Rudy Galvan, 62, retired border patrol canine handler, has not agreed to a single set-up in the eight years since his wife packed her camper and drove north for Alaska. His only consistent companion is Mabel, a three-legged German shepherd he rescued from the shelter where he volunteers three weekends a month, and his biggest flaw is that he still holds grudges against people who wronged him a decade prior, even if they’re six feet under. He’d dragged his old patrol buddy Javi to the summer craft beer festival outside Tucson mostly to get Javi to stop nagging him about “wasting his golden years” and partially for the prickly pear ale the local brewery only brews once a year.
The line for the ale stretched 20 deep when he got there, sweat beading at the edge of his worn cowboy hat, the smell of roasted green chiles from the nearby food truck curling through the hot, dry air. Someone bumped his elbow hard enough that half his just-poured ale sloshed onto his scuffed work boots, and he bit back a sharp curse before he turned around. It was Elara Voss, 58, the widow of his former patrol captain Tom Voss, the man who’d written him up for letting a lost 16-year-old migrant girl go home to her grandma in Douglas instead of processing her for deportation back in 2011. Rudy had avoided her at every local function for 15 years, assuming she was just as cold and rigid as her husband, the kind of woman who’d side with the rules over a scared kid every time.
She was flustered, linen sun dress dotted with stray beer drops, silver streaks in her dark hair catching the late afternoon gold. “I am so sorry, I tripped over a kid’s skateboard,” she said, dabbing at his boot with a crumpled napkin, her knuckles brushing the frayed hem of his jeans by accident. He froze, the sharp retort he’d had ready dying on his tongue. She smelled like jasmine lotion and lime seltzer, nothing like the heavy perfume he’d always imagined she wore to department dinners. She offered to buy him a whole new pint, and against every grudge-driven instinct he had, he said yes.
They found a weathered picnic table tucked under a mesquite tree, far enough from the mariachi band that they didn’t have to yell to hear each other. He learned she’d quit her job as a high school English teacher three months after Tom died of a heart attack two years prior, took the county librarian position because it let her bring story hours to the small desert towns outside the city. She hated the department dinners, hated that Tom made her wear heels for four hours straight and smile at men who told jokes that made her skin crawl. She’d never agreed with him about that 16-year-old girl, had fought with him for three days after he wrote Rudy up.
Their knees brushed under the table when she leaned in to look at the photo of Mabel he pulled up on his phone, her bare leg warm against his denim, and neither of them pulled away. She laughed so hard at his story about Mabel stealing a whole rack of ribs off his neighbor’s grill that she snort-laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth, and he found himself grinning so wide his cheeks hurt. When her hand brushed his passing him his new pint, her skin cool from holding the frosty glass, he felt a tingle crawl up his forearm that he hadn’t felt in longer than he could remember. She held his gaze for three full beats after he told her he’d never been married long enough to hate anyone as much as she’d hated Tom’s rules, no pity in her warm brown eyes, just quiet understanding.
He’d spent 15 years lumping her in with every bad memory he had of that captain, every unfair write-up, every missed holiday with his family, and the realization that she’d been just as trapped by that man as he had been made the tight knot of resentment in his chest unravel fast. He almost told her he was still mad about the write-up, but then she said she’d been thinking about adopting a senior dog from the shelter for months, had been too nervous to go alone, and asked if he’d come with her the next morning.
He almost said no out of habit, almost made an excuse about Mabel needing her meds at noon, but then she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and he saw the faint scar on her wrist from a dog bite she’d gotten as a kid, the one she’d mentioned ten minutes prior. He said yes instead. They exchanged numbers, her thumb brushing his when she handed him back his phone after typing hers in, and Javi yelled from across the field that he was heading out if Rudy wanted a ride. Rudy yelled back he’d find his own way home. She tilted her head, grinning, and asked if he wanted to split a plate of green chile tacos from the food truck by the library after he finished his beer. He nodded, leaning back against the bench, and let his shoulder press light against hers as they watched a group of kids chase a golden retriever across the grass.
