Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 32 years hauling nets out of Lake Michigan before switching to small-batch smoked fish sales after his wife Eileen died eight years prior. He’s stubborn to a fault, still refuses to buy a smartphone, takes all customer orders on a beat-up flip phone clipped to his oil-stained Carhartt overalls, and has turned down every blind date his sister has set him up on since Eileen’s funeral, convinced letting anyone else in would be a betrayal. He’s at the Traverse City Saturday farmers market in mid-July, sweat beading at his hairline under a frayed baseball cap, the sharp, briny scent of smoked whitefish curling off the stacks of vacuum-sealed packets stacked next to his cooler. The spot next to him usually belongs to a pickle seller who retired to Florida last month, so he’s surprised when a woman hauling wooden crates of honey jars pulls in an hour before opening, her silver-streaked auburn hair tied back with a navy bandana, freckles splayed across her nose.
He doesn’t say hello at first, focused on taping a handwritten price sign to the front of his table. She drops a full pint jar of wildflower honey ten minutes later, and he moves faster than he has in years, catching it before it shatters on the gravel. Their hands brush when he passes it back, her skin soft, smelling like lavender hand cream and the thick, sweet tang of raw honey, and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, guilt pricking at his chest. He hasn’t felt that jolt of something in almost a decade, and he’s angry at himself for it, for even noticing the way her jeans fit just right, the way she laughs when her golden retriever puppy tugs on the hem of her flannel shirt.
The conflict hits three hours in, when he’s ranting to a regular customer about the town council’s recent vote to ban shallow-water commercial gill netting, a rule he’s convinced will put him out of business by cutting off his main supply of spawning whitefish. He hears her clear her throat from the next stall over. She says she’s Clara, she’s on the town council, she voted for the ban. Ronan’s jaw tightens. He writes her off immediately as another out-of-state transplant who doesn’t care about the locals who’ve built their lives on the lake, even as he can’t stop glancing at her when she’s not looking, at the way she licks a drop of honey off her thumb when a jar leaks, at the way she leans in close when customers ask her questions, like whatever they have to say matters.
A fast-moving thunderstorm rolls in at 1 p.m., no warning, fat raindrops hitting the gravel so hard they kick up dust. They both scramble to cover their stock, Ronan hauling his cooler under the heavy vinyl awning he keeps tied to the bed of his F-150, Clara grabbing her crates of honey and ducking under next to him before he can protest. They’re squished shoulder to shoulder, the awning flapping so loud in the wind they have to lean in to talk, their faces inches apart, rain dripping off the edge of his cap onto her shoulder. She yells over the storm that the ban wasn’t meant to screw small operators like him, that the council added a last-minute grant program for small independent fishermen to afford deep-water nets and safety gear, that she’d been looking for him all week to tell him, that she’s been buying his smoked whitefish from the general store for six months, thinks it’s the best in the entire state.
Ronan’s anger melts fast, replaced by a warmth that has nothing to do with the July humidity. He notices the silver hoops in her ears, the small scar on her left cheek from a childhood bike crash she mentions offhand, the way her knee presses against his when they shift to avoid a puddle forming under the awning. He’s spent eight years convincing himself he didn’t need anyone else, that loneliness was the price he had to pay for loving Eileen well, but right then, with the rain hammering the awning and the smell of honey and smoked fish mixing in the damp air, that logic feels stupid, feels like a waste of the years he has left. When she reaches up to wipe a raindrop off his cheek, her fingers soft against his stubble, he doesn’t pull away.
The rain lets up 20 minutes later, the sun coming out so fast it paints a faint rainbow over the cherry orchard at the end of the market parking lot. Clara brings over a quart jar of raw wildflower honey, the label hand-stamped with her logo, to trade for a pound of his peppered smoked salmon. Their fingers brush again when they swap, and this time he doesn’t yank his hand back, holds the contact for a beat, long enough for her to grin up at him. He asks her if she wants to get a draft beer and an order of cheese curds at the dive bar down the road after the market closes, and she says yes, no hesitation. He tucks the jar of honey into the cooler next to his leftover fish, already mentally mapping the back road to the bar, the one lined with oak trees that arch over the pavement like a green tunnel.
