Moe Pritchard is 59, has run his custom fly-tying shop out of the back of his Bryson City, North Carolina, hardware store for 17 years. He’s kept every person at arm’s length since his wife Linda died of breast cancer eight years prior, turning down fishing trips, cookoff invites, even a standing weekly poker game with the fire department crew because he hates the pitying looks, the quiet questions about when he’ll “get back out there.” He’s spent so long cultivating the gruff, reclusive mountain guy persona he half believes it himself, until his old high school buddy Jimmie, now the fire chief, shows up at his shop at 8 a.m. on cookoff Saturday, shoves a chili tasting ticket in his face, and says if he doesn’t show, the whole crew is going to come to his house next week and repaint his porch neon pink. He caves, because he knows Jimmie will follow through.
The fairground behind the fire station smells like burnt chili, cinnamon cider, and pine from the wreaths the 4-H club is selling for pre-order. The bluegrass band set up by the picnic tables is playing a fast, twangy version of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and kids are darting between the booths, their sneakers crunching over fallen oak leaves that have turned burnt orange and deep red with the first cool snaps of October. Moe sticks to the edge of the crowd, hands stuffed in the pockets of his worn Carhartt jacket, until he sees her.
Lila Mae Carter, Linda’s first cousin, 54, moved to town six months prior to run the county’s tiny public library branch, and Moe has avoided every possible run-in with her since she arrived. He’d run into her at the grocery store once two weeks after she moved, and the sight of her — the same crinkly smile as Linda, the same habit of tucking her hair behind her ear when she’s nervous — had made him walk out with only a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, too flustered to grab the rest of his list. He’d told himself liking her, even looking at her, was a betrayal, the kind of cheap, tacky move he’d have mocked other guys for back when he was younger.
She’s standing by the cider booth, sleeves of her plaid flannel rolled up to her elbows, freckles dark across her nose from the hiking she posts about on the town Facebook page, holding a paper cup in both hands. She looks up right as he’s debating turning around and leaving, and her face lights up. She waves, and he can’t make himself walk away, so he drifts over, boots scuffing the sawdust the crew spread down earlier to soak up the rain from the night before.
“Was starting to think you’d never show up to one of these,” she says when he’s close enough to hear her over the band, and she leans in a little, her shoulder brushing his bicep for half a second, warm through his jacket. She holds out a second cup of cider, still steaming, and when he reaches for it, their fingers brush. Her hands are cold from carrying the cups, but the jolt that shoots up his arm is warm, sharp enough that he almost drops the cup. He takes a sip, and it’s spiked with a little bourbon, just how he likes it.
“Jimmie threatened to paint my porch pink,” he says, and she laughs, loud and bright, and the sound hits him right in the chest, the way no sound has since Linda died. They talk for 45 minutes, leaning against the side of the cider booth, the crowd swirling around them. He learns she left Charlotte after a messy divorce from a lawyer who cheated on her with his paralegal, that she’s been wanting to learn to fly fish for years but never had anyone to teach her, that she’s been reading all the old fishing books in the library’s collection that Moe donated after Linda died.
The guilt nags at him the whole time, quiet and sharp in the back of his throat. This is wrong, he tells himself, she’s family, Linda would hate this. But then Lila says, almost like she can read his mind, “Linda used to call me every Christmas and complain that you were moping too much even when she was alive, said she was gonna sign you up for a line dancing class if you didn’t stop working 12 hour days. She’d have your head if she knew you’ve been sitting alone in that house every night for eight years.”
The words knock the breath out of him, and for the first time in years, the guilt doesn’t feel like it’s weighing him down. The sun dips below the tree line, and the air gets colder, the drizzle that had been threatening all afternoon finally starting to fall, soft and misty. He walks her to her beat-up old Subaru Outback parked at the edge of the fairground, their boots squelching in the wet grass. She stops at the driver’s side door, turns to him, and reaches up, brushing a fleck of beef chili off the edge of his jaw. Her hand lingers there, warm against his skin, and he doesn’t pull away.
He doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t debate it for another second. “I’ve got a spare rod at the shop,” he says. “Lake Santeetlah next Saturday, 7 a.m. I’ll teach you to cast. No charge, but you bring the coffee.”
She grins, leans in, and kisses him quick, soft, on the corner of his mouth, and she tastes like cinnamon and bourbon and rain. “I’ll bring donuts too,” she says, climbing into her truck. “The glazed ones from the bakery on Main, just how Linda said you like ‘em.”
He stands there in the drizzle, watching her taillights fade down the road, until they disappear around the curve. He touches the corner of his mouth, still warm from her kiss, and glances over at his own truck, where his old fly rod case — the one Linda bought him for their 20th anniversary, the one he hasn’t touched in three years — is propped up in the bed, dust on the handle. He pulls his jacket tighter against the cold, turns toward his truck, and kicks a crumpled paper chili cup into the nearby trash can as he walks.
