Rudy Galvan, 62, spent 31 years as an air traffic controller at Cleveland Hopkins before a minor stroke forced him into early retirement seven years prior. His biggest flaw, the one his late wife Linda used to nag him about nonstop, was that he held grudges like they were prized possessions, tucked away and polished every chance he got. For 18 years, the top spot on that grudge list belonged to Marnie Carter, Linda’s childhood best friend, the woman he was convinced talked Linda into that solo hiking trip in the Hocking Hills where she slipped on a wet rock and never came home.
He’d avoided her ever since the funeral, bailed on neighborhood cookouts if he heard she was coming, left the grocery store mid-cart if he spotted her red hair in the produce section. He didn’t expect to run into her at the annual Maple Street summer fair, sweating through a gingham apron behind a table stacked with mason jars of jam, the sweet smell of peaches cutting through the usual fair stench of fried dough and diesel from the tilt-a-whirl.
He was reaching for a jar of peach jam, Linda’s favorite, when their hands brushed. He flinched like he’d touched a hot grill, yanking his hand back, and looked up to meet her eyes. She didn’t look away, didn’t flinch, just leaned her hip against the edge of the table, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half smile he remembered hating for 18 years, the same one she’d worn at the funeral when she tried to say something to him and he walked right past. Her hair had more silver at the roots than he remembered, freckles darker across her nose from hours in the sun canning, and there was a faint scar along her left cheekbone from the time she and Linda crashed a golf cart when they were 16.
He should have walked away. That’s what he’d practiced a hundred times if he ever ran into her, turn on his heel and leave without a word. But his boots were stuck to the sticky asphalt, the callus on her index finger from twisting jar lids still burning on his knuckle, and she was already talking, her voice lower than he remembered, smoky from the occasional menthol she used to sneak on back porches at cookouts. She said she’d been trying to find the right time to talk to him for almost two decades, that she had something Linda wrote the night before she left for that trip, something she’d been too much of a coward to hand over after he shut her out.
She pulled a crumpled envelope out of the apron pocket, edges soft from being folded and unfolded a hundred times, and held it out to him. Their fingers brushed again when he took it, and this time he didn’t flinch. He leaned against the leg of the booth to read it, the noise of the fair fading to a hum, Linda’s messy scrawling jumping off the page: she hadn’t told him she was going on the trip because he’d just spent three straight days handling the fallout from a small cargo plane crash that killed two pilots, hadn’t slept more than four hours total, and she didn’t want to add more stress to his plate. Marnie had begged her not to go alone, had even offered to go with her, but Linda said she needed the quiet to figure out how to help him through it.
The grudge he’d carried for 18 years dissolved like sugar in hot tea, fast enough to make his head spin. He looked up at Marnie, and for the first time he let himself notice the way her eyes crinkled when she was nervous, the way her wrist had a faint tattoo of a daisy, Linda’s favorite flower, right where Linda used to wear her silver bracelet. He’d always felt a stupid, guilty spark of attraction to her back when Linda was alive, would catch himself staring at her shoulders when she wore tank tops to summer cookouts, would fumble his beer bottle when she laughed too loud at one of his bad jokes. He’d written it off as a stupid midlife thing, buried it under the grudge after Linda died, but now it was bubbling back up, warm and tight in his chest, tangled up with relief and embarrassment for hating her for so long.
He bought three jars of jam, even the blackberry one he didn’t care for, and stayed by her booth until her shift ended an hour later, listening to her talk about the canning business she’d started after her husband left her four years prior, about her grandson who was obsessed with space rockets. They walked to the lemonade stand at the edge of the fairgrounds together, her elbow brushing his bicep every other step, the humidity sticking their t-shirts to their backs, the distant scream of kids on the rollercoaster mixing with the sound of a cover band playing old John Mellencamp songs. She teased him about still wearing that faded Air Nationals cap Linda got him for their 20th anniversary, and he teased her back about still drinking her lemonade with extra sugar, just like she did when they were all younger.
He asked her if she wanted to come over to his place the next weekend, told her he restored vintage CB radios out of his garage as a side gig, that he could fix the one she said her late brother left her sitting in her basement. She nodded, tucked her phone number into the pocket of his flannel shirt, her fingers brushing the fabric of his chest for a beat longer than necessary, and told him she’d bring peach pie. He stood there watching her walk to her beat up minivan, the three jars of jam heavy in his tote bag, the letter tucked safely inside his cap, and when she waved over her shoulder before she climbed in, he waved back.
