It was Mara. His ex-wife’s youngest sister, 49, who’d been 17 the day he married her older sister, who’d snuck him a beer during the wedding reception when his nerves got so bad he thought he might pass out. She was leaning against the bake sale booth, flour dusted on the knee of her frayed high-waisted jeans, scuffed white cowgirl boots planted in a puddle of spilled lemonade, silver hoop earrings catching the golden late afternoon sun. She’d moved back to western North Carolina the year before, he’d heard through the grapevine, after divorcing a Charlotte real estate developer who’d cheated on her with his admin, and now ran a vintage western wear shop in Asheville. He’d spent 12 years telling himself everyone in her family was off limits, no exceptions, so when she waved him over, his first instinct was to turn and run.
He stayed anyway. Red curled up at the foot of the splintered pine picnic table she led him to, and she brought him a root beer float, her cold, ice cream-sticky fingers brushing his when she handed it over. The air smelled like coconut sunblock (hers) and fried oreos and pine from the tree line bordering the fairgrounds, the hum of the crowd mixing with the twang of the guitar from the stage. She leaned in when she talked, close enough that he could count the faint freckles across her nose, her knee brushing his under the table every time she shifted to wave at a passing kid. She told him her sister, his ex, was in remission from early stage breast cancer, that she’d been driving in every weekend to help run the bake sale to cover her medical bills, and Clay felt a sharp twist of shame for 12 years of unanswered texts and Christmas cards he’d thrown straight in the trash.
He didn’t know when the shift happened, when the low hum of shame mixed with something warmer, something he hadn’t felt since before the fire, before the divorce. She laughed so hard at his story about accidentally dying his hair neon red trying to cover gray before the wedding that she snort-laughed, and he found himself leaning in too, his shoulder pressing against hers, the rough fabric of his well-worn flannel shirt rubbing against the soft cotton of her tank top. He told himself he was an idiot, that this was wrong, that she was still family even if he wasn’t married to her sister anymore, that the whole town would talk if they saw them sitting this close. The disgust at his own desire bubbled up sharp and fast, but it melted just as quick when she said, quiet enough that only he could hear, “I always thought you got a raw deal, Clay. You never deserved any of the garbage that happened to you.”
Her hand was resting on the bench between them, her thumb calloused from restoring vintage leather jackets, and his hand brushed it when he reached for his half-empty float. She didn’t pull away. She laced her fingers through his for two slow, heart-thudding seconds, then pulled back to wave at a volunteer who was calling her over to help pack up the booth. “I’m done here in an hour,” she said, standing, brushing crumbs off her jeans, holding his eye contact a beat longer than was strictly polite. “You wanna drive me up to Black Rock Overlook? I haven’t seen the sunset from there since I was a kid.” He hesitated for 10 long seconds, thought about all the years he’d wasted being angry, about all the rules he’d made for himself that only ever hurt him, then nodded.
He loaded Red into the back of his beat-up 2004 Ford F150, helped her fold up the last of the bake sale tables, and drove up the winding dirt road to the overlook, the windows rolled down, the smell of pine pouring in, the radio playing old Johnny Cash cuts low. They walked to the edge of the overlook when they parked, leaning against the rough wooden rail, and she pointed out a red-tailed hawk circling high above the ridgeline. She reached out then, ran her finger slow along the pale, jagged scar on his left forearm, the one he’d gotten pulling that third teen hiker out of burning underbrush. “I remember when you got that,” she said, soft, like she was sharing a secret no one else knew. He looked down at her hand resting on his arm, then up at her face, the orange and pink of the sunset painting her cheeks warm, and he did not move away. He reached for her hand, laced his calloused fingers through hers, and held on tight as the last sliver of sun sank below the mountains.
