Roman Voss, 62, spent three decades tracking gray wolf packs across the Superior National Forest before he retired two years prior. His biggest flaw, by his own admission, was holding a grudge against small talk so fierce he’d skipped every local community event for eight years, ever since his wife Carol died of breast cancer. He only showed up to the June beer and brat fest because his 80-year-old next door neighbor left a free ticket tucked under his doormat with a note that said “you’re turning into a hermit, Roman.”
The sun hung low and sticky over the fairgrounds, the air thick with the smell of charred sausage, hop-heavy craft beer, and citronella candles burning to keep mosquitos away. He’d been standing by the beer stand for 12 minutes, already mentally mapping the quickest route back to his truck, when he spotted her. Marnie, Carol’s younger cousin, 58, the one who’d showed up to their wedding barefoot with a bottle of whiskey in her purse, who he hadn’t seen since Carol’s funeral. She was leaning against a picnic table, a half-empty beer in one hand, the other pushing a strand of dark hair streaked with silver away from her face, and she was looking right at him.
He froze for half a second, considered ducking behind the nearest port-a-potty, but she was already walking over, cutoff jeans frayed at the cuffs, linen button-down unbuttoned at the collar, beat-up white Converse on her feet. She smelled like lavender hand lotion and the faint tang of cherry hard candy when she stopped half a foot away, close enough that he could see the smattering of freckles across her nose he’d forgotten existed. “I knew that was you,” she said, her voice a little rough from decades of occasional smoking, the same lazy Minnesota drawl she’d had since they were kids. “No one else around here wears that beat-up Carhartt jacket in 80 degree weather.”
He laughed, surprised at how easy it came. He’d spent so long telling himself any connection to Carol’s family would feel like a betrayal, like he was tainting the memory of their 32 years together, that he’d avoided all of them on purpose. But Marnie didn’t push him to talk about Carol first, she just waved the bartender over for two more IPAs, slid onto the picnic table bench, and patted the spot next to her. He sat, his knee brushing hers for half a second when he shifted, and he felt a jolt run up his spine he hadn’t felt since he was 20 years old. He pulled his knee away fast, cheeks warm, and she smiled like she knew exactly what he was thinking.
They talked for an hour, first about the terrible cover band fumbling through Tom Petty deep cuts, then about her job at the local library, how she’d just finished cataloging a whole stack of vintage wildlife field guides that made her think of him immediately, then about the trips they’d all taken up to Carol’s family cabin when they were younger. She mentioned how Carol used to hide his beer in the lake to keep it cold when he was out fishing all day, and he almost teared up—no one had brought that up in years. The crowd noise softened as the sun dipped below the treeline, and Marnie leaned in closer, her shoulder pressing against his bicep, to talk over the music. Her hand brushed his when she passed him a napkin to wipe mustard off his chin, and he didn’t pull away this time.
He was fighting a war in his head, half of him screaming that this was wrong, that she was Carol’s cousin, that family would talk, that he was dishonoring the woman he’d loved for most of his life. The other half of him ached so bad for someone who knew him, who didn’t treat him like a broken toy that might shatter if you mentioned his wife’s name, that he could barely breathe. He stared at her, at the chipped red nail polish on her fingers, at the way she was biting her lower lip like she was waiting for him to say something, and he knew he didn’t want to go home alone tonight.
“You wanna come back to my place?” he said, before he could talk himself out of it. “I got that old bottle of bourbon you brought to our wedding, still sitting on the top shelf. Haven’t opened it yet.”
Marnie’s smile softened, she nodded, and stood up, grabbing her canvas bag off the bench. He walked her to his beat-up Ford F150, opened the passenger door for her, his hand brushing hers when she stepped up into the cab. He closed the door behind her, walked around to the driver’s side, climbed in, and turned the key. The radio cut on to Patsy Cline’s Crazy, the song Carol used to sing while she made pancakes on Sunday mornings, and Marnie reached over, resting her hand light on his forearm, her palm warm through the thin fabric of his work shirt.
He pulled out of the parking lot, not looking back at the fairgrounds, not thinking about the opinions of anyone who might spot them together, just focused on the weight of her hand on his arm, the sound of her humming along to the radio, the quiet relief of not being alone for the first time in eight years.
