Clay Bennett is 58, retired after 32 years as a Great Smoky Mountains National Park ranger, and he’s spent the last three years cultivating a very specific routine: coffee at 6 a.m., two hours of splitting firewood, a sandwich for lunch, three episodes of old Westerns before bed, no unnecessary conversations with anyone who doesn’t live within a five-mile radius of his cabin. His flaw is a stubborn refusal to admit he’s lonely; he calls it “prioritizing peace,” even when his old patrol partner drops by twice a week to badger him into leaving the house. That’s how he ends up at the VFW chili cook-off on a crisp October Saturday, surrounded by people yelling about everything from school board votes to deer hunting limits, holding a paper bowl of chili so spicy it makes his eyes water.
He turns to walk away from the crowd, boots crunching over peanut shells scattered across the concrete floor, and slams straight into someone half his size. A dollop of chili splatters across the chest of a faded red flannel shirt, and he freezes, already gearing up to apologize gruffly and leave, until he meets her eyes. It’s Maren Hale, 52, the new county extension agent who moved to town six months prior, and the same woman his late wife Linda had banned him from ever being alone with back when they were all 20 years old in college. Linda had called her “too reckless, too much of a temptation” once, half-joking, after they’d snuck out to a bar and Maren had dared Clay to jump off a dock into a freezing lake.
He grabs a handful of crumpled paper napkins off the nearest table, and when he reaches out to dab at the stain on her shirt, his knuckles brush the soft curve of her hip through the flannel. He yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, face hot, and expects her to be annoyed, but she laughs instead, loud and warm, cutting through the din of the off-key country cover band playing in the corner. “Relax, Clay,” she says, holding eye contact long enough that he has to look away first, staring at the scuffed toes of his work boots. “I’ve had worse things spilled on me at county events. Last week a guy dropped a whole jar of dill pickles on my work boots.”
The guilt hits him sharp and fast, the familiar voice in his head hissing that Linda would roll in her grave if she saw him standing here, flustered, smelling her coconut shampoo over the scent of chili and burnt firewood. He starts to mumble an excuse to leave, but she leans in a little, their elbows brushing when she shifts her weight against the folding table behind her, and says she’s been trying to find the old Blue Ridge Overlook for weeks, the one he used to take Linda to watch the sunset, but can’t navigate the rutted backroads without someone who knows the area. She teases him about the fact that the local old-timers all say he’s the only person who can find every unmarked trail in the county, even in the middle of a rainstorm.
He hesitates, his thumb rubbing the faded wedding band he still wears on his left hand, the metal worn smooth from years of use. For three years he’s turned down every invitation, every chance to do anything that doesn’t fit his rigid routine, convinced that wanting anything more than quiet is a betrayal of the 34 years he had with Linda. But Maren’s smirking, holding a cold can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and she’s the first person in years who hasn’t tiptoed around Linda’s name, hasn’t looked at him like he’s a broken thing that needs to be handled carefully. The sharp disgust he feels at his own quiet desire fades, slow, replaced by a flicker of excitement he’d thought was long dead.
He nods, before he can talk himself out of it, and she grins, grabbing her canvas jacket off the back of the chair next to her. They walk out to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, the cool October air stinging his cheeks, and when he opens the passenger door for her, her hand brushes his when she grabs the handle to climb in. He gets in the driver’s seat, turns the key, and the radio cuts on to a 1994 Alan Jackson song he and Linda used to dance to in the kitchen after dinner. Maren taps her boot against the dash in time with the beat, and he pulls out of the VFW parking lot, taillights fading into the dark line of oak trees along the road.
