slice of pie looks up, and he freezes. It’s Elena, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the one he’d only seen a handful of times since the divorce, the one he’d carried a stupid, quiet crush on for the entire 14 years he was married. She’s 58 now, her dark hair streaked with more gray than he remembers, tied back in a messy braid, flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, forearms dusted with flour. She grins, and the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes are exactly the same as he remembers.
She calls his name before he can duck out of line, and he has no choice but to step over to the counter. She shoves a paper plate with a warm slice of apple crumb pie across the wood at him, and when he reaches for it, their fingers brush. Her palm is rough, calloused from kneading dough, a faint smudge of flour crusted under her thumbnail, and he feels a jolt run up his arm that has nothing to do with his bad knee. He takes a bite, and the crust is buttery, flaky, the apples tart and spiced just right, way better than any lumpy, over-sweet pie his ex ever bothered to make. He doesn’t say that out loud, but Elena must see it on his face, because she laughs, a low, warm sound that makes the back of his neck feel hot. She leans over the counter, the top button of her flannel undone, and he can see the thin silver chain around her neck, the tiny brass bear charm dangling from it— the one he’d gotten her for her 30th birthday, when he’d driven down to L.A. to pick up his ex from her sister’s house, and he’d grabbed it from a gift shop on the way because he’d heard her mention once she loved the black bears that wandered the forest edges. He’d always thought she’d lost it, or thrown it away after the divorce.
He stands there awkwardly, picking at the flaky pie crust, while the bluegrass band on the nearby stage plays a slow, twangy cover of a Johnny Cash song he used to listen to on patrol. She tells him she moved up to Wrightwood two years prior, after her husband died of a sudden heart attack, opened the pie shop downtown after working as a pastry chef in Orange County for 20 years. He can feel the conflict coiling in his chest, half disgust at himself for even entertaining the idea of talking to her, half sharp, unignorable desire, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was in his 20s. He knows it’s wrong, or at least it feels wrong, like he’s breaking some unwritten rule even though his ex hasn’t spoken to either of them in 11 years, even though the marriage was over long before she walked out.
He’s about to mumble an excuse and leave, to go get his honey and drive back up to his empty cabin, when he shifts his weight and his knee gives out, a sharp pain shooting up his leg. He stumbles, and she leans over the counter fast, grabbing his forearm to steady him, her grip firm, warm. Her face is inches from his, and he can smell the cinnamon on her breath, see the tiny fleck of pie dough stuck to her lower lip. “I always liked you, you know,” she says, quiet enough that no one else can hear, even the kid grabbing a second slice of pie a few feet away. “Back then, I never said anything. I didn’t want to be the person who broke up a marriage. But that marriage was broken long before anyone left, and we’re both too old to play stupid games now.”
He stares at her for a long second, the noise of the festival fading out around him, the pain in his knee even fading for a second. He thinks about the 17 years he’s spent alone, eating frozen burritos for dinner, fixing the cabin by himself, never letting anyone get close because he was still mad at a woman who hadn’t thought about him in a decade. He nods, before he can talk himself out of it.
They meet at the dive bar off Route 138 an hour later, after she closes up her pie stand. The bar smells like old beer and peanut shells, the jukebox playing Merle Haggard. She slides into the booth across from him, kicks her scuffed work boot up next to his on the rail under the table, steals a fry off his plate before he can even take a bite. He doesn’t say anything, just pushes the whole plate of fries closer to her. He glances down at her neck again, the little bear charm catching the dim neon light from the sign over the bar. He lifts his beer to clink against hers, and for the first time in 18 years, he doesn’t feel the urge to look away when she smiles.
