Roland Voss, 62, had spent the last three years avoiding every town event within a 10-mile radius of his cabin. A retired state park trail maintenance foreman with calloused palms and a scar snaking up his left bicep from a 2018 chainsaw mishap, he’d built a routine that required no small talk, no well-meaning “how are you holding up” questions, no reminders of the 38 years he’d spent married to Martha, who’d died of ovarian cancer three days after their anniversary. His only flaw, if you asked the ladies at the town diner, was that he was stubborn enough to rot alone before he’d admit he was lonely. He’d only driven into town for the annual summer street fair for one reason: the Mennonite stand sold the same peach pie Martha used to beg him to bring home every year, flaky crust oozing with warm, spiced fruit.
He was tucking the paper-wrapped pie under his arm and turning to leave when a woman carrying a mason jar full of blinking fireflies stepped around a funnel cake cart and bumped hard into his chest. His worn plaid flannel sleeve brushed her sun-warmed forearm, and he caught a whiff of lavender hand cream mixed with the sugary fried dough curling through the fair’s humid air. She staggered half a step back, a streak of silver in her chestnut braid falling over her shoulder, and laughed instead of apologizing. “You’re Roland, right? The guy who built half the trails in the state park?”
He blinked, taken aback. He didn’t recognize her. She was mid-50s, wearing cutoff jean shorts and a faded library volunteer t-shirt, smudges of glow-in-the-dark paint on her wrist. “Elara Moore. I took over coordinating the annual firefly watch after you stopped showing up. I’ve seen your signature on every sign-in sheet from 1999 to 2020.” She nodded at the pie under his arm. “Martha’s favorite, right? I found her old notes in the coordinator folder. She always wrote that you’d sneak a slice before you got home if no one was watching.”
Heat crept up his neck. He’d forgotten that Martha used to scribble little jokes in the margins of the firefly watch logs. He should have said excuse me, should have turned and walked back to his truck, should have gone home to eat the pie alone in front of the western he’d been rewatching for the last week. But when she tilted her head and gestured toward the tree line at the edge of the fairgrounds, her elbow brushing his ribcage as she moved, he found himself following.
They walked slow, the sounds of the fair’s carnival rides fading behind them as they stepped onto the packed dirt path he’d laid down in 2003. She stayed close enough that their shoulders brushed every few steps, and he didn’t shift away. He’d spent three years hating the idea of letting anyone get this close, feeling a sharp, sour twist of guilt every time he caught himself looking at a woman for longer than two seconds, like he was cheating on the memory of the woman who’d sat with him through every broken bone, every bad winter storm that knocked out power for three days, every late night he’d come home covered in mud and pine sap. But Elara didn’t ask about Martha, didn’t offer pity, just ranted about the town council trying to cut funding for the firefly watch to pay for a new parking lot, and he found himself laughing, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months.
They stopped at a weathered oak log bench he’d hewn and installed in 2001, right where the fireflies always gathered thickest at dusk. She sat first, patting the spot next to her, and when he sat down, her thigh pressed warm against his through his work jeans. She held out the mason jar of fireflies to him, and when he reached for it, their fingers brushed. Her skin was softer than he expected, calloused only at the tips from turning pages all day at the library. He twisted the lid off the jar, and they sat quiet for a minute, watching the fireflies blink out one by one before floating up into the dark purple sky, dotting the treeline like floating embers.
“I get it, you know,” she said soft, leaning her shoulder against his. “I moved out here after my divorce four years ago. Spent the first year only leaving the house to get groceries, thought I’d never want to be around people again. No one warns you how weird it is to stop being half of a pair.”
The tight knot in his chest loosened, just a little. He didn’t have to explain himself, didn’t have to apologize for being quiet, didn’t have to pretend he was fine. He nodded, turning his head just enough to see the way the faint glow of the fireflies caught the silver in her braid, the way her lip was tilted up in a half-smile. He thought of the pie in his truck, still warm from the stand, the mason jar he kept on his kitchen windowsill that Martha used to catch fireflies in every year, the fact that he’d spent three years waiting for the grief to get easier instead of letting himself feel anything else.
He asked her if she wanted to come back to his cabin to split the pie. He said he had vanilla ice cream in the freezer, the kind Martha used to like, too. She said yes, standing up and brushing pine needles off her shorts. They walked back toward the parking lot slow, her hand brushing his every few steps, the distant sound of the fair’s live country band drifting through the trees. He slowed his pace just enough to let her knuckles catch against his for three full steps before he curled his pinky loosely around hers.
