Roland Voss, 62, vintage canoe restorer and part-time apiarist in northern Michigan, leaned against the splintered wood siding of the county fair’s fried pie stand and wiped sweat from the back of his neck. He’d already dodged three neighbors pestering him to fix their rotting dock posts, and one former student’s mom who kept pushing him to meet her newly divorced sister from Grand Rapids. The fair noise buzzed around him: the tinny jingle of the Tilt-A-Whirl, kids screaming as they raced down the giant slide, the sharp, sweet smell of cotton candy mixing with the dusty scent of hay bales from the petting zoo ten feet away. He’d only agreed to show up to support his 12-year-old granddaughter’s 4-H beekeeping entry, and he was already counting the minutes until he could drive back to his quiet lake cottage, no small talk required.
He reached for the last peach fried pie under the heat lamp, and his knuckles brushed another person’s at the same time. He pulled his hand back fast, mumbled an apology, and looked down to meet warm, crinkled brown eyes. The woman in front of him was maybe 58, wearing a faded linen sundress dotted with tiny bee stencils along the hem, a smudge of potting soil on her left cheek. Her hair was streaked with silver, pulled back in a loose braid half undone in the heat. “You can have it,” she said, laughing, her voice low and rough like she spent most days reading out loud. “I’ve been hovering here ten minutes waiting for a fresh batch, I can hold out longer.”
Roland shook his head, flagged down the teen running the stand, and paid for two plastic forks. “No sense in either of us waiting,” he said, splitting the flaky crust down the middle. They stood shoulder to shoulder while they ate, their arms brushing every time they lifted their forks. She smelled like lavender hand soap and faint, sharp lemon, and he could hear the soft crunch of pie crust between her teeth over the fair’s roar. Her name was Clara, she’d moved to the area six months prior to run the small county library, she’d come to the fair specifically to check out the beekeeping entries because she wanted to put a hive in the library’s backyard to teach kids about pollinators. She’d seen his award-winning honey comb display earlier, she said, and had been tracking him down all afternoon to ask where she could buy bulk wildflower honey for the library’s upcoming bake sale.
He told himself he should hand her his contact info, give her the honey, and leave. That’s what he would have done any time in the last eight years, since his wife Elaine died. He’d spent so long clinging to the idea that any warm new interaction with another woman was a betrayal of their 32 years together that he’d turned down every dinner invitation, every set-up, every casual coffee offer from people in town. But Clara didn’t make that soft, pitying face everyone else did when he mentioned Elaine loved peach fried pie too, that they’d come to this same fair every year until she got sick. She just nodded, took another bite of pie, and said her ex-husband hated all fruit desserts, would only eat chips and frozen hamburgers for dinner, so she’d stopped baking pies entirely for 15 years after they married.
“Wanna ride the Ferris wheel?” she asked, wiping crumbs off her dress with the back of her hand when they finished. Roland froze. He hadn’t ridden a Ferris wheel since his granddaughter was five, when she’d gotten scared halfway up and cried until they got off. He told himself he was being ridiculous, that it was just a ride, that it didn’t mean anything, but his chest felt tight like he was about to cross a line he’d drawn for himself years ago. “You’re not scared of heights, are you?” she teased, tilting her head, the laugh lines around her eyes crinkling even more.
He followed her to the ride, his work boots kicking up dust on the asphalt. The Ferris wheel car swayed a little when they climbed in, their knees pressing together when they sat down, the thin fabric of her dress brushing the denim of his jeans. When the car stopped at the very top, the wind picked up, blowing a strand of her loose hair into his face. She leaned in to brush it away, her palm brushing his cheek for half a second, warm and soft. He didn’t pull back. He admitted he hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone new in eight years, that he’d thought he’d spend the rest of his life fixing canoes and tending bees and never letting anyone get close again. She nodded, her knee still pressed against his, and said she’d moved to town to get away from her toxic ex, that she’d thought the same thing, that she’d spend her days running the library and never letting anyone know her well enough to annoy her.
The Ferris wheel started moving again, and they didn’t talk the rest of the way down. When they got off, he led her to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, pulled a full jar of wildflower honey from the cooler he kept in the bed for his granddaughter, and handed it to her. She pulled a crumpled grocery receipt from her purse, scribbled her phone number on the back in bright blue fountain pen, and pressed it into his palm. He tucked the paper into the breast pocket of his faded flannel shirt, where it sat warm against his chest, and watched her walk to her small hatchback, the bee stencils on her dress fluttering in the wind as she went. He pulled his flip phone out of his pocket as soon as she turned the corner, already mentally drafting a message asking if she wanted to come out to his cottage the next weekend to see his hives, and test the peach pie he’d been meaning to bake for the first time in eight years.
