Elias Voss, 62, spent 28 years as a smokejumper, leaping out of planes into wildfires that ate up Oregon pine forests faster than a teenager with a bag of chips. He retired after a 2018 blaze shattered his left ankle and left a silvered scar snaking up his jaw, and now runs small-group foraging tours for city folks who can’t tell a chanterelle from a toxic jack o’ lantern mushroom. His biggest flaw? He’d built a wall around his cabin and his life so thick after his wife left him 12 years prior, he wouldn’t even let the local mail carrier step inside to get out of the rain. He hated small talk, hated crowded spaces, and only agreed to man a demo booth at the Bend Harvest Festival because the town’s fire department was using half the proceeds to buy new wildfire response gear.
The air reeked of roasted sweet corn, spiced apple cider, and pine straw crushed under hundreds of scuffed work boots and white sneakers. The bluegrass band two booths over was playing a wobbly cover of “Folsom Prison Blues” that made Elias tap his boot against the splintered folding table even as he grumbled about the noise. His booth was sandwiched between a 4-H kid selling rabbit pelts and a honey vendor whose table was stacked with glass jars glinting gold in the overcast October light. He’d avoided looking at her for the first two hours, until she leaned over the two-foot gap between their tables and passed him a cold can of root beer, her sleeve brushing his forearm.
He recognized her then. Clara Marlow, 54, his ex-wife’s youngest cousin. He’d only met her three times, the last at his wedding 17 years prior, when she’d been a college kid with a blue dye streak in her hair and a gap between her front teeth that showed when she laughed. The gap was still there. She was wearing a flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, her forearms dusted with a faint coating of bee pollen, and a silver bee pendant on a chain around her neck. Elias’s throat went tight. He’d always thought she was too bright, too kind, too off-limits, even when his marriage was falling apart. The old guilt pricked at him, sharp as a pine needle, and he almost turned down the root beer before he caught the faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
They talked in snatches between festival attendees, her teasing him about the way he over-explained mushroom identification to little kids, him teasing her about the jar of “extra spicy” honey she’d infused with habaneros that made a tourist cough so hard he spilled his cider all over his khaki shorts. When a woman asked for a sample of chanterelle paired with local honey, Clara reached across the table to hand Elias a jar of wildflower blend, their fingers brushing when he took it. Her skin was warm, sticky with a thin layer of honey, and Elias’s pulse jumped so hard he almost dropped the jar. He didn’t miss the way her eyes lingered on the scar on his jaw, either, her gaze softening instead of flinching away like most people’s did.
By the time the festival shut down at 7 PM, a light drizzle was falling, turning the parking lot into a mess of mud and fallen maple leaves. Clara’s truck was parked all the way at the far end of the lot, and Elias offered to walk her with the heavy-duty umbrella he kept stashed under his booth. She rolled her eyes and said she didn’t need an escort, but she slid under the umbrella with him anyway, her shoulder pressed tight to his, her hip bumping his every time they stepped over a puddle. They stopped under the awning of the closed old general store halfway across the lot, when the rain picked up so hard it drowned out the sound of the band packing up.
Clara reached up and brushed a stray pine needle off the collar of his flannel, her fingers brushing the skin of his neck. “You know,” she said, her voice lower than it had been all day, “I always thought you were way too good for my cousin. Even back then.” Elias didn’t think, just leaned down and kissed her, the taste of root beer and honey on her lips, the rain drumming on the awning above their heads. She kissed him back, her hand fisting in the front of his shirt, no hesitation, no awkwardness, like they’d been doing it for years.
He drove her back to his cabin, stopping on the way to pick up a bottle of cheap red wine from the corner market. He made chanterelle pasta tossed with a glaze of her wildflower honey and garlic, and they ate it sitting on his porch swing, watching the rain roll down the sides of the pine trees at the edge of his property. She stole a bite of his garlic bread without asking, something no one had done since his wife left, and Elias didn’t even pretend to be annoyed. When she leaned her head on his shoulder, the faint scent of clover honey and rain on her jacket settled softer than any pine breeze he’d ever breathed.
