Silas Rainer, 59, runs a 300-square-foot antique typewriter repair shop out of a converted garage in Boise’s North End, hasn’t spoken to anyone from his ex-wife’s side of the family since she packed her suitcase and left with a travel yoga instructor in 2011. He’s got a scar snaking up his left calf from a 2013 wildfire, a habit of chewing on the end of a flathead screwdriver when he’s focused, and a strict rule that no one touches the oak workbench at the back of his shop, not even the regulars who’ve been bringing him machines for a decade.
He’d ducked out to the Saturday farmers market in mid-August only to drop off a restored 1950s Royal Quiet De Luxe for a retired professor, planned to grab a root beer from the old soda stand and hightail it home before the midday heat settled in. The drizzle started without warning, fat cold drops splattering the back of his neck right as he turned away from the soda cooler, and he slammed straight into a woman holding a paper cup of pink lemonade, the whole thing sloshing down the front of her cream linen blouse and his worn work jeans.
He sputtered an apology, grabbing a handful of crumpled napkins from the stand next to him, and his hand brushed the bare skin of her shoulder when he leaned in to dab at the stain on her chest. She didn’t flinch. She laughed, loud and warm, and he recognized that laugh before he even looked at her face. It was Lila, his ex-wife’s younger half-sister, the one who’d showed up to their house every Thanksgiving with a backpack full of art supplies and a stack of beat-up poetry books, the one who’d sat on his workshop floor for two hours in 2018 asking him to walk her through how to replace a typewriter ribbon even though his ex had kept rolling her eyes and saying it was a waste of time.
She was 49 now, a few streaks of auburn in her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of charcoal on the side of her wrist, and she was standing so close he could smell jasmine lotion mixed with the hickory smoke drifting over from the BBQ stand at the end of the row. She held his gaze steady when he stammered that he hadn’t seen her in years, no awkward glance away, no polite small talk deflection, just that same lopsided grin he’d always liked more than he’d ever admitted to anyone, even himself.
He offered to pay for her blouse, offered to buy her another lemonade, offered anything he could think of to make up for the fact that he was suddenly hot under the collar, furious at himself for even noticing how the damp linen clung to her shoulders, furious that he’d spent 12 years writing off everyone connected to his ex like they’d all personally betrayed him. She waved off the offer to pay for the shirt, said she’d spilled worse on it when she was teaching high school art, and said he could make it up to her by giving her a tour of his shop later that week. She’d just moved back to Boise, she said, had taken a job at the high school three blocks from his shop, had been looking for someone to help her fix up a beat-up Underwood she’d found at a garage sale.
He hesitated for a full ten seconds, his mind screaming that this was a bad idea, that anyone related to his ex would only leave him with a mess to clean up, that he didn’t need the chaos of letting someone new into the tiny, ordered life he’d built for himself. He said yes anyway.
She showed up at his shop at 6 PM on Thursday, carrying a tupperware of peach pie she’d baked that morning, the crust still crumbly and sweet when he took a bite. He walked her past the shelves of half-restored machines, the clack of keys filling the small space when he tapped out a line on a 1930s Remington for her, and when they got to the workbench at the back, she didn’t reach out to touch anything without asking first, just leaned in to look at the half-disassembled Underwood he’d been working on for weeks, and said she remembered him talking about that exact model when she’d visited in 2018, how he’d said it was his favorite to work on because the keys had the perfect weight.
No one had ever remembered that. Not his ex, not his regulars, not even his own brother who’d helped him build the shop.
She turned to face him, their arms brushing where they were both leaning against the edge of the workbench, the smell of typewriter oil and peach pie and that jasmine lotion wrapping around him, and she said she’d had a crush on him since she was 22, that she’d never said anything because he was married to her sister, that she’d thought about him every few years since the divorce, wondering if he was still fixing typewriters, still listening to old Johnny Cash records while he worked.
He froze for half a second, the 12 years of anger and resentment and fear sitting heavy in his chest, and then he kissed her, slow, no rush, her hand coming up to rest on the scar on his calf where it was pressed against hers. They finished the pie sitting on the floor next to the workbench, talking about the wildfires he’d fought, the art projects her students were working on, the way the city had changed since she’d left 15 years prior. He gave her the Royal he’d brought to the market that Saturday, said it was hers, no charge, that it typed smoother than the one she’d found at the garage sale.
She stayed until 9, when he locked up the shop, his rescue hound Mutt trotting out ahead of them to greet her when they stepped onto the sidewalk. He opened the passenger door of his beat-up 2004 Ford F-150 for her, and she tucked a stray strand of gray hair behind his ear before she climbed in. The downtown streetlights glinted off the silver fire department charm on the chain around her neck as she leaned over to turn the radio to the old country station he’d listened to since he was a teenager.
