Leo Marquez, 62, retired Chicago public high school woodshop teacher, leaned against a splintered cedar post at the town’s annual summer craft fair afterparty, sweat beading at the edge of his graying buzzcut under a faded 2019 Sturgis hoodie he refused to take off even when the afternoon temp hit 76. He’d only shown up because Jake, the 22 year old hardware store clerk he talked to once a week, begged him to bring a few of his decoys to display, said local hunting guides would pay top dollar for his hand-carved mallards. He held a cold IPA in his calloused right hand, condensation soaking through the paper coozie Jake had pressed on him, and pointedly avoided making eye contact with anyone who wandered too close.
He’d been in Paonia, Colorado two and a half years, and no one had gotten more than a two word answer out of him. Not the librarian, not the pastor at the little church down the road, not the woman who ran the bakery on Main Street who always slipped him an extra chocolate chip cookie with his coffee. He’d built a wall, and he liked it that way. Any crack in it felt like a betrayal of Linda, his wife of 34 years, who’d died of ovarian cancer three weeks after they’d signed papers on the Colorado property.
The scent of lavender cut with cedar hit him first, before he saw her sit down on the split log bench two feet to his left. He glanced over, recognized her: Clara Bennett, 58, the woman who’d bought the 5 acre plot adjacent to his four months prior, who ran a reclaimed lumber business out of a converted barn on her land, who’d waved at him every time she drove past his driveway, who he’d always pretended not to see. She wore worn work boots caked in the same red clay that coated his workshop floor, a faded flannel tied around her waist, a white tank top dotted with sawdust. She held a lime seltzer in one hand, a stack of business cards in the other.
“Your mail got delivered to my place again,” she said, holding out a small cardboard box sealed with packing tape. He recognized the return label: it was the tung oil he’d ordered for his decoys two weeks prior, that he’d assumed got lost in the mail. He reached for it, and their knuckles brushed. He froze for half a second, felt the rough calluses on the side of her index finger, the same kind he had from years of running planers and holding chisels. He pulled his hand back fast, like he’d touched a hot saw blade, and tucked the box under his arm.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, staring at the scuffed toes of his work boots. He could feel her looking at him, not pushing, not prying, just waiting. He felt that familiar twist in his gut, half disgust at himself for even noticing how the sun caught the gray streaks in her auburn hair, half desire he’d been shoving down for three years, that he’d thought was dead and buried with Linda.
“I saw the bluebird decoy on your porch last week,” she said, nodding toward the direction of their properties. “The one with the little chip in the wing. You carved that for someone, right? The detail’s too good for inventory.” He blinked. That was the decoy he’d started carving the week Linda died, that he’d left half finished on his porch rail for three months, that he still didn’t have the heart to sand down the chip on the wing, the chip he’d made when he got the phone call from the hospital. He didn’t know how anyone could have noticed that, let alone a stranger.
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t walk away either. She shifted a little closer, so close he could feel the heat off her shoulder when the breeze picked up. “I also saw your dining table through your kitchen window,” she said, quiet enough no one else could hear. “The oak one, with the lopsided front left leg. You built that with her, didn’t you? The joinery’s off, like someone was rushing, like you were both laughing too hard to line the tenon up right.”
The air caught in his throat. That was exactly what had happened. They’d built that table the week before their 30th anniversary, Linda had held the leg at a 10 degree angle and refused to adjust it, said the lopsided leg would make the table “have personality”, that every time they sat down to eat they’d remember her messing up. He’d refused to fix it for three years, convinced sanding down that joint and resetting the leg would erase that memory, erase her. He’d thought no one would ever notice that, that it was just his secret.
He looked up at her, finally, met her eyes. They were hazel, flecked with gold, crinkled at the corners like she smiled a lot. She didn’t look away, didn’t push him to talk, just sipped her seltzer and waited. That tight, heavy weight that had been sitting in his chest since the day Linda died didn’t disappear, not all at once, but it loosened, just a little, enough that he could breathe again. He realized he wasn’t disgusted with himself for wanting to talk to her, that Linda would have yelled at him for hiding away for three years, for wasting the time he had left.
“Your glue’s better than mine?” he said, half teasing, half nervous. She grinned, and he felt something warm settle in his chest he hadn’t felt in years. She told him she only used Titebond III, had a whole case in her barn, and he nodded, wiping IPA condensation off on his jeans. He invited her over at 2 the next day to fix the leg, said he’d grill the grass-fed burgers from the Main Street butcher.
She pulled a scrap of thin oak veneer out of her back pocket, scrawled her cell number on it in blue Sharpie, and handed it to him. Their fingers brushed again, this time he didn’t pull away. “I’ll bring a six pack of that IPA you’re drinking,” she said, standing up, slinging her tote bag over her shoulder. “Don’t burn the burgers.”
He tucked the oak scrap into the inner pocket of his hoodie, right next to the crumpled photo of Linda he kept there, and watched her climb into her beat up Ford F150, wave at him over her shoulder before she pulled out of the parking lot. He finished the last sip of his beer, looked up at the mountains glowing pink at the edges as the sun started to set, and didn’t feel a single twinge of guilt when he pulled his phone out to text her his address.
