Elias Voss, 53, leans his hip against a warped pine picnic table at the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff, twisting a cold jar of test-batch blackberry mead between his calloused palms. He’d rather be back at his apiary, checking the new hive boxes he built last weekend, but his niece Lila begged him to come support her entry in the white chicken chili category, and he never can say no to her. The air smells like smoked paprika, burnt charcoal, and cheap beer, the crackle of the PA system mixing with the shrieks of kids chasing each other around the playground at the edge of the park. He’s avoided most of the regulars all afternoon, still carrying the quiet grudge that half the town took his ex-wife’s side when she left him eight years prior, no questions asked.
He lifts the jar to take a sip, and his gaze catches on a woman in a forest ranger uniform leaning against the food truck 20 feet away. She’s got sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a braid, a thin scar slicing through her left eyebrow, scuffed steel-toe boots caked with red clay. He recognizes her immediately: Mara Carter, his ex-wife’s younger sister, the kid who used to crash their camping trips when she was 19, who’d once gotten lost on a hike and he’d spent three hours searching for her in the Pisgah National Forest. He hasn’t seen her in 12 years, last he heard she was working as a ranger in Oregon.
She spots him before he can look away, grinning wide enough to show the same dimple in her left cheek she had as a teenager, and walks over. She stops close enough that he can smell pine sap and cinnamon gum on her, the cuff of her uniform brushing his wrist when she nods at the mead jar in his hand. “No way you’re still making that sour honey wine you used to brew in the garage,” she says, holding his gaze longer than polite, no trace of awkwardness even though the last time they spoke was at his ex-wife’s second wedding.
His throat goes dry. He’s already fighting the stupid, unwelcome jolt in his chest at the sight of her, the part of him that’s screaming it’s wrong to even look at her that way, that she’s family, that the whole town would talk if they so much as stood too close together. He holds out the jar anyway, and when she reaches for it, their fingers brush. The contact is electric, warm, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot hive tool, his face heating up. He mumbles an excuse about needing to go check on Lila’s chili, but she laughs, soft, and tugs on the sleeve of his beat up Carhartt jacket. “C’mon,” she says. “Walk with me to get a corndog. I’ve got stuff to tell you.”
He goes, even though every stubborn, self-isolating bone in his body is telling him to run. They walk to the edge of the park, sitting on a weathered split-rail fence overlooking the creek, and she tells him she took the head ranger position for the county three weeks prior, that she never thought his ex-wife leaving him was fair, that she knew about the affair with the hardware store owner six months before anyone else did, that she never said anything because she didn’t want to start family drama. She shifts closer, her shoulder pressing firm against his, and he can feel the heat of her through the thick fabric of their jackets. “I had a crush on you when I was 19, you know,” she says, quiet enough that the wind almost carries the words away. “I just never said anything because you were married.”
The confession hangs in the air between them, and for a second Elias thinks he’s going to panic, that he’ll make up some stupid excuse and drive straight back to his apiary and lock himself in the honey house for a week. But then she tilts her head up to look at him, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, and the guilt he’s been carrying all afternoon melts away, slow and warm. He doesn’t pull away when she brushes a fleck of chili off the front of his shirt, her knuckle grazing his chest through the jacket.
He offers to bring her a full case of the blackberry mead out to her ranger station the next morning, before she starts her patrol shift. She nods, pulling a crumpled forest service fire warning flyer out of her pocket and scribbling her personal cell number on the back of it, tucking it into the breast pocket of his Carhartt, her hand lingering for a beat against his chest. She squeezes his wrist lightly before she hops off the fence, turning to walk back toward the cookoff. He sits there for ten minutes after she’s gone, sipping the mead, watching the sun dip pink and orange behind the Blue Ridge peaks, the crumpled flyer pressing warm against his chest through the jacket fabric.
