Rico Morales, 62, drags his scuffed work boots across the gravel parking lot of the Boise suburban farmers market at 7:15 a.m., 45 minutes before official opening, when only vendors are hauling crates and the air still smells like cut clover and leftover charcoal from the food truck grills that never get fully scraped down. His bad left knee, the one he wrecked sliding down a granite slope to outrun a 2018 Salmon River fire twister, throbs with every step, but he refuses to use the cane his physical therapist shoved at him three months prior. Stubbornness has always been his worst flaw; it’s what got him through 32 years as a wildland firefighter crew boss, what kept him living alone on 10 acres of pine forest for 8 years after his wife Elaina died, what made him drive 20 minutes into town instead of grabbing the sad grocery store peaches down the road from his property.
He spots the peach jam booth first, the hand-painted wooden sign propped up against stacked crates of O’Henry white peaches, and freezes when he sees who’s behind the table. Lena Marquez, Elaina’s second cousin, 58, moved back to Idaho six months prior after her divorce from a corporate lawyer in Portland, and he hasn’t spoken to her since Elaina’s memorial service three years prior, when she hugged him so tight his ribs ached for two days. She’s wiping down the edge of the table with a ragged dish towel, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a loose braid, splotches of apricot jam staining the cuff of her flannel shirt, and when she looks up and sees him, her whole face lights up the same way it did at his and Elaina’s wedding in 1987, when she was 22 and snuck him a shot of tequila before the ceremony.
He ambles over, keeping his hands stuffed in the pockets of his worn Carhartt jacket to keep from fidgeting, and nods at the crates of peaches. “Heard these are the only ones in the valley that don’t taste like wet cardboard this year,” he says, and she laughs, the sound warm and rough, like she’s been singing too loud in her car on the drive over. She leans across the table to grab a sample jar of peach jam, and he leans in at the same time to get a better look at the label, their knuckles brushing when their hands wrap around the glass at the same time. Both of them freeze for half a second, and he catches the scent of lavender hand cream mixed with ripe peach nectar coming off her skin, the exact scent Elaina used to wear on their anniversary trips to the Oregon coast.
His throat goes dry. He yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove, and feels his face flush, a stupid, boyish reaction he hasn’t had since he was 16 and asked Elaina out to the senior prom. For a second he’s torn, half-disgusted at himself for even noticing how the early sun hits the silver strands in her hair, how her jeans fit just right over her hips, half-giddy at the quiet buzz under his skin that he hasn’t felt in almost a decade. He knows the small town gossip mill will run wild if anyone sees them talking for too long; everyone knows who Lena is, everyone knows he’s been the loyal widower for 8 years, everyone will whisper that he’s moving on too fast, that he’s betraying Elaina’s memory by even looking at her cousin.
She doesn’t pull back, though. She holds the jar out to him, her fingers brushing his again when he takes it, and smirks. “Don’t act so skittish, Morales. I don’t bite. Unless you ask nice.” She nods at his left knee, which he’s been shifting his weight off of this whole time. “Heard you wrecked that knee worse last winter. Still refusing to use the cane?” He huffs a laugh, takes a bite of the jam on the plastic sample spoon she hands him, and it tastes exactly like the jam Elaina used to make every August, when they’d can 20 jars together on their back porch. “Still refusing,” he says. “Don’t need help.”
She rolls her eyes, leans across the table even further, so close he can count the freckles across her nose. “Sure you don’t. Hey, I got a flat tire on my Subaru parked around the back. Spare’s in the trunk, but I can’t get the lug nuts loose. You gonna be stubborn about helping me with that, too?” He doesn’t even think before he nods.
By the time he gets the tire changed, the sun is high enough that the back of his neck is sweating, and she hands him a glass of iced sweet tea when he follows her up the steps to her small bungalow, the porch strung with fairy lights and lined with potted tomato plants. They sit on her porch swing for an hour, talking about Elaina, about the old fire crew he used to run, about her ex-husband who hated Idaho and hated peaches and hated everything she cared about. She admits she’s had a crush on him since that 1987 wedding, when he danced with her for three songs after Elaina went to cut the cake, and he admits he’s thought about her more than he should have over the years, but never said anything because he loved Elaina too much to mess things up.
She makes peach cobbler for dinner, served with vanilla ice cream that melts into the warm, cinnamon-dusted crust, and when he reaches across the table to wipe a smudge of cobbler off her cheek, she doesn’t pull away. He laces his fingers through hers across the gingham tablecloth, the faint stickiness of peach jam still on her palm, and outside the kitchen window, crickets hum in the dimming dusk.
