Ray Voss, 62, spent 31 years as a power line technician for Consumers Energy before a 2018 fall from a 40-foot pole shredded the ACL in his left knee and forced early retirement. He still walks with a slight limp, favors worn steel-toe boots even on warm days, and avoids any event his ex-wife might attend, a habit he’s clung to since she left him for a retired golf pro eight years prior. His only steady social interaction is the weekly Saturday farmers market in downtown Grand Rapids, where he sells raw wildflower honey from the 14 hives he keeps on his 5-acre property outside town. He’s quiet, keeps to himself, and has turned down three separate setups from the market manager, convinced every single woman his age is just looking for someone to fix their leaky faucets and haul their mulch for free.
The last Saturday in August is sticky, 82 degrees with 70 percent humidity, the air thick with the smell of kettle corn and fresh cut peaches from the orchard booth three rows over. The city’s new single-use plastic ban went into effect that week, so every vendor is fumbling with flimsy paper bags that tear the second they get damp with juice or honey. Ray is wiping a smudge of comb honey off his work pants when the stack of paper bags at the adjacent jam booth topples over, spilling across the concrete between their tables.
He leans down to help grab them before they blow into the street, and his hand brushes hers mid-reach. Her skin is cool, calloused at the fingertips from mashing fruit and screwing on canning lids, a smudge of dark purple blackberry jam dried on her knuckle. He looks up, and his throat goes tight. He knows her. Clara, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, the one who’d been 21 at his wedding 22 years prior, the bridesmaid who’d danced with him for three straight songs when his ex had disappeared to catch up with her college friends. He’d thought she was off limits then, had tucked the memory of her laugh away so far he’d almost forgotten it existed.
She grins, wiping a strand of sun-streaked brown hair off her forehead, and says she recognized him the second she set up her booth that morning. She’s 58 now, widowed 12 years, runs a jam business out of her cottage outside Traverse City, and is only in Grand Rapids for the summer to test out new recipes from her grandma’s old canning journal. She leans past him to grab a jar of blackberry jam that rolled under his table, her shoulder pressing firm against his good right leg, and he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the sweet, tart scent of the fruit on her clothes.
Ray’s first instinct is to pull back, to make an excuse about tending to his hives and leave early. Hooking up with his ex’s family feels wrong, like crossing a line he’d spent 22 years pretending didn’t exist. But then she hands him a cold cup of iced coffee she’d picked up from the café booth down the row, says she noticed he’d been rubbing his knee all morning and figured he could use the pick-me-up, and the guilt fizzles just a little. He carries a dozen jars of her peach jam to a customer’s minivan for her, and when he gets back, she’s pulled a folding chair next to hers under her pop-up canopy, patting the seat so he can get off his bad leg.
They talk through the slow mid-morning lull, swapping stories about busted canning pots and bee stings and the ridiculousness of the plastic ban, which already has half the vendors complaining to the city council. A sudden August downpour hits at 11:30, fat cold raindrops slamming into the tabletops without warning, and they both scramble to yank waterproof tarps over their goods before the honey and jam get waterlogged. They huddle together under the edge of his sturdier canopy once everything is covered, shoulders pressed tight, rain dripping off the edge onto his steel-toe boot, the sound of the downpour drowning out the rest of the market noise.
She tilts her head up to look at him, a drop of rain running down her cheek, and says she always thought he was too good for his ex, that she’d thought about that wedding dance more than once over the years. Ray doesn’t overthink it. He leans in, kisses her, tastes blackberry jam and cold coffee on her lips, and there’s no guilt, no lingering awkwardness, just that warm, sparking thrill he hasn’t felt since he was 20 years old and sneaking his high school girlfriend into the back of his pickup.
The rain lets up 15 minutes later, the sun breaking through the clouds and leaving puddles glistening across the market parking lot. Customers start filtering back in, and she slips a sealed jar of her special peach bourbon jam into his honey crate when no one is looking, scrawling her cell phone number across the lid in bright red Sharpie. She tells him to bring a jar of his most potent wildflower honey to her rental cabin on the north side of town that night, says she’s got a porch swing, a full bottle of small-batch bourbon, and no plans that involve talking about his ex.
Ray tucks the jar into the back of his pickup when the market closes at 2 p.m., stops at the hardware store on his way home to pick up a new hinge for her cabin’s screen door, which she’d mentioned was sticking that morning. He slips on a clean flannel on his way out the door that night, grabs the jar of honey he’d set aside, and doesn’t even notice the ache in his knee until he’s halfway up her driveway, the porch light glowing warm through the trees.
