Rafe Calderon, 62, spent 31 years as a Wyoming game warden patrolling Yellowstone’s most remote backcountry before retiring to Bozeman three years back to run a tiny fly-tying supply shop out of a converted garage. His biggest flaw, the one his old patrol partner ribbed him about every time they grabbed a beer, is that he’s stubborn to a fault about letting anyone new past the walls he built after his wife Elara died of ovarian cancer eight years prior. He’d turned down no fewer than 17 invites to the local bar’s weekly trivia night, skipped every neighborhood cookout until this September, when the downtown wild game and craft beer festival offered him a free vendor booth to sell his custom hand-tied trout flies.
The air smelled like turned earth and smoked elk sausage the second he hauled his crates of flies to his assigned spot, the hum of a bluegrass band playing a block over thrumming low under the chatter of festival goers. He was taping a handwritten price sign to the front of his table when a soft, familiar voice pulled his gaze up. “You still tie that ugly elk hair caddis Elara used to make fun of?”
The woman leaning over the flimsy plastic divider between his booth and the next was Lena Voss, Elara’s 58-year-old younger cousin, the one he hadn’t spoken to since the funeral. Silver streaks threaded through the chestnut hair she’d pulled back in a loose braid, a faded denim work shirt stretched over her shoulders, the sleeve brushing his bare forearm when she nodded at his display of flies. She smelled like pine resin and cinnamon hard candy, the same scent that used to cling to her jacket at every family Christmas back when he and Elara were first married, and he froze mid-tap, his tape dispenser hanging useless in his hand.
Their eye contact held for three full beats, longer than polite, and she didn’t look away when he shifted awkwardly on his feet. He’d always felt that unspoken hum between them back when he was married: the way she’d laugh at his terrible hunting jokes a second before Elara did, the time they’d gotten stuck in a rainstorm on a family hike and she’d grabbed his arm to steady herself when she slipped on a rock. He’d never acted on it, never even said a word about it to anyone, but the memory of that jolt up his arm had lingered in the back of his head for 22 years, a secret he’d buried under guilt and grief.
She ran the adjacent booth for her wildlife rehab center, selling stuffed barn owls and vinyl bison decals to raise money for a new bear enclosure. She passed him a cold can of hazy IPA halfway through the afternoon, their fingers brushing when he grabbed it, and he swore the static from the touch traveled all the way up his arm to his chest. They traded stories the rest of the shift: her about the baby moose she’d rescued the month prior that kept eating her lunch sandwiches, him about the hiker he’d pulled out of a snow drift in 2019 who still sent him Christmas cards every year. He didn’t mention Elara until the sun started to dip below the mountains, when Lena pulled a crumpled photo out of her wallet of the three of them at a lake in 2001, all three grinning, covered in lake water.
“I used to stop by your shop once a month,” she said, twisting the cap off her second beer, not looking at him for the first time all afternoon. “Never got out of the truck. Figured you didn’t want to be reminded of all the old stuff.” Rafe’s throat went tight. He’d spent so long thinking moving on, feeling anything other than grief, was a betrayal of Elara, he’d never stopped to think she’d yell at him for moping around by himself for almost a decade.
The festival wrapped up as a light drizzle started to fall, fat cold drops hitting the top of the booth’s awning. He helped her load her crates of merch into her beat-up pickup, his shoulder brushing hers when he lifted a heavy box of stuffed owls into the bed. When they were done, she turned to him, her boots planted in the wet gravel, and held his gaze again. “Elara always said you were too hard on yourself,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it over the sound of the rain. “She’d tell you to stop being an idiot and go fishing with me this weekend, if she was here.”
Rafe laughed, a real one, the kind that hurt his sides a little because he hadn’t laughed that hard in years. He didn’t argue, didn’t overthink it, when she leaned in first brushing her lips against his cheek, then pressing them soft and slow to his mouth. The rain was cold on the back of his neck, the distant bluegrass band was playing a slow waltz, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel a single twinge of guilt.
She scribbled her cell phone number on a crumpled napkin from her glove box, pressed it into his palm, and climbed into her pickup. He stood there in the rain, holding the napkin, until her taillights disappeared around the corner. He tucked the napkin into the pocket of his worn flannel shirt, took a bite of the cold smoked elk sausage he’d bought earlier, and smiled as rain dripped off the brim of his baseball cap onto his cheeks.
