Hollis Grady, 63, had made custom leather saddles out of his garage outside Missoula for 38 years, and he’d avoided every local street fair, potluck, and community dance for the 12 years since his wife Diane died. He hated the pitying looks, the not-so-subtle attempts by neighbors to set him up with their single sisters or widowed coworkers, the way everyone treated him like a half-broken project that just needed a new woman to fix him. The only reason he was standing in the 82-degree July heat now, sweat sticking the collar of his faded work flannel to his neck, was his 16-year-old granddaughter Lila, who’d begged him for three weeks to come sample her spiked (with mint, not liquor, she’d stressed) lemonade at her first fair booth.
The air smelled like charred grilled corn, cotton candy, and the faint pine tang blowing off the mountains to the west. He was halfway through his third cup of Lila’s lemonade, nodding along while she ranted about the kid running the fried Oreo booth next to her stealing her customers, when he spotted her. He’d know that walk anywhere, even 15 years after he’d last seen it: loose, easy, sandals crunching over the gravel path, auburn hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, freckles splayed across her nose that he’d somehow forgotten were there. It was Maeve, Diane’s baby cousin, the one who’d been 21 and wild as a mountain jay when she’d helped them move into their first trailer, who’d laughed so hard at Hollis burning the burgers at Diane’s 30th birthday that she’d snort-laughed beer out her nose.
He froze mid-sip, lemonade sloshing over the edge of the cup onto his wrist. She spotted him before he could duck behind Lila’s booth, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners as she waved and cut through the crowd toward him. When she got close enough to hug, her shoulder brushed the sun-warmed flannel on his chest, and he caught a whiff of lavender hand lotion and the sweet, sharp tang of raspberry jam, the stuff she was selling at the booth three rows over. He tensed up automatically, guilt curling hot in his gut; he’d carried a stupid, tiny, entirely suppressed crush on Maeve for almost 30 years, and he’d always thought it was the lowest, most disloyal thing a man could feel, married to a woman as good as Diane.
She didn’t seem to notice his stiffness, leaning back to get a good look at him, one hand resting light on his forearm for half a second longer than was strictly polite. “You haven’t aged a day,” she said, grinning, and he huffed a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck, the calluses on his palm catching on the gray stubble there. She’d moved to Portland right after Diane’s funeral, he remembered, gotten a job as a graphic designer, got married and divorced twice, sent Christmas cards every year that he’d always left unanswered, too wrapped up in his own grief to write back.
She told him she was back in town for a month, fixing up her mom’s old log cabin 10 minutes down the road from his place, and she’d been struggling to hang a new screen door, couldn’t get the hinges to line up right, didn’t know the first thing about power tools. He wanted to say no, wanted to make up an excuse about a rush saddle order for a rancher out of Darby, wanted to run back to his quiet garage where he didn’t have to feel the confusing, messy pull of desire warring with the guilt he’d carried for so long. But she was teasing him about the burnt burger incident, her laugh throaty and warm, and he found himself saying yes before he could think better of it.
He showed up at her cabin the next Saturday with a drill, a set of new hinge screws, and a half-finished bottle of peach iced tea in his cooler, his hands sweating more than they had when he’d hung his first ever saddle on a client’s horse when he was 25. He worked on the screen door for 45 minutes, Maeve sitting on the porch step next to him, passing him tools every time he asked, their knees brushing every time she shifted her weight. The sun dappled through the pine trees overhead, the sound of a creek gurgling behind the cabin mixing with the hum of crickets in the underbrush.
When he finished, testing the door to make sure it latched tight without sticking, she sat back and sighed, her hand coming to rest on his knee, warm through the worn denim of his work jeans. “I always thought you were the best man Diane ever could’ve found,” she said, quiet, no teasing in her voice now. “She used to tell me if anything ever happened to her, she’d kick your ass if you spent the rest of your life alone.” The guilt that had been sitting heavy in his chest for weeks, for agreeing to come, for noticing how the sun caught the silver in her hair, for wanting to be close to her, melted away just like that, soft and easy, like snow off a fence post in spring. It didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt like something he’d been waiting for without even knowing it.
She asked him to stay for dinner, said she was making meatloaf, the recipe she’d stolen from Diane all those years ago, and he nodded, following her inside the cabin, the smell of baking bread and tomato sauce wrapping around him the second he stepped through the door. She pulled the meatloaf out of the oven, setting it on the wooden kitchen table between them, and grabbed a jar of dill pickles from the fridge, holding it out across the table to him. He reached across the table to take the jar of pickles she held out, his fingers brushing hers, and he didn’t flinch this time.
