Elias Voss is 61, makes custom fly rods out of the converted garage of his western North Carolina cabin, and hasn’t willingly attended a town community event in the eight years since his wife Linda died. His only flaw, if you ask his only remaining fishing buddy, is that he’s turned “no fun allowed” into a personal brand, shutting down any half-hearted flirting from the single women at the hardware store with a gruff shake of his head and a mumbled excuse about having a rod to finish. He only agreed to come to the annual county trout festival because his buddy threatened to hide all his rare bamboo stock if he bailed again, so he’d hidden himself in the back corner of the beer tent, nursing a hazy IPA, the faint smudge of epoxy still stuck to the calloused heel of his left hand.
He’s halfway through considering sneaking out the back when he spots her. Maren Hale, Linda’s younger cousin, the kid he’d once taught to cast a line when she was 12, the woman who’d dropped off three lasagnas and a case of his favorite beer the week Linda died before driving back to Charlotte, gone 15 years now. She’s 52, sun streaks bleached into her chestnut hair, crow’s feet fanning out at the corners of her hazel eyes when she laughs at something the guy at the food truck says, wearing a faded “Women Who Fish” t-shirt, scuffed work boots, jeans with a hole at the knee that shows a flash of freckled skin. He freezes mid-sip, because the last time he saw her she was 37, sharp-edged and angry at the world for her cousin’s early death, and now she looks like she’s finally settled into her skin.
She spots him before he can duck behind the beer cooler. She grins, the same lopsided grin she had as a kid, and cuts through the crowd of festival goers, shouldering past a group of teens in fishing hats, until she’s standing right in front of him, close enough that he can smell pine and citrus hand soap on her, no heavy perfume, just the clean smell of the outdoors. “Elias Voss. I’d know that ratty gray flannel anywhere. Linda said you’d be buried in that thing.” She pulls a stool up next to him, sits down so close their knees brush when she shifts, and signals the bartender for an IPA of her own.
He’s awkward at first, stilted answers to her questions about his rod business, his cabin, the local trout streams. He keeps telling himself this is wrong, that Maren is family, that feeling the faint spark of something when her hand brushes his reaching for a bowl of pretzels is a betrayal of Linda. She doesn’t push, just laughs at his gruff answers, tells him she moved back to town last month after her divorce, is opening a guided fly fishing outfit for women and girls new to the sport. She asks him if he’d make custom beginner rods for her clients, pays him the compliment of listing off all the small, specific details she loves about his work, the way he carves tiny trout into the handle of every rod he makes for kids, the soft finish he uses that never slips even when your hands are wet.
The band by the tent starts playing “Folsom Prison Blues,” the same song he and Linda danced to at their wedding, and Maren stands, holds out her hand, her palm calloused too, from reeling in fish, from tying knots, from work, not soft like the women who’d tried to ask him out at church. He stares at her hand for a long beat, the guilt coiling tight in his chest, until she says, quiet enough only he can hear, “Linda told me once if anything ever happened to her, I was supposed to make sure you didn’t turn into a hermit who only talked to trout. She’d kick both our asses if we stood here all night being miserable.”
He takes her hand. She pulls him to the small patch of dirt the festival set up as a dance floor, and they sway off-beat to the song, her hand resting light on his shoulder, his on her waist, close enough that he can feel her breath on his neck when she laughs at him stepping on the toe of her boot. The guilt fades slow, like ice melting in spring sun, and he realizes he’s not betraying Linda by feeling alive again, that she’d always hated seeing him mope, that she’d been the one who spent their whole marriage teasing him for being too serious.
The song ends, they don’t let go of each other right away. She tilts her head up at him, her eyes glinting in the fairy lights strung across the tent, and asks if he wants to drive down to the 24-hour diner on the edge of town, the one that serves blueberry pancakes as big as your plate all weekend. He nods, doesn’t let go of her hand as they walk out of the tent, the cool mountain air hitting their faces, the roar of the festival fading behind them. He brushes a stray pine needle off the shoulder of her t-shirt, his fingers lingering a beat longer than necessary, and smiles for the first time in eight years that doesn’t feel like he’s faking it for the benefit of everyone around him.
