Leo Marquez, 64, retired smokejumper turned Christmas tree farm owner, hauled the last stack of fraser fir wreaths into the grange hall at 7 a.m., his knuckles split from three hours of trimming boughs in 38-degree rain. He’d avoided the annual holiday craft fair for 11 straight years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a traveling solar panel salesman she’d met at the exact same event, but the local 4-H was running the food booth this year, and he owed their leader a favor for helping him round up escaped goats last spring. The hall reeked of spiced cider, sugar cookies, and the faint, acrid tang of pine cleaner left over from the county fair two months prior. He propped a handwritten sign reading “WREATHS – $25, PROCEEDS TO LOCAL FIRE CREW TRAINING” against his table and pulled a crumpled pack of peppermint chewing tobacco from his Carhartt pocket.
He was tucking a tin of dip into his jacket when she rolled up next to him, hauling a stack of cardboard boxes stacked so high she could barely see over the top. The first thing he noticed was the streak of silver running through her dark, wavy hair, the exact same shade her dad, his old smokejumper partner Mike Hale, had sported by the time he was 30. “Leo? I thought that was you,” she said, dropping the boxes on the table next to his and stretching, her sweater riding up just enough to show a sliver of freckled skin above her jeans waistband. It was Clara, Mike’s youngest daughter. He hadn’t seen her since her high school graduation, 24 years prior, when he’d slipped her a $100 bill and told her not to waste too much of college drinking cheap beer. She was 42 now, divorced, she mentioned offhand, just moved back to town to open a small candle shop downtown.
He spent the first two hours of the fair actively avoiding eye contact, telling himself the twist in his gut was nothing but guilt, that he had no business noticing how her eyes crinkled when she laughed at a customer’s bad joke, how she tucked her hair behind her ear the exact same way Mike did when he was focused on a map of a fire line. When a toddler darted between their tables and knocked over a stack of her beeswax candle tins, they both bent to pick them up at the same time, his calloused, scarred knuckle brushing the soft, warm skin of her wrist. He flinched like he’d touched a live power line, dropping the tin he’d grabbed. She laughed, the sound bright and familiar, and said, “Relax, I don’t bite. You used to let me climb all over you when I was 7, remember?” He did remember. He also remembered promising Mike, right before he died in a 2005 fire outside of Bend, that he’d look out for his kids if anything ever happened.
The crowd thinned out as the afternoon wore on, rain lashing against the grange’s fogged windows. She started leaning in closer when she talked, her shoulder brushing his every time she reached for a piece of twine to tie a candle gift bag, her perfume mixing with the scent of her cedar and pine candles to make something that made his chest feel tight. He kept running through a list of reasons this was wrong: 22 years between them, he’d known her since she was in diapers, Mike would probably rise from the grave to kick his ass if he saw how Leo was looking at her right now. But every time he tried to put some distance between them, she’d ask him a question about his tree farm, or a story about her dad, and he’d forget what he was supposed to be mad at himself for.
By 5 p.m., the last of the vendors were packing up, and Clara was cussing under her breath, her keys stuck in the ignition of her beat-up Honda Civic, the engine turning over but refusing to start. Leo didn’t even think before he offered to drive her home, to drop her boxes of leftover candles off at her new cottage on the edge of town. They sat in his F150 in silence for the first five minutes, the heater blowing warm air on their cold feet, rain drumming so hard on the roof he could barely hear the old Johnny Cash song playing on the radio. She turned to him then, her hand resting on the center console 6 inches from his, and said, “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 16. I came back to town because I heard you were still single. I know it’s weird. I don’t care.”
He opened his mouth to tell her no, that she was too young, that he was too rough around the edges, that her dad would never approve, but she leaned across the console and kissed him before he could get the words out. She tasted like the spiced cider she’d been sipping all day, her hand coming up to brush the scar across his left eyebrow, the same way she’d done when she was a kid and asked him to tell her how he got it. He kissed her back, slow, all the guilt and resistance melting away faster than snow on a hot hood. He drove her to her cottage, carried her boxes inside, stayed for the tomato soup she heated up on the stove, stayed while she told him about her ex-husband, who’d never once bothered to ask her what she wanted out of life, stayed while he told her stories about her dad that no one else had ever heard.
He woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee and beeswax drifting from the kitchen, her head resting on his chest, one of her hands curled loosely around the hem of his old fire department t-shirt. He reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his phone, and typed a quick text to the 4-H leader telling him he’d be back to run the wreath booth next year, no favor required.
