Hank Collier, 58, retired power lineman with a scar slicing across his left eyebrow and a habit of holding grudges longer than he’s held onto the dented Zippo his dad gave him at 16, leaned against a splintered oak post at the county summer street fair’s beer tent, half-watching a pair of 70-year-old grandmothers crush a group of high school boys at cornhole. He’d come to the fair every August since he was 10, even the three years after his wife Diane died, when he could barely drag himself out of bed long enough to fix neighbors’ faulty wiring for free. The air smelled like fried Oreos, cut grass, and warm draft Budweiser, the hum of fair rides and a Tom Petty cover band mixing with the buzz of gnats swarming strung yellow lights.
He’d just lifted his beer can to his mouth when he spotted her. Mara Carter, Diane’s little sister, 56, the woman he’d blamed for 22 years for talking Diane into the elective surgery that led to the fatal complication. He’d not spoken a word to her since the funeral, blocked her number, left every Christmas card she sent unopened in his junk drawer. She was thinner than he remembered, auburn hair streaked with gray pulled back in a loose braid, wearing a faded denim work shirt and scuffed white sneakers, a half-smoked menthol tucked behind her ear. She met his gaze, paused half a second, then walked straight over, no hesitation.
His calloused fingers tightened around the beer can so hard condensation dripped down his wrist onto his steel-toe boot. When she stopped three inches from him, close enough he could smell coconut shampoo and faint peach seltzer on her breath, his first instinct was to turn and walk away. She didn’t give him the chance. “I know you hate me,” she said, voice raspier than he remembered, like she’d spent two decades singing along to Skynyrd in a pickup with the windows down. “But I have something to tell you, and you’re gonna listen, whether you like it or not.”
He nodded, never able to say no to a woman with that fire in her eyes, even when he wanted to. They grabbed a chipped plastic picnic table at the tent’s far edge, far enough from the crowd they didn’t have to yell over the band. She told him Diane had known she had stage 3 ovarian cancer six months before surgery, hadn’t wanted to tell him because she’d watched her own mother waste away from chemo and refused to let Hank remember her that way. She’d made Mara promise not to say a word, told her to take the blame if anything went wrong, because she knew Hank would be too mad at Mara to fall apart completely.
Hank sat quiet for a full minute, staring at dents in his beer can, 22 years of anger and grief curdling in his chest, warring with the quiet, guilty spark of attraction he’d carried for Mara since he first met her at 19, when she’d shown up to his wedding in a too-short bridesmaid dress and winked at him across the altar. She leaned forward, her hand brushing his forearm when she pointed out the grandmothers high-fiving after another win, and the warmth of her skin through his thin flannel sent a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt since Diane kissed him before going into surgery.
They talked for two hours, long enough the sun dipped below the tree line, air turning cool enough he handed her his extra flannel without thinking. She laughed at his terrible joke about the squirrel that chewed through three power lines on his block last winter, her hand staying on his arm three seconds longer than needed, and he didn’t pull away. She told him she’d moved back two weeks prior, divorced her second husband after he cheated with a Florida beach bar waitress, bought the little cottage three streets over from his house, the one with the blue porch swing he’d admired for years.
When the beer tent closed, he walked her to her beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 parked behind the VFW, the lot dark except for a single streetlight. She stopped next to the driver’s door, turned to face him, reached up to brush a fleck of sawdust off his shirt, her thumb brushing his jawline for half a second. He didn’t hesitate, leaned down to kiss her slow, the taste of peach seltzer and mint on her lips, the rough edge of her braid brushing his knuckle when he cupped the back of her head. Faint guilt niggled at the back of his mind, but it melted faster than snow on a power line in March, because he knew Diane would have called him an idiot for waiting this long.
She pulled back first, grinning, the same crinkles around her eyes Diane had when she was amused. She said she had a fishing boat docked at the lake 20 minutes out of town, asked if he wanted to come out Saturday, bring the six-pack of Pabst he kept in his fridge for guests. He said yes. She climbed into her truck, rolled the window down, waved as she pulled out, her braid flying out the open window. He stood there for five minutes after she was gone, finishing the last sip of his warm beer, the cool August breeze blowing through the empty lot. He pulled his phone out, scrolled to the contact he’d blocked 22 years prior, tapped unblock, then typed a text asking if she wanted to stop for pancakes on the way to the lake.
