Ronan O’Malley, 58, retired commercial salmon troller, spent 32 years working the frigid, choppy waters off Oregon’s coast before selling his boat, the Sea Sprite, and moving to Portland two years prior. His wife Eileen had died of lung cancer six months before he sold the boat, and he’d grown sick of waking up to the same salt-stained walls that still smelled like her lavender laundry detergent and the fish guts he’d track in after a long run. His biggest flaw, the one his granddaughter Lila never stopped nagging him about, was that he’d turned aggressively reclusive in his retirement, avoiding all neighborhood gatherings like they were contagious. He only agreed to show up to the August block party because 16-year-old Lila begged him—she was manning the 4H bake sale table, and needed someone to cover for her when she snuck off to the bounce house with her friends.
He leaned against the thick trunk of the oak tree at the edge of the street, sipping a lukewarm Pabst he’d grabbed from the cooler by the grill, half watching Lila scream as she bounced 10 feet in the air, half trying to ignore his next-door neighbor who kept waving him over to the cornhole set. The air smelled like grilled bratwurst, cut grass, and the coconut sunscreen half the kids were slathered in, and the tinny pop music blaring from the bounce house speaker was loud enough to make his teeth rattle. He was already mentally mapping his exit, planning to slip out as soon as Lila got back to the bake table, when a woman tripped over the skateboard a 10-year-old had left propped against the tree root and stumbled straight into him.
Her left palm slammed into his chest first, hard enough to jostle the beer can in his hand, a few drops sloshing onto his faded gray flannel. Next, her forearm dragged across the thick, ropy scar on his right bicep—left by a winch that snapped mid-set on the Sea Sprite back in 2013, almost taking his whole arm off if his first mate hadn’t hit the kill switch fast enough. She smelled like jasmine hand lotion and old, yellowed paper, the exact same scent of the library books Eileen used to stack on their nightstand, and for half a second Ronan froze, ready to snap an annoyed retort. Then she laughed, bright and unapologetic, swatted a strand of auburn hair out of her face, and said “Christ, I’m so sorry, I swear I’ve got two left feet when I’m juggling 40 flyers and a toddler’s sippy cup I just fished out of the gutter.”
He grunted, about to brush it off and turn back to his beer, but she nodded at the scar first, then at the tiny, faded salmon tattoo peeking out from his flannel cuff. “Winch accident?” she said, leaning in a little, the toe of her white canvas sneaker almost brushing his scuffed work boot. “My dad was a fisherman out of Coos Bay, had the exact same scar on his left arm. Refused to get it fixed, said it was his battle scar.”
Ronan blinked. No one outside his immediate family had noticed that tattoo in three years, let alone connected it to the scar. He found himself leaning forward too, not even thinking about it, the beer can loose in his hand. “Sea Sprite, 2013,” he said. “Snapped mid-set, put me in the ER for 12 stitches. Still aches when it rains.”
She grinned, and he could see the smattering of freckles across her nose he hadn’t noticed before, smell the lemonade she’d been drinking on her breath. She introduced herself as Elara, 54, the new head librarian at the neighborhood branch, said she was passing out flyers for the library’s fall local history series. She’d been digging through microfilm of 1990s fishing logs for weeks, she said, looking for someone who’d actually lived the commercial fishing life to come speak to the group.
Ronan tensed immediately. His first instinct was to say no. He hated public speaking, hated talking about his old life to strangers—those years felt like pieces of Eileen and his old crew that weren’t for casual consumption, for people who’d never spent three days stuck in a storm eating nothing but canned beans and stale crackers. Part of him wanted to make an excuse, grab Lila, and hightail it back to his quiet house, where he could watch the Mariners game he had recorded and eat the frozen carnitas burrito he had stashed in the fridge, no small talk, no pressure. But the spot on his bicep where her arm had brushed was still warm, and the sound of her laugh was sitting light in his chest in a way he hadn’t felt since Eileen died.
She noticed his hesitation, leaned in even more, her shoulder brushing his, and her voice dropped a little, like she was sharing a secret no one else could hear. “I won’t make you talk longer than an hour,” she said. “I’ll even bring you a slice of the key lime pie I baked for the bake sale—won the county fair blue ribbon last year, for what it’s worth—and a bottle of 12-year Jameson I’ve had stashed in my desk for a special occasion. No pressure to stick around after, no one will hound you for dumb questions about what your favorite fish is.”
Ronan stared at her for a second, noticed the way her eyes kept darting from his eyes to his mouth then back up, the way she was biting the corner of her lower lip like she was trying not to laugh at how flustered he probably looked. He realized he hadn’t wanted to say yes to anything that wasn’t Lila asking for a ride or a new video game in years. He nodded, the corner of his mouth tugging up in a real smile, not the tight polite one he used for the grocery store cashier. “Fine,” he said. “But if some guy shows up in a rain jacket asking how to catch a 50-pound salmon in his backyard kiddie pool, I’m out before the hour’s up.”
She laughed so hard she snort a little, clapping a hand over her mouth. She dug a ballpoint pen out of her jeans pocket, scribbled her cell number on the back of a library flyer, pressed it into his palm, her fingers lingering for a beat longer than necessary, the pad of her thumb brushing the thick callus on his palm from 30 years of holding fishing rods. She said she’d text him the date and time tomorrow, and if he changed his mind, she’d still leave the pie on his porch for him, no questions asked. She turned to walk away, paused, glanced over her shoulder and winked before she disappeared into the crowd of people milling around the grill.
Ronan looked down at the flyer, the blue ink smudged a little from the sweat on her fingers, shoved it into the pocket of his work jeans, and took a sip of his beer that had gone fully warm in the sun. He didn’t even mind that it was flat.
