Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired commercial salmon fisherman out of Astoria, had spent 18 years carrying a grudge so heavy it had kept him from half his family’s milestones. The source of that grudge was Elara Voss, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, who’d testified against him in his 2005 custody battle, saying she’d seen him crack open a beer before taking his 10-year-old daughter out on his boat. He’d lost partial custody that day, and he’d avoided every family wedding, holiday, and birthday since, until his granddaughter Lila begged him to show up for her high school graduation party.
The June afternoon hung thick with coastal mist, the air smelling like alder smoke, brown sugar-glazed grilled salmon, and the sharp, hoppy tang of the craft IPA he’d been nursing by the keg for two hours. He’d kept his distance from Elara the whole time, sneaking glances when he thought no one was looking. She was 54 now, ran a small herbal apothecary in downtown Seaside, and she looked nothing like the sharp-tongued 36-year-old he’d remembered from the courtroom. Her dark hair was streaked with silver at the temples, pulled back in a loose braid, and she wore a faded navy sundress dotted with tiny silver salmon prints, her bare freckled calves propped on a cinder block as she laughed at a joke Lila told. She had a sea star tattoo curled around her left wrist he’d never noticed before, and when she lifted her hard seltzer to her mouth, he could see the faint laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes.
Lila dragged him over before he could duck behind the keg again. “Gramps has been avoiding you all day, Elara,” she said, grinning, before darting off to greet a group of her friends. Ronan shifted his weight on his scuffed work boots, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his oil-stained flannel, and mumbled a half-hearted hello. Elara smirked, leaning forward a little, so her shoulder was only a foot away from his. “Took you long enough to say hi, O’Malley. I was starting to think you’d hide behind that keg until everyone went home.”
They talked for 20 minutes first about Lila, about her plans to study marine biology at Oregon State, then Elara brought up the custody battle before he could steer the conversation away. She told him she’d testified because she’d just lost her best friend to a drunk boating accident three months before the hearing, that she’d been terrified he’d hurt his daughter, not trying to punish him. Ronan felt the tight knot of anger he’d carried for almost two decades soften, fast, when he realized he’d never even asked her why she’d said what she did, too wrapped up in his own hurt to care about her reasoning. When he passed her a plate of grilled corn slathered with chili lime butter a minute later, their fingers brushed for three slow seconds, her skin warm and soft, smelling like lavender and sea salt, and he felt a jolt run up his arm he hadn’t felt since he was in his 20s.
They drifted away from the crowd, leaning against the half-burned fire pit as the sun started to dip below the fir trees, the mist turning cool enough to make his nose run. Their shoulders were six inches apart at first, then four, then two, and when a gust of wind blew a cloud of mist straight into Elara’s face, she leaned into him for half a second before pulling back, flushing, and apologizing. He told her not to worry about it, that he didn’t mind. She admitted a minute later, quiet enough that only he could hear over the distant foghorn from the Columbia River mouth, that she’d had a crush on him since she was 22, when he’d carried her in from the dock at a Fourth of July party after she twisted her ankle, that she’d hated that their fight had kept them apart for so long. Ronan laughed, low, and told her he’d thought about her more times than he’d ever admit after the divorce, wondered what she was up to, hated that the only memory he’d had of her for 18 years was the courtroom.
The party wound down an hour later, and Lila’s mom came over, grinning, and told Ronan Elara’s bike had gotten a flat earlier, asked if he could drop her off at her place in Seaside on his way home. He nodded, holding her worn leather jacket for her when she slipped it on, and held open the passenger door of his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 for her. She slid into the seat, her knee brushing his thigh when he climbed into the driver’s side, and when he reached for the heat dial to turn it up against the evening chill, her hand was already there, their palms pressing together against the plastic knob for a long beat, neither of them pulling away.
