Moe Pritchard, 59, spent 32 years teaching high school woodshop before retiring last spring, now runs a tiny custom cutting board business out of his two-car garage outside Traverse City. He’s stubborn to a fault, skipped the annual National Cherry Festival beer tent three years running ever since his wife Jan died of ovarian cancer, hates the way neighbors pat his shoulder and mutter about how brave he is for keeping busy. He only showed up this year because his old football buddy Mike begged him to haul 12 heavy pine picnic tables into the tent at 7 a.m., and Moe never could say no to a guy who once took a linebacker’s helmet to the ribs for him senior year.
He sputters an apology, grabbing a handful of napkins and holding them out, and that’s when he gets a good look at her. Hazel eyes flecked with gold, sun-streaked auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smattering of freckles across her nose he swears he recognizes. She doesn’t step back, doesn’t huff, just laughs, the sound bright over the band, and swipes a napkin from his hand, their fingers brushing for half a second, warm and calloused at the tips. He smells coconut sunscreen and cherry liqueur on her, the faint tang of cedar like she’d been sanding something earlier that day.
“Moe, right?” she says, dabbing at the beer stain on her shirt, and he blinks. “Lena Marlow. Jan’s second cousin. You taught me to carve a tiny wooden rabbit at your wedding, when I was 12. I still have it on my desk at work.”
The name clicks. He’d forgotten she moved up to the county six months ago, took the extension agent job after leaving a corporate law gig in Chicago, got divorced the year prior. The town gossip mill ran wild about her for weeks, half the old biddies saying she was trouble for leaving a fancy city job to move to a town with 12 stoplights, the other half whispering she’d hit on the married county road commissioner at the last planning meeting. Moe had tuned all of it out, didn’t care about anyone’s business but his own.
Now he can’t look away. She leans against the pole next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushes his bicep when a group of drunk college kids shoves past, and he tenses up first, then relaxes, surprised he doesn’t mind the contact. He’s spent three years flinching whenever anyone gets within a foot of him, hated the pitying touches, but this feels different. No pity, just curiosity, her eyes crinkling when she tells him she’s been buying his cutting boards from the farmers market every month for her friends, loves the little burnt cherry motifs he etches into the corner of each one.
Guilt nags at him for the first 20 minutes they talk, sharp and hot, like he’s doing something wrong, like Jan is watching and rolling her eyes at him for flirting with her cousin. Disgust even, for a second, that he’s even capable of noticing how the neon Pabst sign hits her hair just right, how she tucks a stray strand behind her ear when she laughs, how her knee presses against his when they sit down on an empty picnic bench to get away from the crowd. But the longer they talk, the quieter that guilt gets. She tells him about growing up visiting Jan’s farm every summer, about how Jan used to sneak her cherry pie before dinner when her mom wasn’t looking, and Moe finds himself telling stories he hasn’t told anyone in years, about the time Jan tried to cut down a cherry tree with a chainsaw and almost took out the porch.
The band slows to a soft fiddle cover of a Patsy Cline song by 10 p.m., most of the crowd filtering out to head to the fireworks show down by the bay. Lena doesn’t move to leave. She leans forward, elbows on the table, and asks if he’d be willing to teach her how to carve, says she’s been trying to teach herself from YouTube videos and keeps nicking her fingers. Her hand rests on the table between them, palm up, and she wiggles her index finger to show him a tiny scab across the knuckle. When he reaches out to look at it, his thumb brushes the back of her hand, and she doesn’t pull away.
He hesitates for three full seconds, the old guilt flaring one last time, before he nods. She grins, handing him her phone to put his number in, and he types it slow, his fingers a little clumsy, like he’s forgotten how to do something as simple as enter digits into a screen. She squeezes his wrist when she takes the phone back, her grip firm, warm, and says she’ll text him first thing Monday to schedule the lesson.
She leaves a minute later, waving over her shoulder as she walks toward the bay, the hem of her flowy yellow sundress swishing around her calves, the pink glow of the fireworks starting to paint the sky behind her. Moe sits there for another five minutes, sipping the last of his beer, the spot on his wrist where she touched him still tingling. His phone pings in his pocket 30 seconds after she turns the corner. He pulls it out, and it’s a text from an unknown number, a photo of a chipped tiny wooden rabbit, the edges worn smooth from 28 years of being held.
