Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired railroad signal technician, swipes sweat off his forehead with the back of a calloused hand and glares at the group of kids darting between street fair booths. The August air sticks to his skin like a damp shirt, thick with the smell of fried dough, charcoal, and cut clover from the town green. He never wanted to man the historical society booth selling his restored signal lanterns, but the old lady who runs the society brought him homemade soda bread three weeks running until he caved. His boots are caked in dust, the Guinness he snuck in his cooler is warm, and he’s ten minutes from packing up early when a shadow falls over his table of polished cast iron and colored glass.
He looks up and his throat goes tight. Maeve Carter. Eileen’s best friend. The woman he’s blamed for 18 years for talking Eileen into that solo road trip to Burlington, the one where she hydroplaned off I-89 and never came home. He hasn’t spoken to her since the funeral. She’s 58 now, her auburn curls streaked with so much silver it looks like someone shook a salt shaker over her head, the same thin scar slicing across her left knuckle from that 1999 camping trip where she tried to open a beer with a hunting knife. She’s wearing a loose sage linen sundress, no bra, and when she leans in to squint at a red glass lantern, he can see the faint outline of her nipples through the fabric, sun-warmed and soft.
“Nice work,” she says, her voice lower and rougher than he remembers, like she’s spent the last two decades smoking menthols on her porch. She reaches for the same lantern he’s just picked up to adjust its price tag, and their knuckles brush. The contact sends a jolt up his arm, sharp and warm, and he fumbles the lantern half an inch before he catches it. She smirks, like she noticed, and steps closer, her shoulder almost pressing into his when a group of drunk college kids stumbles past yelling about cornhole. He can smell her perfume now, jasmine and sweet citrus, cut with the faint tang of the fried oreos she’s holding in a crumpled paper plate.
The old anger rises first, hot and familiar, the same fury that kept him up at night for years, convinced she’d pushed Eileen to leave that weekend when he’d wanted her to stay and help him fix the roof. But before he can snap at her to leave, she nods at the scar on her knuckle, then at him. “Eileen made me promise not to tell you this until you stopped being such a stubborn jackass,” she says, and her voice cracks a little. “That trip to Burlington? She wasn’t going to look at art prints. She was going to tour an outpatient rehab center for your drinking. She didn’t want you to get defensive, so she told you I talked her into it. I tried to talk her out of driving in the rain. She wouldn’t listen.”
Ronan goes cold, then hot, the lantern in his hand slipping again. She catches it this time, her hand wrapping completely around his, her palm soft but firm, calloused at the fingertips from the stained glass work she’s always done. He stares at her, at the tears glistening in her hazel eyes, and 18 years of rage crumble to dust in his chest. He feels stupid, and hollow, and lighter than he has since the day the cops showed up at his door. He can’t think of anything to say, so he just holds her gaze, the noise of the fair fading to a hum in the background, her hand still wrapped around his.
They talk for the next hour, while the sun dips lower in the sky, painting the clouds pink and tangerine. She tells him about her stained glass studio downtown, about the tabby cat she adopted last year that keeps knocking over her half-finished panels, about how she missed him, even when he was being a complete asshole to her. He tells her about the lanterns, about the railroad line he worked on for 38 years, about how he’s been sober for 17 years, one day at a time. Every time she laughs, she leans into him a little more, her arm brushing his, her knee knocking against his when they sit on the tailgate of his beat-up Ford after he packs up the booth. He doesn’t pull away.
When the last of the fair vendors pack up their trucks and the street lights flicker on, she tilts her chin up at him, her lips parted, the faint sheen of peach iced tea gloss catching the light. He leans in and kisses her, slow, not rushing, and she tastes like peach and mint and the faintest hint of rum from the daiquiri she’d drunk an hour earlier. His hand comes up to cup her jaw, his thumb brushing the silver streak in her hair, and he doesn’t feel guilty, not even a little. He knows Eileen would have yelled at him for wasting 18 years being mad when he could have been happy.
When she pulls back to laugh at the streak of black lantern grease he smudged on her cheek when he cupped her face, he reaches for his phone to type in her number before he can talk himself out of it.
