Elroy Voss, 62, retired northern Minnesota state park trail maintenance foreman, stood in the fish fry line with a crumpled paper plate in one calloused hand, flannel sleeves rolled to the elbows to show off a map of chain-saw nicks and pine sap stains crisscrossing his forearms. He’d ducked out of the pavilion 10 minutes prior to avoid running into his ex-wife’s cousin, the man who’d swiped his custom hand-tied muskie lure on a group fishing trip 18 years prior, the lure his dad had carved for him two months before his heart gave out. The air smelled like fried cod, hushpuppies still sizzling in cast iron, apple cider vinegar sharp on the coleslaw station, and thin curls of birch smoke drifting from the fire pit at the edge of the grass. He’d planned to grab his food, eat in his truck, and head home to his quiet cabin before anyone he didn’t want to talk to spotted him. That plan fell apart the second he looked up and saw Mara Hale leaning against a white pine post 10 feet away.
She was 58, ran the local beekeeping supply shop out of a converted dairy barn 12 miles west of town, and for 18 years Elroy had written her off as selfish, stuck up, complicit in the lure theft—she’d been dating the cousin that weekend, had stood 3 feet away when he slipped the lure into his tackle box and hadn’t said a word. He’d also, if he was being honest with no one but himself, thought she was the prettiest woman in the county for just as long. She had silver streaks threading through the dark braid slung over her shoulder, a smudge of beeswax on the edge of her left jaw, jeans tucked into scuffed work boots, and a can of spiked blackberry seltzer in her hand. She caught him staring, lifted one eyebrow, and pushed off the post to walk straight toward him. He froze, half tempted to duck behind the port-a-potty, but his boots were rooted to the pine-needle strewn grass.
She stopped half a foot away, close enough he could pick up the scent of lavender lip balm and the sweet, clover-heavy honey she sold at the farmers’ market on her breath. “You still scowling at me over that stupid lure, aren’t you?” she said, no heat in her voice, just a half-teasing smirk that made the corner of her eyes crinkle. He opened his mouth to snap back that it wasn’t stupid, that it was the last thing his dad ever gave him, but she held up her left hand before he could get a word out, and there, looped around her index finger, was the lure, its paint faded a little but the carved fish head still perfect, the feather tail frayed just how he remembered it. He forgot how to breathe for two seconds. She’d broken up with the cousin three days after that trip, she explained, had dug the lure out of his tackle box when he was passed out drunk on her couch, had carried it in her jacket pocket for 18 years because she was too embarrassed to track Elroy down, too sure he’d slam the door in her face before she could apologize. When she lifted her hand to drop the lure into his palm, their fingers brushed, sharp as static from a wool sweater, and a tingle ran up his arm all the way to the base of his neck.
They stepped off the food line to the side of the pavilion, talking over the hum of the crowd and the crackle of the fire pit. He learned she hiked the park’s back trails three times a week to collect wildflower nectar samples to test for her hives, had seen him working dozens of times, had watched him stop to carry an elderly couple’s cooler to their picnic spot, had seen him leave handfuls of trail mix out for the stray dogs that hung around the campground, had always been too shy to say hi because she thought he hated her. He admitted he’d avoided her not just for the lure, but because he’d been convinced she was out of his league, that he hadn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since his divorce 12 years prior, that he was too set in his ways, too grumpy, too used to only having to answer to himself. She laughed, a low, warm sound that made his chest feel light, and leaned in a little so her shoulder pressed against his, her hand brushing his wrist for half a second. “Grumpy’s my type, for the record,” she said.
The sun dipped below the tree line as the fish fry wrapped up, string lights strung between the pines flickering to life, painting gold streaks across the grass. She asked if he wanted to walk down to the lake shore, and he nodded before he could overthink it. The gravel path crunched under their boots, the air growing crisp enough to make their breath fog a little, the lake flat as glass, dyed pink and tangerine from the leftover sunset. They stopped at the edge of the dock, and for a second neither of them said anything, just watched a loon dive under the surface 50 yards out. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t overanalyze if he was moving too fast or if he was making a fool of himself, just leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were soft, the lavender lip balm still faint on her mouth, and her hand came up to rest on his scarred forearm, warm through the thin flannel of his shirt.
They stayed on the dock for an hour, swapping stories about bad tourist encounters on the trails, hive swarms that got loose in her shop, how they both hated the new overpriced rental cabins the county had plopped down by the north campground that summer. He walked her to her beat-up pickup, and she pulled a jar of wildflower honey from the passenger seat, the label hand-stamped with her shop’s bee logo, and handed it to him. Said it was a bonus peace offering, and that she needed someone who knew how to use a drill without breaking a finger to help her hang new hive boxes next Saturday, if he didn’t have plans. He said he didn’t, not a single one. He stood in the gravel lot holding the lure in one hand and the cold glass jar of honey in the other, watching her taillights disappear down the dirt road, before he climbed into his own truck, turned the key, and smiled so wide his cheeks ached when an old Johnny Cash song he hadn’t heard in 20 years blared from the radio.
