Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired forest fire spotter, had dragged himself to the Bend fall harvest potluck only because his 16-year-old niece had threatened to leave his prize golden retriever locked in the bed of his rusted F-150 for three hours if he bailed again. He’d spent the last three years holed up in his one-room cabin 20 miles outside town, his only regular company the dog and a stack of weathered fire service memoirs, still carrying the stupid, stubborn guilt of moving on even three years after his wife Kate’s sudden heart attack. A mild stroke six months prior had left him with a faint, persistent tremor in his left hand, the one that used to hold the plane’s control stick steady for 8-hour flights over the Cascade old-growth, and he hated letting anyone see it.
He was wiping smoked salmon dip off the edge of the picnic table with a paper towel when she stepped up beside him, so close the shoulder of her faded Carhartt jacket brushed his upper arm. He’d know that lavender-and-pine perfume anywhere, even mixed with the sharp tang of apple cider and smoked brisket drifting through the crowd. It was Lila, Kate’s youngest cousin, the one who’d fallen off a jet ski at their wedding reception 18 years prior and split her eyebrow open, the one he’d driven to the ER himself, the one he’d spent the next two decades deliberately not thinking about for fear of feeling like he was betraying Kate. She was 40 now, a travel nurse passing through town to fill a three-week gap at the local urgent care, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, the faint silver scar still slicing through her left eyebrow.
She didn’t hesitate to hug him, her arms wrapping tight around his waist, her cheek pressing to his flannel shirt for two beats longer than a polite family hug should last. When she pulled back, she held his gaze, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew exactly how flustered he was. He fumbled for a plastic cup of spiced cider to hand her, his tremor acting up enough that a little sloshed over the edge onto her wrist. He started to apologize, but she caught his left hand mid-move, her warm fingers wrapping around his wrist to steady him, her thumb brushing the scar on his knuckle he’d gotten from a plane crash landing in 2019. “Don’t be sorry,” she said, her voice low enough no one else could hear. “I always liked how fumbly you get when you’re trying not to stare.”
He felt his face heat up, the same stupid flush he’d gotten when he was 20 and Kate had first kissed him behind the high school gym. He’d spent 18 years writing off any stray thought about Lila as a moral failure, as proof he wasn’t good enough for Kate, and here she was, standing so close he could count the freckles across her nose, calling him out like it was no big deal. They drifted away from the crowd, stepping over crumpled orange maple leaves and half-empty paper plates, until they were under the big oak at the edge of the park, out of sight of his extended family. She told him she’d been in town three days, had asked his niece where he was the second she got to the potluck, had driven past his cabin twice but was too nervous to knock.
The conflict churned in his chest, sharp and hot, half guilt half something softer, something he hadn’t felt since before Kate died. He kept catching himself glancing at her mouth when she talked, at the way her jacket slipped off one shoulder when she gestured to the snow-dusted mountains in the distance. When they stepped over a gnarled oak root, she grabbed his bicep to steady herself, her hand staying there long after she was balanced, her fingers pressing into the muscle through his shirt. “Kate used to talk about you all the time,” she said, her voice quieter now, no teasing left. “Said you’d lock yourself up in that cabin forever if someone didn’t drag you out. She’d kick your ass for being this lonely, you know that.”
It hit him then, how stupid the guilt was, how Kate would have laughed herself sick at the idea of him moping alone for three years, turning down a chance to not be miserable. He reached up, brushed a strand of hair that had fallen out of her braid off her face, his left hand steady for the first time in six months. “I’ve been an idiot,” he said, and she smiled, that slow, sharp smile he’d thought about a hundred times when he was alone in the cabin, when he couldn’t sleep. She leaned in first, her lips brushing his, slow, no rush, the faint taste of cinnamon cider on her tongue, her hands coming up to rest on his chest. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her closer, the noise of the potluck fading into background static, the only thing that mattered the warmth of her against him, the fact that the tremor was gone.
They pulled apart after a minute, both grinning like stupid teenagers, and she told him she was leaving town in three days, had a new assignment lined up in Montana, but she wasn’t in any rush to go if he didn’t want her to be. They agreed to meet for pancakes at the diner on Main Street at 7 a.m. the next day, no pressure, no plans, just to talk. He walked her to her beat-up Subaru, and she squeezed his hand twice before she climbed in, waving as she pulled out of the parking lot. He stood there for a full minute, holding up his left hand, turning it back and forth in the golden sunset light, no tremor at all. He turned toward his truck, the dog barking excitedly from the cab when he saw him coming, already looking forward to the way the diner’s bitter black coffee tasted first thing in the morning.
