Rafe Marlow, 64, spent most of his Saturday hunched over his market booth, rearranging jars of wild blackberry and mint-infused honey for the third time that hour. The fall harvest festival drew a steady crowd, the air thick with the smell of fried apple pies, spiced cider, and wood smoke curling from food truck grills. He’d avoided the booth next to his for the first three hours, too stubborn to strike up a conversation with the woman manning it: Elara Voss, 58, stained glass artist, and his son’s ex-mother-in-law. They’d crossed paths a dozen times at grandkid birthday parties, soccer games, and the occasional holiday dinner, but Rafe had always kept his distance, convinced any extended interaction would read as inappropriate to the gossips in their tiny mountain town, or worse, a betrayal of the wife he’d lost eight years prior.
A sharp gust of wind ripped through the market rows at 3 p.m., sending a stack of Elara’s suncatchers teetering off the edge of her table. Rafe moved before he thought, grabbing half the stack before they could shatter on the leaf-strewn asphalt. His hand brushed hers when he passed the pieces back, calluses scraping against calluses—his from 40 years of lifting bee boxes and prying open hive frames, hers from hours gripping a soldering iron and cutting glass. She laughed, a low, warm sound he’d only ever heard in passing before, and wiped a smudge of silver solder off her wrist with the hem of her plaid flannel shirt. “You just saved me $200 worth of inventory, Marlow. I owe you one.”
He shrugged, wiping a bead of honey off his thumb onto his jeans. He tried not to stare at the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, or the streak of silver running through the auburn hair she’d twisted back in a loose braid. They fell into easy conversation after that, her leaning against the edge of his booth when the crowd slowed, her elbow brushing his bicep every time a kid darted past between the rows. She told him about the custom window she was installing for the new library downtown, the scar above her left eyebrow from when she’d fallen off a ladder working on it last spring. He told her about the two hives he kept in his backyard, the way the bees got grumpy when the temperature dropped below 50. The bluegrass band at the far end of the market played a slow, twangy cover of a Johnny Cash song, and for a second Rafe forgot how to breathe when she smiled at him, her cheeks pink from the cold.
He spent the next hour fighting with himself, half of him disgusted that he was even entertaining the thought of flirting with a woman who’d once been family, the other half thrumming with a spark of excitement he hadn’t felt since before his wife got sick. He kept replaying the way her hand had felt against his, the smell of lavender hand cream clinging to her sleeve when she leaned in to ask a question about his honey. When the market closed at 6, the last of the vendors packing up their trucks, Elara leaned against the side of his pickup and twisted a strand of hair behind her ear. “You gonna let me pay you back for saving my suncatchers? There’s a bar down the street that serves fried pies and cold draft beer. My treat.”
Rafe hesitated for three full seconds, thinking about the gossip column in the local paper, about the way his son might raise an eyebrow if he found out, about the photo of his late wife he kept taped to the dashboard of his truck. Then he looked at Elara, her nose pink from the wind, a smudge of glass dust on her cheek, and said yes.
They sat in a booth in the back of the bar, the wooden table sticky with old beer, the jukebox playing soft country deep cuts. She reached across the table to touch his swollen, arthritic knuckle when he talked about putting his old border collie down last winter, her thumb brushing the raised scar across the back of his hand from a bee sting that landed him in the ER five years prior. He didn’t pull away. They split a cinnamon fried apple pie, crumbs sticking to the corners of her mouth, and he laughed so hard at the story she told about her ex-husband leaving her for a 28-year-old yoga instructor that beer came out his nose.
The bartender flipped the open sign to closed at 10, wiping down the counters while they finished their last round. He walked her to her truck parked two spots down from his, the streetlights casting gold over the fallen oak leaves crunching under their boots. She leaned up and kissed him before he could say goodnight, soft, tasting like cinnamon and hard cider, her hand resting lightly on his chest. He kissed her back, his palm settling on her hip, the wool of her flannel shirt warm under his fingers even through the cold. She pulled away after a minute, pressing a tiny stained glass suncatcher shaped like a honeybee into his palm before she climbed into her truck. “I’ll see you at Lila’s soccer game next Saturday. We can get dinner after, if you want.”
He nodded, tucking the suncatcher into the pocket of his flannel jacket, watching her taillights fade down the main street. He pulled the suncatcher out a minute later, holding it up to the streetlight, the yellow glass glowing bright against the dark. He turned toward his own truck, the cold October air stinging his still-warm lips, and smiled for the first time in years that didn’t carry a single thread of guilt.
