Rafe Mendez, 61, spends every Saturday morning at the Willamette Valley farmers market, following the same unchanging route: first the elderly Amish couple’s blackberry stand, then the grass-fed beef guy who gives him free liver treats for his hound dog, then a fast exit through craft row to avoid the chatty potters he’s known for 10 years. He’s an antique map restorer, works out of his back sunroom, hasn’t let anyone step foot in that space since his wife Elara died 8 years prior. His well-honed flaw is deliberate prickliness: he uses his “grumpy old restorer” persona to keep people at arm’s length, convinced any new connection will either end in the kind of loss he still can’t bear, or someone trying to swindle him out of his curated collection of 19th century Pacific Northwest survey maps.
Today he smells clover honey before he sees the new stand, tucked between the beeswax candle seller and the old lady who sells peach jam. The woman behind the table laughs at a toddler who’s trying to stick his whole fist in a sample jar, and Rafe’s steps slow before he even registers why. He recognizes that laugh. It’s Lila, Elara’s younger cousin, the one who’d showed up to their 2004 wedding with a neon blue mohawk and a jar of her first ever batch of honey as a wedding gift. She’s 58 now, the mohawk long gone, chestnut hair streaked silver at the temples, pulled back in a braid dotted with a stray dandelion seed. She’s wearing a faded bee-themed t-shirt, red flannel tied around her waist, steel-toe work boots caked with dark loam from her hives.
She spots him before he can turn and duck down an aisle, and her grin widens until the crinkles at the corners of her eyes deepen. She leans over the rough pine table, and her warm, calloused forearm brushes his when she holds out a small popsicle stick dipped in raw wildflower honey. The contact is over faster than he can process, and he stares at the honey glistening on the stick like it’s some kind of trick. “Rafe, right? I knew that was you. Moved up here three months ago to take care of mom, she passed in May. Figured I’d stick around, the hives love the valley soil way more than they did in southern California.” He tastes the honey, sweet with a faint earthy bite of pine, and their eyes lock for three full seconds, neither looking away. He feels heat crawl up the back of his neck, and he’s suddenly hyper aware that the last time he was this close to a woman who wasn’t a cashier or his primary care doctor, it was Elara.
The conflict hits him hard and fast, sharp as a paper cut from an old map. This is Lila. Elara’s cousin. Everyone in this tiny, gossip-hungry town knows who they are, who she’s related to. He still has a polaroid of Elara and 19-year-old Lila on his fridge, both covered in vanilla cake frosting at the wedding reception, grinning so wide their eyes are crinkled shut. He mumbles something about needing to grab his blackberries before they sell out, turns to leave, and she calls after him, shoving a full glass jar of honey into his hand before he can protest. “On the house. For old times. My number’s on the lid, if you ever want to talk. Or have someone take care of that bee infestation you’ve probably got in your old oak tree out back, I heard about it from your next door neighbor when I was scouting hive spots last week.”
He spends the rest of the day staring at the jar on his kitchen counter, the Sharpie-scrawled 10-digit number smudged slightly where his thumb keeps rubbing it without him noticing. He remembers Elara, two weeks before she died, lying in the hospital bed, squeezing his hand so tight her nails dug into his skin, saying if he ever found someone after she was gone, Lila was the only person she’d ever trust to take care of him. He’d laughed it off then, told her to stop talking like that, but the memory won’t leave him alone. He’s disgusted with himself for even thinking about her like that, for the way his chest tightens when he replays her laugh, the rough callus on her index finger from lifting heavy wooden hive boxes. But the desire is louder, warm and persistent, the kind of soft, thrumming want he thought he’d buried with Elara 8 years prior.
He calls her at 6 PM, voice gruffer than he means it to be, says he’s grilling salmon on the back porch, he picked up a flat of those blackberries that morning, if she doesn’t have other plans. She shows up 20 minutes later, holding a loaf of crusty sourdough and a jar of homemade blackberry jam, no makeup, a few blades of grass stuck to the knee of her jeans. They eat at the rickety cedar table on his porch, the smell of pine and wood smoke wrapping around them, crickets starting to chirp in the fir trees at the edge of his 5-acre property. She asks to see his map collection, and for the first time in 8 years, he doesn’t say no, leads her through the back hall into the sunroom lined with shelving holding rolled maps and archival paper.
She runs her finger along the frayed edge of an 1892 survey map of the Mount Hood wilderness, her shoulder pressed flush to his, and he doesn’t pull away. “Elara always talked about how careful you were with these,” she says, soft, not looking at him. “I had a crush on you when I was 19, you know. Never said anything. You were hers, first and always.” He turns to look at her, and her face is inches from his, he can smell honey and lavender hand soap on her skin. “I thought about you, too,” he says, quiet, like he’s admitting a secret he’s kept locked up for 18 years. “After the funeral. I felt guilty for it, for months.”
She leans in then, kisses him slow, and she tastes like honey and the blackberry crumble they ate for dessert 10 minutes prior. His hand rests light on her hip, and she presses closer, her fingers tangling in the short gray hair at the nape of his neck. Somewhere a half mile down the dirt road, a dog barks, and the last sliver of sun dips below the tree line, painting the edges of the maps on the walls pink and soft gold.
