Roland Voss, 62, retired forensic entomologist, leaned against the side of the volunteer fire department’s beer truck and took a slow sip of IPA. He’d shown up to the annual chili cookoff only because his next door neighbor had begged him to enter his award-winning venison chili, and he’d already turned the guy down three years running. The crowd was loud, full of screaming kids and retirees yelling over each other about chili spice ratios, and he was already counting the minutes until he could slip back to his quiet cabin in the woods, where the loudest sound was the creek behind his house and the occasional woodpecker tapping at his oak tree. His biggest flaw, he’d long admitted, was that he hated deviating from routine. He’d followed the same weekly schedule for eight years, ever since his wife Ellen died of ovarian cancer: work on his bug collection on Tuesdays, grocery shop on Thursdays, fish on Saturdays, no exceptions. No dates, no new friends, no mess.
A woman stepped up next to him so close her shoulder brushed the sleeve of his faded plaid flannel, and he tensed up before he even looked over. She was holding a paper plate stacked with cornbread and a scoop of bright red chili, her bare arm warm against his even through the fabric. She smelled like clove shampoo and cedar, like the cedar chest his grandma used to keep in her attic. “Roland Voss,” she said, and her voice was rough, like she smoked a menthol every now and then after a long day. “I’d know that beat-up pair of Red Wings anywhere. You wore the exact same ones to Ellen’s wedding in ‘88.”
He blinked, and recognized her then. Mara Hale. 58, ex-wife of Ellen’s younger brother Jake, who she’d divorced 12 years prior after he cheated on her with his dental hygienist. They’d only met once, that wedding weekend, when he’d sprained his ankle tripping over a tent stake and she’d wrapped it for him with a bandana she’d pulled out of her purse. He’d thought she was pretty then, but he’d been so wrapped up in his new wife he’d barely given it a second thought. She’d moved to town six months prior to run the small public library on Main Street, and he’d seen her a handful of times from a distance, but he’d never gone up to say hello. It felt wrong, somehow, like he was crossing an invisible line the family had drawn.
“Thought you’d avoid me forever,” she said, grinning, and took a bite of cornbread. Crumbs stuck to the corner of her mouth, and he had to fight the urge to brush them off. Her hazel eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, and she had a tiny scar above her left eyebrow, the kind you get from falling off a bike as a kid. She leaned in a little closer, like she was sharing a secret, and he could smell the cinnamon on her breath from the cornbread. “Jake’s here today, by the way. With his third wife. If we talk too long, half the family’s gonna start gossiping before we even finish our beer.”
That old rigid part of his brain screamed at him to step back, to make an excuse about having to get home, to avoid the mess of whatever this was. But the other part of him, the part that had been asleep for eight years, hummed. He didn’t step back. He handed her a can of IPA from the cooler at his feet, and their fingers brushed when she took it. Her skin was soft, but her fingertips were calloused, like she played guitar or gardened a lot. “I don’t care what they say,” he said, and he surprised himself by meaning it.
They snuck off a few minutes later, walking the dirt trail behind the fairgrounds that led to an old picnic table under a giant oak tree, far enough away that no one from the cookoff could see them. The leaves rustled overhead, and the distant sound of the country band playing at the cookoff drifted through the air, soft enough that they could talk without yelling. She told him she’d seen him at the library two weeks prior, checking out a stack of old Louis L’Amour westerns, and she’d almost gone up to say hello then but she’d been scared he’d blow her off. He told her he’d noticed her too, that he’d purposely avoided the library for a week after that because he’d been flustered, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and he found himself laughing right along with her.
When she reached over to wipe a smudge of chili off his chin, her thumb lingering on his jaw for a beat longer than necessary, he didn’t pull away. For a second he thought about all the rules he’d made for himself, all the ways this could go wrong, all the family drama that would blow up if anyone found out they were even talking. But then she smiled at him, and all that noise in his head went quiet. He’d spent 30 years of his career studying death, picking apart the small details that told him how a life had ended. He’d forgotten what it felt like to look at someone and think about how a new one could start.
She pulled a crumpled pink napkin out of her jeans pocket and scrawled her phone number on it in blue ballpoint, a tiny smudge of chili grease next to the digits. “Coffee at the Main Street diner next Wednesday,” she said, handing it to him. “7 a.m. Before any of the old biddies show up for their pie and gossip. No one has to know unless we want them to.”
He nodded, folding the napkin carefully and tucking it into the inner pocket of his flannel shirt, right next to the worn photo of Ellen he kept there. It didn’t feel like a betrayal, like he’d thought it would. It felt like breathing, for the first time in years. She stood up, brushing crumbs off her denim skirt, and said she’d head back first so no one got suspicious. He watched her walk down the trail, the hem of her skirt brushing the tops of her scuffed white sneakers, and the distant sound of the country band’s steel guitar drifted through the oak leaves above him.
