Rafe Marquez, 53, wipes a bead of pine-scented sweat off his forehead with the edge of his frayed plaid flannel, the same one Elaina bought him for their 12th anniversary. He spent 21 years as a high school biology teacher in central Florida before Elaina’s ovarian cancer took her four years prior, packed up their life the week after the funeral, and moved to the Blue Ridge foothills to keep bees, the retirement plan they’d mapped out on taco shop napkins every Sunday for a decade. He’s stubborn to a fault, turned down every family dinner invitation from Elaina’s side since the service, convinced any reminder of her will crack the careful wall he’s built around his grief. He sells raw wild honey at the Asheville farmers market every Saturday, keeps interactions short, sticks to pricing questions and quick tips for treating seasonal allergies with local honey.
The crowd thins out by 4 p.m., August heat softening as the sun dips behind the ridgeline. He’s packing the last of his glass jars into a wooden crate when his elbow brushes the warm, soft skin of the woman running the sourdough booth next to him. He’d recognized her the second he showed up at 7 a.m., avoided eye contact all day: Lila, Elaina’s first cousin, the gawky 18-year-old who’d cried so hard at the funeral she’d stepped outside mid-eulogy, now 26, in a faded Nirvana tee and overalls, a silver nose ring glinting in low light, the same faint scar on her left cheek as Elaina, from a childhood bike crash the two shared. He’d always thought that scar belonged only to his wife, and the jolt of seeing it on someone else makes his chest tight.
She laughs when he stammers an apology, wipes a smudge of flour off her cheek with the back of her hand. Her laugh is raspier than Elaina’s, a little rough around the edges, like she smokes clove cigarettes when stressed, which he picks up on when she leans in a second later to ask if he has any wild blackberry honey left. She smells like sourdough yeast and lavender shampoo, and he has to fight the urge to step back, to tell her he’s sold out, to pack up his truck and leave before he has to talk about Elaina, about the life he left behind. He nods instead, grabs the last jar off the table, twists it so the amber honey catches the sun.
She mentions she found Elaina’s old recipe box in her grandma’s attic last month, brought it with her when she moved to Asheville for her environmental science master’s, picked up the bakery shift to cover rent. She wants to bake Elaina’s famous honey cake to sell at the booth next weekend, says no one else makes it the way Elaina did, with blackberry honey and a dash of cinnamon. Rafe’s throat goes tight. He and Elaina used to bake that cake every Christmas, bring tins to all family gatherings, Lila would sneak slices before dinner even started. He tells her he doesn’t do recipe collaborations, that he keeps business separate from personal stuff, and the smile fades a little from her face, but she doesn’t push.
The wind picks up ten minutes later, whipping paper bags and loose honey labels across the asphalt. The market coordinator yells a pop-up thunderstorm is 10 minutes out, everyone needs to pack up fast. Lila reaches for a stack of cooling loaves on her table edge at the same time Rafe reaches for a tipping crate of his jars, and their hands crash together, her cool fingers wrapping around his wrist for half a second to steady him. His chest presses against hers for a beat, he can feel the fast thud of her heart through her tee, and she doesn’t step back, just looks up at him, dark eyes soft. She says she knows he’s been hurting, that Elaina used to talk about him all the time, said he was the only person who ever got her weird obsession with bad 90s rom-coms and sour candy.
Rafe feels the wall around his grief crack a little. He’s spent four years thinking any joy, any attraction, would be a betrayal of Elaina, but standing there, with Lila’s hand still on his wrist, the smell of bread and honey in the air, he realizes Elaina would have called him an idiot for closing himself off this long, would have teased him for weeks for being scared of a girl 27 years younger who makes better sourdough than he ever could. He laughs, a rough, rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his mouth in years, and tells her he’ll bring three jars of blackberry honey to her place tomorrow, that he’s the only person who knows Elaina’s secret trick of adding a splash of bourbon to the cake batter.
The first fat raindrop hits his neck a second later, cold and sharp. Lila grins, pulls her phone out of her overalls pocket, types her address into his notes app when he hands it to her, her thumb brushing his knuckle as she passes it back. He shoves the last jar of blackberry honey into her free hand, waves off her attempt to pay, turns to load his jars into the bed of his beat-up Ford F-150. He glances over his shoulder right as he pulls the tailgate up, sees her holding the jar to her chest, grinning, already tasting a drop of honey off her finger as she runs to her car to beat the rain.
