Jim Hale, 58, retired lineworker for the county electric co-op, leans against the chipped cinder block wall of the township fire hall, sweating through the sleeves of his faded Carhartt flannel. There’s a splotch of three-alarm chili on the left breast pocket, courtesy of the kid manning the serving table who’d tripped over a fire extinguisher five minutes earlier. He’d entered the cookoff for ten years running, won three times, but this year he’d burned his batch so bad the fire chief threatened to fine him for triggering the hall’s smoke alarm. He twists the cap off a Pabst, ignores the group of guys he used to coach Little League with waving him over to their table, and stares at the dirt parking lot, boots scuffing at a loose patch of gravel. He hates small talk these days, hates that every conversation loops back to how he’s holding up after Diane died three years ago, like he’s a broken bird they’re all waiting to stop breathing.
He spots her through the crowd first, the streak of strawberry blonde in her dark auburn hair catching the golden hour light the same way it did when she was 19, crashing his and Diane’s first anniversary party with a case of cheap beer and a black eye from a bar fight. Clara. Diane’s little sister, the one he’d spent 22 years hating for ghosting them when Diane was going through chemo, the one he’d banned from Diane’s funeral when she’d showed up unannounced, too skinny, shaking like a leaf. She’s 41 now, wearing a frayed work shirt for the animal rescue she runs an hour out of town, jeans scuffed at the knees, steel-toe boots caked in mud. She’s holding a paper bowl of chili, laughing at something the 16-year-old volunteer firefighter next to her said, and when she turns her head, her eyes lock right on his.
She doesn’t look away. He tenses, half-ready to slip through the side door and drive home, but she walks over before he can move, stopping six inches from his boots, close enough he can smell lavender hand lotion mixed with the wood smoke from the fire pit behind her and the sharp, tomatoey tang of chili on her breath. “Jim,” she says, voice lower than he remembers, rougher, like she smokes a pack a day, which Diane always said she did when she was stressed. He nods, doesn’t say anything, his grip on his beer bottle so tight his knuckles go white. When she reaches past him to grab a napkin off the folding table behind his shoulder, her forearm brushes his wrist, soft, warm, and he flinches like he touched a live wire. He hasn’t been touched that gently since Diane took her last breath in the hospital bed next to him.
The psychological whiplash hits him hard, hot shame coiling in his gut right next to the stupid, unwanted spark of attraction he’s carried for her since he first met her, back when he was 26 and she showed up on his and Diane’s new porch with a duffel bag and no place to stay. He’d spent decades shoving that feeling down, calling himself a creep, a bad husband, and piling on top of it the anger he felt for her leaving when they needed her most. “I owe you an apology,” she says, before he can snap at her to leave. She pulls a crumpled photo out of her shirt pocket, worn at the edges, the three of them at his wedding, her in a too-big bridesmaid dress, grinning so hard her cheeks are puffed, holding a glass of champagne she’d snuck from the bar. “I was in rehab for Oxy when Diane was sick. Got in a car wreck my first year of college, got prescribed the pills, couldn’t get off them. I didn’t tell anyone. Was too ashamed. Didn’t think you’d want a junkie around your wife.”
He blinks, the anger he’s carried for half his life fizzling out so fast he feels lightheaded. He remembers Diane crying to him one night, saying she was scared Clara was dead, that she’d never forgive herself if she was. He’d told her Clara was just selfish, that she didn’t care about anyone but herself. He feels like an idiot. The high school marching band down the street starts playing a rough cover of Jack & Diane, and she laughs, a quiet, throaty sound, when she hears it. “Diane used to sing that to me when I was a kid, when I’d have nightmares after our parents died,” she says. He’d forgotten that, forgotten that Diane raised her from the time she was 12, that Clara was the only family Diane had left besides him.
She asks him if he wants to walk down to the lake, get away from the noise. He hesitates, every part of him screaming that it’s wrong, that he’s betraying Diane, that the whole town will talk if they see them together, but he nods anyway. They walk the half mile down the dirt path to the water, their shoulders brushing every few steps, neither of them pulling away. They sit on the old wooden dock he built with Diane in 2001, the planks splintered, weathered, still solid. The sun dips below the treeline, painting the water pink and orange, and a loon calls from the other side of the lake, loud, clear. He looks over at her, and she’s already looking at him, no pity in her eyes, no awkwardness, just something soft, familiar.
She reaches over, laces her fingers through his, her palms calloused from hauling dog crates and fixing fence posts at the rescue, same as his from 36 years climbing power poles in the middle of winter storms. He doesn’t pull away. Some kid sets off a firework a few blocks away, bright blue bursting over the treetops, and she leans her shoulder against his, warm, solid, right where she’s supposed to be.
