Ray Garza, 61, retired CBP K9 handler, leans his hip against the rickety metal table holding his chili pot, one boot propped on the lower crossbar. The air in the small South Texas community park hums: kids screaming on the rusted swing set, a guy in a cowboy hat yelling about brisket prices, the sharp, warm smell of cumin and mesquite smoke curling through every open space. He’s only here because his neighbor bet him fifty bucks he wouldn’t enter the annual cookoff, and Ray never turns down a bet, even when he hates crowds. His left forearm, crisscrossed with a thin pale scar from a 2018 bust where his K9 partner took a knife meant for him, itches when a group of teen girls walks past, giggling. He scratches at it, staring at the slow bubble of his chili, already mentally calculating how fast he can pack up and go home before anyone tries to make small talk about his retirement.
He spots her before she spots him. Lena Mendez, 52, Maria’s second cousin, just moved back to town last month to care for her dad after his stroke. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts that show a faint constellation of freckles on her thighs, a faded 2019 Willie Nelson tour tee, scuffed cowgirl boots caked in red dirt from her dad’s ranch. She’s carrying a paper plate stacked with cornbread, laughing as a toddler shoves a fistful of cheese puffs into her own hair, and when she turns her head and meets his eyes, her smile softens, shifts into something that makes the back of his neck go warm. She starts walking over, no hesitation, and Ray’s throat goes dry. He hasn’t talked to her since Maria’s funeral, hasn’t let himself think about her, not really, because she’s family, because the quiet spark they’d had even when Maria was alive felt like a secret he wasn’t allowed to keep.
She stops so close he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint sharp tang of peppermint gum over the chili fumes. Her shoulder brushes his bicep when she leans in to sniff the pot, and he flinches like he’s been burned. “Still putting way too much cayenne in this, huh?” She says, tilting her head up to look at him, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. She’s got a little silver hoop through her left nostril he doesn’t remember her having before, a tiny scar on her chin from when she fell off a horse at the family ranch when she was 16. He can feel his face heating up, equal parts embarrassed and angry at himself for reacting like a skittish teen. “Maria always said you cooked like you were trying to chase off cartel scouts with spice alone.” The mention of his wife’s name makes his chest tighten, half guilt, half something softer, like he’s not being punched in the gut when someone says her name for once.
He’s torn, for a minute, between stepping back and making an excuse to leave, or leaning in a little closer, seeing if her hand is as warm as it looks when she rests it on the table next to his. The guilt nags at him, sharp and persistent: this is wrong, she’s family, you’re supposed to still be grieving, what would people say? But then she reaches for a plastic sample spoon, and her fingers brush his, calloused too from years of working as an ER nurse, from mending fences on her dad’s ranch, and the desire is louder, for the first time in four years, louder than the guilt. “Don’t look so panicked,” she teases, popping a spoonful of chili into her mouth, winking when she coughs a little at the heat. “I won’t tell anyone you’re not as much of a hardass as you pretend to be.”
They drift over to the big live oak at the edge of the park, out of the noise of the crowd, sitting on a splintered wooden bench under the shade. She tells him about her dad’s physical therapy, about the crazy shifts she worked in San Antonio during the pandemic, about how she’d missed this town, missed the way everyone knows everyone’s business but no one says it out loud. He tells her about his new rescue dog, a scrawny German shepherd mix he found wandering the border a few months back, about the woodworking shop he built in his garage, about how he still sleeps on his side of the bed, even though Maria’s side has been empty for four years. She doesn’t pity him, doesn’t pat his arm and say he’ll get over it, just nods, like she gets it, like she’s carried heavy things too. When a mesquite leaf lands in his hair, she reaches up to pluck it out, her thumb brushing the stubble on his jaw for half a second, and he doesn’t pull away.
“Maria told me once,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear it, the distant noise of the cookoff fading to a hum, “that if anything ever happened to her, she didn’t want you to mope around the rest of your life like a lost dog. Said you were too stubborn to ask for happiness, so someone would probably have to hand it to you.” The words settle in his chest, warm, unclenching the knot of guilt he’s been carrying for so long he forgot what it felt like to breathe easy. The sun’s starting to dip below the treeline, painting the sky pink and tangerine, and the announcer over the loudspeaker calls his name, says he got third place in the spicy chili category, come get your plaque and fifty dollar gift card to the feed store.
He doesn’t move. He just looks at her, at the way the golden light hits the strands of gray in her dark hair, at the smudge of cornbread crumbs on the corner of her mouth, and he asks her if she wants to come back to his place later. Says he’s got a bottle of anejo tequila he’s been saving for no good reason, leftover pork tamales from the food truck down the road, and the new season of Yellowstone downloaded on his TV, if she’s into that. She grins, wide and bright, and hooks her pinky through the scarred skin of his forearm, squeezing a little. “Sounds a hell of a lot better than staying home and listening to my dad snore through old westerns,” she says. Somewhere behind them, a mariachi band that set up by the food stalls strikes up a slow, waltzing love song, and he doesn’t even think to let go of her hand when a group of his old CBP buddies waves at him from across the field.
