Wendell Rojas, 62, retired smokejumper turned part-time wild mushroom foraging guide, shifted his weight on the folding chair behind his harvest festival booth, the faded patch on his canvas jacket frayed at the edges where 17 seasons of fire jumps had worn it thin. He’d avoided the town’s public events for 18 years, ever since his wife Elaine dropped dead mid-sentence while they were stirring oatmeal one Tuesday morning, but his niece had begged him to set up a booth for his dried chanterelle and morel blends, said it would get him out of the cabin he’d holed up in since the funeral. The air smelled like roasted chestnuts, pine, and the sharp, hoppy fizz of IPA from the craft beer tent three spots down, the bluegrass band off by the corn maze sawing through a cover of *Folsom Prison Blues* loud enough that his boots vibrated a little against the packed dirt.
He’d just reached for the roll of paper towels under his table to wipe up a spill of mushroom-infused olive oil when another hand closed around the same roll, knuckles rough and calloused, brushing his. He pulled back fast, like he’d touched a hot stove, and looked up. The woman running the hard cider booth next to his was grinning, gap between her two front teeth, flannel-lined jeans caked in mud at the cuffs, a chanterelle tattoo curling around her left wrist. “Sorry, partner,” she said, voice low and rough from years of smoking, “spiced cider decided to take a dive off my table all over my boots. Figured I’d mop it up before I track it all over your fancy mushroom jars.” Her name was Maren, she said, 58, moved to the area from Portland six months prior after her divorce, ran a small cidery out of a converted barn on 10 acres outside town, foraged most of her add-ins herself—crabapples, wild blackberries, even the occasional birch syrup tapped from trees on her property.
He nodded, kept his answers short at first, eyes darting away whenever she leaned in to sniff a jar of his dried matsutakes, her shoulder brushing his bicep, warm even through the thick canvas of his jacket. He’d spent so long wrapped up in grief he’d forgotten what it felt like to have a woman that close, that easy with her attention, no expectations, no pitying looks when she spotted the wedding band he still wore on a chain around his neck. The guilt hit sharp, fast, like a punch to the gut: he had no right to be enjoying this, no right to feel the warm hum in his chest when she laughed at his terrible joke about morels only growing where lightning had struck, no right to notice how the golden hour light caught the strands of gray in her auburn hair, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from a hiking accident when she was 22. He caught Elaine’s cousin staring at them from across the field, arms crossed, mouth tight, and he stepped back, putting three feet of space between him and Maren, busying himself rearranging the jars on his table like they were out of order.
Maren didn’t push. She just handed him a sample cup of her spiced reserve cider, cold and sweet with a kick of cinnamon at the end, and went back to helping a customer. By the time the festival closed at 7, the sky had gone dark purple, drizzle spitting down, turning the dirt under their feet slick with mud. Her tent leg had snapped halfway through the afternoon, and he’d lent her a spare foraging stake from his truck to prop it up, so he walked over to grab it once she’d packed her last jug of cider into the back of her beat-up Subaru. She was stepping off the edge of the tent platform when her boot slipped on a patch of wet oak leaves, and he reached out, catching her by the waist, his hand splayed across the thick flannel of her shirt, holding her steady for three beats too long before he tried to pull away.
She didn’t let him. She curled her fingers around his wrist, kept him there, looking up at him, her eyes glistening in the string lights strung between the booths. “You don’t have to be scared of this, you know,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it over the sound of the volunteers packing up the stage. He opened his mouth to say something, to tell her he was too broken, that he still talked to his wife when he was out foraging alone, that he didn’t know how to be anything other than half a person, but she leaned in first, kissing him on the cheek, then on the mouth, soft, tasting like cider and clove. He kissed her back, slow, not caring that Elaine’s cousin was still standing by the corn maze watching, not caring that he still had his wedding band around his neck, not caring that he’d spent 18 years thinking he’d never feel anything other than cold again.
He followed her Subaru to the tiny diner off the old logging road, the one that served elk meatloaf and pie so sweet it made your teeth ache, pulling into the parking spot next to her 10 minutes later. She was already leaning against the hood of her car, holding two paper bags of warm donuts she’d picked up from the bakery stand on the way out, and she waved when she saw him, grinning that same gap-toothed grin that had made his chest feel tight earlier. He turned off his truck, grabbed the jug of reserve cider she’d given him off the passenger seat, and stepped out into the cold, crisp air, the donut smell wrapping around him before he even crossed the parking lot.
