Milo Rourke, 53, retired U.S. Forest Service hotshot crew lead, only dragged himself to the Silverton summer farmers market for one reason: the Amish guy from outside town who sold briny dill pickles fermented in oak barrels, the only ones that tasted like the ones his mom used to make. He’d avoided the market for three years straight, ever since his wife Lila passed, because every other person there would corner him to ask how he was holding up, their voices soft and pitying like he was a half-broken bird they might scare off. He wore his faded 2019 fire season hoodie with a burn hole on the left cuff, scuffed steel-toe boots, kept his head down, hands stuffed in his pockets, ready to bolt the second he had his jar of pickles.
He turned too fast around a stack of berry crates, shoulder knocking a full quart jar of raw wildflower honey off the edge of a nearby booth. It hit the grass hard, glass cracking, golden honey oozing out into the clover, the sweet, pine-thick scent hitting him before he could even apologize. The woman behind the booth laughed, not sharp or annoyed, warm, and he looked up to see Elara Voss, his old crew boss’s ex-wife. He hadn’t spoken to her in 11 years, not after her ex had lied to half the town saying Milo had gotten a 19-year-old crew member hurt on a fire, when Milo had actually taken the fall to keep the kid from getting banned from forest service work for life. Her ex still ran the town’s biggest hardware store, had half the local good old boys in his back pocket, and Milo knew even being caught standing next to her would spark rumors that would spread faster than an August grass fire.
He fumbled for his wallet, pulling out a twenty, holding it out, his left hand still bearing the thick, pale scar across the knuckles from that same 2019 fire that’d burned 12,000 acres outside town. “My bad. Shoulda been watching where I was going.” She waved the cash away at first, then leaned over the booth to grab a handful of paper towels, her flannel sleeve rolled up to the elbow, a smudge of beeswax on her jaw, her fingers sticky from handling honeycomb when she passed the towels to him. Their knuckles brushed, and he felt a jolt he hadn’t felt since Lila was alive, sharp and warm, settling low in his chest. She was 47, he remembered, had quit her job as a dental hygienist two years prior to start the apiary, according to random town gossip he’d overheard at the gas station.
He wiped the honey off his jeans, avoiding eye contact at first, then glanced up and saw her staring at his scar, no pity in her hazel, gold-flecked eyes, just curiosity. “I heard what really happened that year, you know,” she said, soft enough that the group of tourists browsing the jam booth next to them couldn’t hear. “My ex ran his mouth drunk at a barbecue last summer, admitted he lied about the kid. I’ve been wanting to say I’m sorry you took the heat for that for months. Didn’t think you’d ever show up here.” She leaned against the edge of the booth, not pulling back when he stepped closer to look at the observation hive behind her, bees buzzing softly against the glass, the bluegrass band at the far end of the market playing a slow, twangy cover of a Johnny Cash song. When he finally did offer her the twenty again, this time for the broken jar plus two extra he grabbed from the stack, his wrist brushed the soft, warm skin of her forearm, and she didn’t flinch, just smiled, slow, like she was sharing a secret only the two of them knew.
Milo’s chest felt tight, half guilt, half something he hadn’t let himself feel in years. He knew if anyone saw them talking, word would get back to her ex by sundown, he’d get dirty looks at the hardware store for months, people would whisper that he was moving on too fast from Lila, that he was messing with a married woman, even though she’d been divorced for three years. He thought about going home to his empty cabin, microwaving a frozen burrito, sitting on the porch alone watching the deer walk through the yard, the same thing he did every single night.
“Got a batch of mead I just finished fermenting out at the apiary,” she said, nodding at the stack of bee boxes next to her booth, the ones marked with little hand-drawn sunflowers. “Used all pine and wild clover honey. Tastes like the woods in August. You wanna come out after I pack up here? No pressure. Just… thought you might appreciate it.”
He hesitated for ten full seconds, then nodded. He got his pickles first, drove out to the apiary 20 minutes outside town, leaned against the hood of his beat-up Ford F-150 waiting for her, watching the sun dip low over the Cascades, painting the sky pink and orange. She pulled up 10 minutes later in her Subaru covered in bee stickers, hopped out, tossed him a cold black cherry hard seltzer first, then led him up to the back porch of her small cabin, strung with warm yellow string lights, a half-dozen frosted mead glasses set out on the rough cedar table. The air smelled like pine and clover, crickets chirping loud in the grass around the bee boxes. She sat down next to him on the bench, close enough that their knees brushed when she shifted to reach for the ceramic mead jug. When she passed him the frosted glass, her thumb brushed the scar across his left knuckle, and he didn’t pull away.
