Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot, leans against the dented cinder-block beer cooler at the Darby Volunteer Fire Department’s annual chili cookoff, calluses catching on the rough edge of his lager can. He only showed up because his 12-year-old granddaughter Lila, a junior fire cadet selling raffle tickets for a brand-new kayak, batted her eyelashes at him over a tray of cornbread, and he’s never once said no to that kid. The air reeks of cumin, charred ground beef, and pine cleaner, the jukebox in the corner spitting out 90s Alan Jackson so low it blends with the roar of the crowd, kids running between folding tables with paper cups of lemonade sloshing over the rims. He’s avoided this event for 22 years, ever since his divorce, ever since he decided his ex-wife’s younger sister Elara was the one who’d ratted him out for the one stupid night he’d spent with a camp cook after a three-week fire tour outside Salmon.
He’s halfway through his second beer when someone slams into his left side, thick, bean-heavy chili slopping over the rim of a paper bowl and splattering his scuffed work boots, brown sauce seeping into the frayed laces he’d tied that morning. “Oh, hell, I’m so sorry—” He looks down, and it’s her. Elara, 56, gray streaks threading through the chestnut braid slung over her shoulder, a faded red flannel tied around her waist, a smudge of chili powder dusting her left cheek. She drops to her knees without thinking, dabbing at the mess on his boot with a crumpled napkin, her knuckle brushing the bare skin of his calf where his jeans have ridden down from kneeling to talk to Lila earlier. The contact sends a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in 15 years, and he steps back like he’s been burned, mumbles that it’s fine, it’s just a boot, he can wash it off. She looks up at him, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she’s laughing at how jumpy he is, and holds eye contact for three full seconds too long for two people who haven’t spoken a civil word to each other since the 2001 divorce papers were signed.
He can’t stop staring. He’d forgotten about the thin scar snaking up her left wrist, from the time she was 18 and her mare spooked and threw her into a barbed wire fence, when he’d been the one to drive her to the ER, stitched her up himself when the hospital was backed up with three car crash victims from the highway. He’d forgotten how her laugh sounds, light and scratchy, when she complains that she’s been dodging the county animal control officer all night, who’s been bugging her to go out for burgers. Disgust hits him first, hot and sharp, because he’s supposed to hate her, she’s the reason he lost his marriage, the reason he only saw his kids every other weekend for 10 years. But then she leans in, voice dropped so low no one else can hear over the crowd, and says, “I never told her, you know. About that night in Salmon.”
The beer tastes like ash in his mouth. He asks her what the hell she’s talking about, and she steps closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep, the smell of pine shampoo and dog fur (she runs the town’s no-kill animal rescue, he remembers) wrapping around him. She tells him his ex-wife had hidden a GPS tracker under the seat of his work truck three months before the divorce, had known about the camp cook for weeks, had lied and said Elara ratted him out because she didn’t want to admit she’d been cheating on him with the real estate agent she married six months after the papers were finalized. She’d tried to tell him a hundred times, had called, had left notes on his garage door, but he’d never answered, never let her get a word in. 22 years of anger melts so fast it makes his head spin, and he realizes the rage was just cover for something else, the way he’d looked at her back when he was married, the way he’d felt guilty for even noticing how her smile crinkled the corners of her eyes.
He suggests they sneak out back, away from the noise, and she nods, tucking her half-eaten bowl of chili on a nearby empty table before following him through the side door to the loading dock, cold October air stinging his cheeks when they step outside. He hands her his beat-up Carhartt jacket when she shivers, and she slips it on, the sleeves falling past her wrists, her shoulder pressing tight against his when she sits down next to him on the edge of the dock. She admits she’s had a crush on him since she was 19, when he took her fishing on the Bitterroot and taught her to tie a woolly bugger, and she’d never said anything because he was married to her sister, and then he hated her, and it felt like the universe was playing a dumb, cruel joke on both of them.
The crowd’s noise fades to a low hum behind them, a single cricket chirping in the grass at the base of the dock, the moon peeking out from behind a stand of ponderosa pines. He leans in slow, so she has time to pull away if she wants, and she doesn’t, her hand coming up to rest on his jaw when their lips meet, the faint dust of chili powder on her cheek rubbing soft against his. When they pull away, she grins, tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and asks him if he wants to come over to her place tomorrow, to help her fix the broken fence in the dog run, and maybe hit the river for an hour of fishing after. He nods, takes a slow sip of his now-warm beer, and watches the silver light of the moon catch the gray strands in her braid.
