Ray Escobar, 62, retired Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden, showed up to the Hill Country farmers market 47 minutes before closing, same as he did every third Saturday. He hauled his stack of restored cast iron skillets and dutch ovens to his usual spot at the far end of the asphalt, far from the bluegrass band and the swarm of soccer moms passing out free samples of pickled okra. For 8 years, ever since his wife Lucy died of ovarian cancer, he’d kept his interactions tight: take cash, hand over the cookware, mumble a care instruction, leave. He’d turned down three separate dinner invitations from the ladies at the church bake table, told the president of the local fishing club he didn’t have time for meetings, even skipped his own niece’s graduation party the prior spring because he didn’t want to field questions about when he’d “get back out there.” His biggest flaw, his sister liked to say, was that he’d turned being a widower into a full-time job, and he hated that she was right.
The wind shifted that afternoon, sharp with the smell of roasted jalapeño and cinnamon, and he looked up from wiping down a 1950s Wagner skillet to see a woman he’d never seen before leaning against the post next to his booth, a beat-up blue cooler at her feet. She was mid-50s, dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a braid, flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, a smudge of flour on her left cheek. He realized she was selling empanadas under the table, the kind the town council had banned three months prior after a woman from the new gated subdivision complained she’d gotten food poisoning from a homemade peach pie. No license, no posted signs, just her sliding foil-wrapped packages to regulars who slipped her $5 bills when no one was looking.
She caught him staring, and smirked, lifting one eyebrow. “You gonna turn me in, game warden?”
He snorted, wiping his hands on his worn work jeans. “Retired. And I never wasted time on people selling good food to folks who want it.”
She stepped closer, boots scuffing the asphalt, and held out a foil-wrapped packet. The edge of her flannel sleeve brushed his knuckle when he took it, the fabric soft from years of washes, her fingers warm even through the foil. “Beef and potato. On the house. If you don’t snitch to the code guys.”
He bit into it, the crust flaky, the filling spicy enough to make his eyes water a little, and he nodded. “Worth the risk.”
They talked for 12 minutes before he saw the code enforcement guy, the one with the buzzcut and the permanent scowl, walking down the aisle toward them. Ray’s first instinct was to step back, mind his own business, let her handle it. He’d spent 28 years following the rules, hadn’t stuck his neck out for anyone but Lucy in a decade. But he looked at her, the way she was tucking the cooler behind her legs, panic flashing in her eyes for half a second before she put on that same smirk, and he moved before he thought about it. He grabbed the cooler by the handle, hauled it under his table next to his stack of cast iron, and leaned in close enough that his shoulder brushed hers, like they were haggling over a dutch oven. He could smell lavender from her shampoo and fried dough on her shirt, could feel the heat coming off her arm where it pressed against his, and when the code guy stopped in front of the booth, he nodded at the skillet in his hand. “This one’s $45. Seasoned three times, ready to cook. My assistant was just showing me how she uses it for empanada filling.”
The code guy stared at them for a second, then shrugged and walked away. When he was out of sight, they both laughed, loud enough that the guy selling honey a few booths over looked over at them. She leaned her head against his shoulder for half a second, just a quick, unplanned touch, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t step back.
The market closed 20 minutes later, and they carried his cast iron and her cooler to the tailgate of his beat-up 2007 F150, parked in the dirt lot at the edge of the field. She pulled out a jar of mango habanero sauce and another empanada, split it down the middle with a pocket knife, and they ate it while the sun dipped below the oak trees, the sky turning pink and orange. She told him she ran the thrift store downtown, had been a widow for 6 years, sold empanadas on the side to pay for vet bills for the three rescue dogs she kept at her house out on the creek. He told her about restoring cast iron, about the 10-day backpacking trip he’d taken the previous summer out in Big Bend, about how he still slept on his side of the bed even though Lucy’s side had been empty for 8 years. He didn’t even realize he was telling her all that until he stopped talking, and she was looking at him like she understood, like she didn’t think he was broken or weird for being alone for so long.
He gave her a tiny 6-inch cast iron skillet he’d restored a week prior, the perfect size for heating up empanada filling, and she gave him a dozen frozen empanadas, wrapped in parchment paper, with a handwritten note with the heating instructions taped to the top. She scribbled her phone number on the back of a thrift store receipt, and told him to text her if he wanted to go hiking the next weekend, out on the trail by her house.
He drove home as the sky turned dark, the empanadas sitting on the passenger seat next to the leftover cast iron. He pulled into his driveway, cut the engine, and sat there for a minute, holding the receipt with her phone number in his hand. He twisted the key in the ignition to turn off the truck, and for the first time in 8 years, he didn’t reach for the radio dial to crank the classic country station loud enough to drown out the quiet of the empty house waiting for him inside.
