Leo Voss, 61, spent 32 years as a high-voltage lineman across Oregon’s Willamette Valley before a 2018 line fire left him with a thick, silvery scar snaking up his left forearm and an early pension. He now runs a one-man shop restoring vintage neon signs out of a converted garage on the edge of Silverton, and his worst flaw is he holds grudges so long he’s forgotten the origin of half of them. The one he holds for Clara Mendez, though? He remembers that one crystal clear: 18 years prior, at the 2005 county fair, he’d gotten sloppy drunk on spiked cider and kissed a rodeo queen in the bed of his beat-up Ford F-150. His ex-wife filed for divorce three days later, and Leo was convinced Clara, his ex’s childhood best friend, had ratted him out. He’d avoided her every chance he got since, ducking down cereal aisles at the grocery store, leaving the hardware store early if he saw her truck in the parking lot, turning down every town event invite he suspected she’d attend.
Her elbow brushes the raised scar on his forearm when she reaches to tuck a stray strand of dark, silver-streaked hair behind her ear, and he flinches like he’s been shocked. She looks up, recognition flicking across her face, her smile fading just a little. She’s 58, works part-time at the town library and volunteers at the community garden three days a week, he knows, even though he’s avoided talking to her for almost two decades. She’s wearing a faded red flannel, hole at the elbow, scuffed work boots caked with mud, a half-empty cup of hard cider in her hand. She smells like lavender soap and turned earth, sharp and soft all at once.
“Leo,” she says, her voice low, the same warm rasp he remembers from back when he and his ex would host cookouts in their backyard. “Haven’t seen you out of your shop in forever.”
He grunts, trying to shift away, but a group of soaked parents huddling with their kids blocks his path, the rain still coming down so hard he can barely see the street 20 feet away. “You still hold that stupid grudge, don’t you?” she says, snorting a little, taking a sip of her cider.
He turns to face her, jaw tight. “You told her about the kiss. Ended my marriage. That’s not stupid.”
She barks out a laugh, loud enough that a couple next to them glances over. “I didn’t tell her shit, Leo. She caught you two. Was driving past the fairgrounds, saw you groping that girl in your truck bed like a teenager. She asked me if I knew you were being an idiot, I said no. You just wanted someone to blame other than the fact you got sloppy and got caught.”
His ears burn, hot and sharp, because that lines up. He’d forgotten his ex had said she saw him, in the middle of the fight, he’d latched onto the first excuse he could find, and Clara had been the easiest target. He shifts his weight, the case of beer digging into his shoulder, and mumbles an apology so quiet he’s not sure she hears it.
“I heard you,” she says, soft now, no bite in her voice. She shifts a little closer, their knees bumping under the wobbly folding table someone dragged under the awning earlier. Her hand brushes his when she reaches for a crumpled napkin on the table, her fingers calloused from pulling weeds and turning soil, warm even through the chill of the rain. He doesn’t pull away.
They talk for the next hour, the rain slowing to a drizzle, the crowd thinning out as people head home or back to the beer garden. He learns she divorced her husband 10 years prior, he left her for a children’s librarian from the next town over, and she’s been living alone in the little blue cottage on Oak Street with two rescue cats ever since. She tells him she has a photo of the neon “Mabel’s Diner” sign he restored two years ago taped to her fridge, she eats there every Saturday morning for pancakes. He tells her about the neon Route 66 sign he’s restoring for a collector in California, the way the gas hums when it’s wired right, the soft glow of the glass tubes when they first light up. He finds himself leaning in when she talks, not having to pretend to be interested, actually leaning in, the faint smell of her cider mixing with the lavender soap, the distant sound of the band switching to a slower John Prine track.
When the rain stops completely, the sky streaked pink and orange with sunset, the mud under their boots squelching as people start pulling the tent stakes back up, he asks her if she wants to go get pancakes at Mabel’s, the neon sign he built glowing bright pink and blue a few blocks away.
She grins, tucking that same stray strand of hair behind her ear again, and nods. “Only if you promise not to hide behind the Cheerios aisle next time you see me at the grocery store.”
He laughs, a real, loud laugh, the kind he hasn’t let out in years, and slings the case of beer back over his shoulder. He holds the awning flap open for her, his hand brushing the small of her back when she steps out onto the wet sidewalk, her shoulder pressing against his as they walk towards the diner, the glow of his neon sign getting brighter with every step.
