Elias Voss, 62, retired forensic accountant, spent three decades picking apart spreadsheets to nail embezzling CEOs and small-town city council members who siphoned park fund cash for personal golf trips. He’d brought that habit to the annual Maplewood Fire Department rib cookoff, perched on a splintered picnic table bench, half-eaten rack of dry rub ribs in front of him, eyes darting to track the teen sneaking extra cornbread from the serving table, the fire chief slipping a $20 bill into the raffle jar after drawing his own ticket for the new Yeti cooler. His shoulder ached from the old rotator cuff injury he’d gotten playing rec softball 15 years prior, hickory smoke stung his eyes enough that he’d already gone through three crumpled paper napkins wiping at them, and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” hummed low from the speakers strung between oak trees. The plastic table under his elbows was sticky with spilled soda and barbecue sauce, and he’d already wiped the spot twice with a napkin out of habit.
He was halfway through a lukewarm can of Pabst when she slid onto the bench across from him, denim jacket slung over one shoulder, blonde hair streaked with gray pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of tomato-based barbecue sauce high on her left jaw. Mara Carter, 58, Jim’s widow. Jim had been his regular golf partner for 12 years, before the sudden heart attack took him two years prior, and Elias had gone out of his way to avoid one-on-one time with her since the funeral. Not because he didn’t like her—he’d always thought she was sharper and funnier than half the guys he played golf with—but because every time he’d seen her in the last two years, his chest had tightened in a way he’d learned to ignore after his wife left him eight years prior, a stupid, fluttery thing that felt like a kid sneaking a candy bar before dinner, something he had no business feeling for his dead friend’s wife.
She nodded at his half-eaten ribs, snorting so hard a little seltzer fizz came out of her nose. “You look like you’re trying to figure out if the rib team cooked the books on their meat weight.” He blinked, surprised she’d picked up on his default squinty, focused expression, and huffed a laugh. “They did. Team 3’s serving 4 ounce portions when they advertised 6. I weighed three on the portable scale I keep in my truck for flea market finds.” She threw her head back and laughed, loud enough that the group of firefighters two tables over glanced over, and she leaned forward, elbows on the table, so close he could smell the vanilla perfume she wore under the smoke and the citrus of the hard seltzer she was drinking. Her flannel shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, showing a small silver golf club pendant Jim had gotten her for their 25th anniversary, the one he’d asked Elias to help pick out. Their knees brushed under the table, rough denim on rough denim, and he flinched back like he’d been burned, sipping his beer to cover the flush he felt crawling up his neck. She didn’t mention it, just kept talking, telling him about the new rescue dog she’d adopted, a three-legged hound mix named Hank that kept stealing socks out of her laundry basket, and he found himself leaning in too, forgetting to scan the crowd for small scams, forgetting that he was supposed to feel guilty for enjoying the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, the way her fingers brushed his when she passed him a packet of wet wipes to get the sauce off his thumb.
He was mid-story about the time he’d caught a city clerk embezzling $40k by faking stray cat neutering receipts, when she reached across the table, her thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. “You got sauce there,” she said, her voice softer than it had been before, no teasing edge left, and he froze, his brain short-circuiting for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long. No spreadsheets to parse, no red flags to flag, no risk assessments to run, just the warmth of her thumb on his stubble, the way her hazel eyes were locked on his, no look of pity or friendly politeness, just something sharper, hungrier. He caught her wrist before she could pull back, his fingers wrapping around the soft skin just above her scuffed silver watch, and he didn’t say anything, just held it for half a second, long enough for her to know it wasn’t an accident, long enough for him to admit to himself that the guilt he’d been carrying around for two years wasn’t worth ignoring the first thing that had made him feel alive since he turned in his work laptop three years prior. She didn’t pull away, just smiled, a small, private thing that felt like a secret just for him.
The cookoff announcer blared over the speakers that the raffle winners were about to be drawn, and she tilted her head toward the parking lot, the corner of her mouth tugging up. “You got those old John Wayne movies Jim used to rave about at your place, right? The ones he’d bring to every golf weekend and make us all watch even if we’d seen them 10 times?” He nodded, already standing, grabbing his worn leather jacket off the back of the bench, tossing their half-empty cans in the trash can by the table. She slipped her hand into his when they walked across the dewy grass, her palm calloused from years of gardening, warm even through the chill of the early October air. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t run a cost-benefit analysis on whether this would make Jim roll in his grave, didn’t audit his own feelings to make sure they were valid, for once in his life, he just let himself feel it. He pressed the fob to unlock the doors, the taillights flashing twice in the golden dusk, and he held the passenger door open for her, his palm brushing the small of her back when she stepped up.
