Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired Puget Sound ferry captain, leaned against a splintered cedar picnic table at the annual coastal town salmon bake, a half-empty can of Rainier sweating in his calloused left hand. He’d avoided the event for four straight years, ever since his wife Maggie died, but his 22-year-old niece had practically dragged him out of the house that morning, complaining he was turning into the reclusive hermit all the neighborhood kids made up stories about. She’d bailed 20 minutes after they arrived to make out with her boyfriend near the food trucks, leaving Ronan to glower at the crowd, the salt-stiff cuff of his Carhartt jacket brushing the splintered table edge every time he lifted his beer.
He’d just decided to ditch and head home to rewatch old Seahawks games when a soft elbow knocked into his ribcage, hard enough to make him slosh a little beer down his wrist. He turned, ready to snap, and came face to face with Elara Voss, the 58-year-old part-time librarian who’d moved to town six months prior. She was holding a paper tray piled high with butter-slathered grilled corn, her dark gray flannel rolled up to the elbows, a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek from labeling rare maritime books that morning, lavender and sea salt shampoo clinging to the loose strands of silver hair escaping her ponytail. She held his eye contact for two full beats longer than polite, grinning like she knew exactly how much he hated being at the bake, and apologized so casually it felt like they’d been talking for years.
Ronan froze, half annoyed, half weirdly flustered, when she mentioned she saw him slipping into the library every Tuesday at 10 a.m. sharp to browse the maritime history section, that she’d fished his crumpled salmon bait receipt bookmark out of a tattered 1972 logbook of Puget Sound ferry routes he’d left on the table the week prior. He’d thought he’d been invisible those trips, sneaking in and out before anyone could strike up a conversation, and the realization she’d been paying attention sent a hot, guilty jolt up his spine. For four years he’d told himself even looking at another woman was a betrayal of Maggie, that anyone who saw him talking to someone new would whisper he was replacing her, that he was a bad husband. He shifted his weight, putting six inches of space between them, but the wind shifted and he caught that lavender sea salt scent again, and his resolve softened a little.
She offered him a corn cob, and when he took it their fingers brushed, her palm calloused from tending the community vegetable garden, warm even against his sun-warmed skin. They talked for 45 minutes, standing so close their shoulders brushed every time a group of kids ran past screaming, the steel drum band off by the pier playing slow, wobbly covers of 70s country deep cuts. She teased him about the faded ferry company tattoo curling up his right forearm, he told her about the time he’d accidentally run the ferry aground on a low tide chasing a pod of orcas that had swum right across the bow, and she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, wiping at the corner of her eye with the back of her hand. Ronan fought the urge to reach out and wipe that charcoal smudge off her cheek, his jaw tight with the fight between the part of him that wanted to run home and lock the door, and the part of him that hadn’t felt this light since before Maggie got sick.
The band shifted into a slow cover of a Patsy Cline song Maggie used to sing while she baked huckleberry pies, and Elara held out her hand, palm up, the chipped blue nail polish on her thumb catching the golden light of the setting sun. For a split second all he could think was that Maggie would be furious, that he was being disrespectful, then he remembered the last conversation they’d had in the hospital, Maggie’s thin hand wrapped around his, telling him if he didn’t find someone to laugh with after she was gone, she’d come back and hide all his favorite fishing lures in the crawl space. He took her hand, his palm sweaty, and she pulled him close enough that he could feel the heat of her waist through her jeans, their swaying less dancing and more just standing still together, watching the pink and orange sun dip below the Olympic mountains across the sound.
When the song ended, she squeezed his hand, and said she had a jar of homemade huckleberry pie filling back at her cottage, that she needed someone to test the crust she’d pre-made that morning. Ronan paused for half a second, glancing over at the picnic table where he’d left his jacket, then nodded. He tossed his empty beer can in the nearby trash can, wiped the leftover butter off his jeans with the back of his hand, and followed her across the gravel parking lot, her silver ponytail swinging as she glanced over her shoulder every few steps to make sure he was still right behind her.
