Cole Henderson, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew lead, leans against a splintered beer tent pole in the center of his small Oregon mountain town’s annual harvest festival, calloused fingers wrapped around a cold hazy IPA. He’d dragged himself out only after three of his old crew members blew up his phone for an hour, teasing him for hiding out in his log cabin like a reclusive grizzly for the seventh straight year, ever since his wife Sarah died of ovarian cancer. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s spent those seven years punishing himself for outliving her, turning down every set-up, every casual conversation with a woman that might drift past friendly, convinced any kind of happiness would be a betrayal.
The tent hums with rowdy, beer-fueled noise, the first year the county’s loosened its dry laws enough to serve alcohol at the festival, so half the town’s over-50 crowd is giddy like teenagers at their first high school dance. He’s half-watching a group of retired loggers play cornhole when someone stops right next to him, shoulder so close to his bicep he can feel the heat through his worn flannel, the scent of pine sap and jasmine hand lotion cutting through the smell of hops and fried funnel cake.
He glances down, and recognizes her immediately, even with the streaks of silver threading through her chestnut braid, the faint crinkles around her hazel eyes he doesn’t remember from the last time he saw her, at Sarah’s funeral, when she was 42 and fresh off a divorce in Portland. Mara, Sarah’s younger cousin, the girl he’d taught to skip stones at the alpine lake outside town when she was 16, when he and Sarah were newlyweds. She’s 49 now, he does the math fast, wearing high-waisted jeans and a faded Fleetwood Mac tee, a smudge of potting soil streaked across her left wrist from the plant shop she just opened on Main Street, the one he’d seen the sign for last week and deliberately avoided, knowing who owned it.
The noise is so loud she has to lean in to talk, her breath warm against the shell of his ear, and he has to fight not to shiver. “I thought that was you,” she yells over a group of guys cheering a cornhole win. “Figured you’d be hiding in the back of the tent avoiding everyone, same as always.” He huffs a laugh, tenses up automatically, his brain screaming that noticing the way her smile crinkles the corners of her eyes is wrong, off-limits, the kind of thing the town gossips would tear him apart for if they caught him staring. He tries to keep his answers short, gruff, but she doesn’t let him pull away, leaning in every time someone yells too loud, her shoulder brushing his every time she shifts her weight. When she reaches past him to grab a hard cider off the counter behind his pole, her knuckles brush the back of his hand, and he flinches like he’s been burned. She snorts, wiping the condensation off her can on her jeans. “Relax, Cole, I’m not gonna bite. Unless you ask nicely.”
The teasing sends a jolt up his spine he hasn’t felt in a decade, half embarrassment, half sharp, unnameable want, and he hates himself for it, the guilt coiling tight in his gut, like he’s cheating on Sarah just standing this close to her cousin. She must see the look on his face, because her smile softens, and she nods her head toward the dirt path leading down to the lake. “C’mon, it’s too loud in here. I wanna show you the new dock the parks department put in last month.” He hesitates, glances at the crowd, half-convinced every pair of eyes in the tent is on them. “People will talk,” he says, quiet enough only she can hear. She shrugs, already stepping toward the tent flap, holding the canvas open for him. “Half these people are too drunk on their first legal festival beer to remember their own names by now. No one cares.”
He follows her, his boots crunching over fallen maple leaves turned bright orange and red, the noise of the festival fading behind them until all they can hear is the gurgle of the lake and the distant call of an owl. The new dock is smooth, no splinters, and she sits down on the edge, patting the spot next to her, her legs dangling over the cold dark water. He sits, and their knees press together through their jeans, and this time he doesn’t move away. “Sarah wrote me a letter right before she died,” she says, soft, not looking at him, picking at a loose thread on her tee. “Said you were gonna shut yourself off from everyone the second she was gone, that you’d think moving on would be betraying her. Told me if I ever moved back to town, I had to kick your ass until you remembered she wanted you to be happy, not spend the rest of your life alone in that cabin.”
The tightness in his chest he’s carried for seven years loosens all at once, like someone cut the knot holding it together, and he doesn’t feel guilty anymore, doesn’t feel like he’s doing something wrong. He looks over at her, and she’s watching him, her hazel eyes soft, no pity, no expectation, just the same teasing glint she had when she was 16 and dared him to jump off the old dock into the lake in November. He reaches over, his thumb brushing the smudge of potting soil off her wrist, his fingers lingering on her warm skin, and she doesn’t pull away.
They sit there for almost an hour, talking about the old backcountry trips he and Sarah used to take up into the mountains, about the weird rare succulents she sells at her shop, about the 2018 wildfire season he’d spent three months fighting in California, the one that almost killed three of his crew members. The air gets colder as the sun dips below the treeline, and when they stand up to walk back, her hand brushes his, and he laces his calloused fingers through hers, slow, like he’s waiting for her to pull away, and she doesn’t. No one glances twice at them when they walk back into the festival, just like she said, most people too busy laughing or dancing to the old country band playing on the stage to pay any attention. He lifts their joined hands to take a sip of his half-warm IPA, the hops bitter on his tongue, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t feel like he’s doing something wrong.
