Russell “Rus” Pritchard, 58, spent most of his days sanding splinters out of 1970s-era redwood picnic tables for the Licking County park system. He’d retired from his high school woodshop job four years prior, two days after his wife Elayne lost her fight with ovarian cancer, and had turned down every social invite since, convinced casual mingling was for people too afraid to sit with their own quiet. His only consistent flaw, per his former student who ran the parks department, was that he held grudges so tight they left indentations in his palms.
He’d only shown up to the end-of-summer beer garden because the kid threatened to reassign his table restoration route to a part-timer who thought a power sander was a toy. He was three sips into a crisp lager, the air thick with the smell of fried cheese curds and cut grass, leaning against the leg of a folding chair he’d built himself, when Marisol Hale tripped over the chair’s front leg.
She was carrying a crate of wildflower honey sticks for the food truck, the whole stack teetering before Rus caught the crate edge with one hand and her elbow with the other. Her palm brushed his wrist first, calloused from lifting hive boxes, and the scent of clover and lemongrass hair oil hit him before she even apologized. He recognized her instantly, even under the wide beekeeper’s hat and flannel dotted with beeswax stains. She was Arthur Hale’s ex-wife. Arthur Hale, the former principal who’d gutted his and Elayne’s woodshop budget two weeks before Elayne’s diagnosis, the guy who’d called their after-school birdhouse program “a waste of district resources.”
The logical move would have been to hand her the crate, nod, and walk back to his truck. But she laughed, a loud, rough sound that cut over the off-key “Here I Go Again” cover blaring from the stage, and wiped a fleck of mead off her chin with the back of her hand. “You’re Rus, right? Elayne’s husband. I sold her honey every Saturday at the farmers market. She’d always bring me those little carved bee keychains you made for the craft fair.”
He froze. No one had mentioned Elayne in casual conversation in two years, not without that soft, pitying wince people get talking about the dead. Marisol didn’t wince. She leaned in a little, her shoulder brushing his bicep for three full seconds before she shifted back to grab a honey stick, and her eyes flicked from his scuffed work boots to his face, no judgment, no awkwardness. “I heard you restore the park tables now. I saw the one you put in by the bee sanctuary last month. The edge carvings are incredible.”
The grudge in his chest softened at the edges, just a little. He hated Arthur Hale, hated everything tied to him for years. But Marisol had left Arthur six years prior, he remembered, walked out mid-school board meeting when he tried to cut the special ed art budget, yelling he cared more about new football bleachers than kids who didn’t care about touchdowns.
They talked for an hour, standing by his chair, as the sun dipped low and the air turned cool enough he could see his breath when he laughed. She told him about the time a swarm of bees nested in Arthur’s favorite golf bag, how she let them stay three days before saying a word. He told her about the table he’d just finished carving down by the creek, with Elayne’s initials and a tiny bee etched into the corner, hidden where most people wouldn’t look. She leaned in when he talked, her knee brushing his every time someone walked past too close, and when she passed him a honey stick, her fingers lingered on his for a beat longer than necessary.
He didn’t overthink asking her to walk down to the creek to see the table. She didn’t overthink saying yes.
The path was lit by string lights strung between oak trees, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the distant band. She ran her hand over the table’s carved edge when they reached it, fingers tracing the tiny bee next to Elayne’s initials, and smiled. He reached out, brushed a stray clover petal off her flannel shoulder, his knuckles brushing the soft skin of her neck when he pulled back. She sat on the table edge, patted the spot next to her, and he sat down, his leg pressed tight against hers, as the first firefly blinked to life over the creek.
