Delroy Hines, 62, spent 37 years as a livestock feed formulation specialist before retiring last spring, and his biggest flaw is that he hasn’t made a single unplanned decision since he bailed on a cross-country road trip with his late wife Linda the summer after they graduated college. He still keeps the folded trip itinerary in the breast pocket of his work flannel, creased so thin at the edges you can barely read the handwritten notes for diners and national parks they never got to visit.
He’s volunteering at the county fair’s 4-H goat booth the third Saturday of August when Mara Carter walks up, and he recognizes her immediately by the thin silver scar above her left eyebrow, the one she got falling off his back patio swing during a spring break visit with his daughter Lila 22 years prior. The air smells like fried dough and diesel from the Ferris wheel, hay sticking to the cuffs of his worn work boots, and he wipes his dusty palms on his jeans before he says hello.
She lights up when she hears his voice, leaning her hip against the rough pine rail of the booth so close he can smell her lavender lotion mixed with the powdered sugar dusting the fried Oreo she’s holding in one hand. She’s 41 now, divorced, drove two hours from Columbus to enter her grandma’s peach pie in the fair’s annual baking contest, she explains, reaching over the rail to scratch the ears of a Nubian baby goat that’s poking its head through the slats. Her knuckles brush his when they both reach for the goat’s fuzzy chin at the same time, and he jolts like he’s touched a live fence, but she just laughs, warm and low, and doesn’t pull her hand away for three full, quiet beats.
Conflict kicks in fast, sharp in his chest. This is Lila’s old roommate, the girl who used to raid his fridge for leftover meatloaf and ask him to proofread her business school essays. He knows her parents, knows she spent last Christmas at his daughter’s house, knows everyone in this tiny town knows his name and would whisper if they saw them talking alone for too long. But she’s looking at him like he’s not just the boring old guy who used to calculate protein ratios for show cattle, like she actually cares when he rants about the new county rule that’s cutting 4-H funding next year. When she asks if he wants to sneak a bite of her pie before judging, he says yes before he can talk himself out of it.
She says she has two hours until the judges call her number, asks if he wants to walk the old dirt trail behind the fairgrounds that leads down to the creek, the one he used to take Lila to catch tadpoles when she was little. He tells the 16-year-old 4-H volunteer manning the adjacent sheep booth to cover for him if his granddaughter comes back from the snow cone stand, and follows her past the port-a-potties and the cornhole tournament set up, the noise of the fair fading the further they walk, replaced by the hum of crickets and the gurgle of the creek over smooth river rocks.
They sit on a fallen oak log half-hidden by oak saplings, and she pulls a crumpled aluminum foil packet out of her crossbody bag, peeling it back to reveal a wedge of peach pie still warm from the car, flaky crust oozing with sticky, spiced filling. She holds the first bite out to him on a plastic fork, and when he leans in to take it, her thumb brushes the corner of his mouth, wiping away a crumb. She doesn’t pull her hand away this time, just rests her palm on his jaw, and says she’s had a crush on him since she was 19, thought he was the only adult who ever actually listened when she talked about how scared she was to graduate and get a job.
He kisses her before he can overthink it, slow, gentle, the taste of peach and cinnamon on her tongue mixed with the sweet tea she’d been sipping earlier. It’s the first impulsive thing he’s done in 40 years, and for a second he feels guilty, thinks of Linda, thinks of Lila, but then she laces her fingers through his, calloused from her job as a custom woodworker, and the guilt melts away, replaced by a warm, light feeling he hasn’t had since before Linda got sick.
They walk back to the fairgrounds 45 minutes later, her pinky brushing his every few steps, and she waves when she splits off to head to the baking tent, yelling over her shoulder that she’ll save him the first slice if she wins. He makes it back to the goat booth right as his granddaughter runs up, holding a dripping blue raspberry snow cone in one hand and a first-place blue ribbon for her goat in the other. He kneels down to hug her, wiping a streak of blue syrup off her chin with the back of his hand, and when he looks up, he can see Mara standing at the edge of the baking tent, waving at him over the crowd.
