Rafe Mendez, 59, retired wildland fire crew boss, had spent the first 45 minutes of the VFW summer cookout hovering by the beer cooler, plotting his escape. Six years after his wife Carol died of ovarian cancer, he still hated these gatherings, the way people would shoot him sad, sidelong glances before muttering some half-baked line about how she’d be proud of him. He’d only shown up at all because his old crew lead Jimmie had banged on his cabin door at 8 a.m. with a cold six pack of Coors Banquet and a threat to drag him out by his boot laces if he said no.
The cooler handle was sticky with spilled soda and condensation when he reached for his third beer, and his hand brushed someone else’s mid-grab. The skin on the back of her hand was soft, smelled like jasmine lotion and coconut sunblock, a sharp, pleasant contrast to the charcoal smoke and burnt hamburger grease hanging thick in the air. He looked up, and blinked. He’d recognize that dimple in her left cheek anywhere. It was Lila, Carol’s much younger cousin, the one who’d been a bridesmaid at their wedding 8 years prior, when she was still 26 and fresh out of nursing school.
“Rafe,” she said, grinning, her voice a little louder than necessary over the sound of kids screaming as they chased a golden retriever across the grass. She stepped closer, the crowd of VFW members and their families jostling them until their shoulders were almost pressed together, and she leaned in so he could hear her better. “I didn’t know you’d be here. I just got into town last week for a 3-month ER contract at St. Luke’s. Carol used to bring me to these cookouts every summer when I was a teen.”
He nodded, his throat suddenly dry. He’d only seen her twice in the years he’d been married to Carol, both times for family holidays, and he’d always thought she was bright, quick to laugh, but he’d never let himself look too long. That felt like a line you didn’t cross, even when your wife was gone. He mumbled something about Jimmie forcing him to come, and she laughed, the sound light over the twang of the country cover band setting up by the pavilion.
She nodded at the empty spot on the splintered picnic bench a few feet away, and he found himself following her before he could think better of it. They sat down, and a group of teens carrying plates of potato salad squeezed past, making her knee bump his under the table. She didn’t pull away. The denim of her cutoffs was thin, and he could feel the heat of her leg through the worn fabric of his work pants.
She asked him about the trails in the Boise foothills, said she’d already had three hikers come into the ER with heat exhaustion in her first week, and she didn’t want to end up as one of them. He found himself talking more than he had in months, telling her about the hidden swimming hole off Trail 17, the way the aspens turned gold in the Sawtooths the second week of September, the time he’d gotten stuck on a ridgeline for 12 hours during the 2017 Pioneer Fire, his radio dead, his crew miles away. She leaned in when he talked, her elbows on the table, her eyes fixed on his, no pity there, just curiosity.
The sun dipped below the foothills as they talked, painting the sky pink and orange, and the crowd started to thin out, people packing up coolers and herding tired kids into minivans. He knew he should leave, go back to his empty cabin, heat up a frozen burrito, watch the same western he’d seen 12 times. But he couldn’t make himself stand up. There was a low, thrumming excitement in his chest he hadn’t felt in years, tangled up with a sharp, hot twist of guilt. This was Carol’s cousin. It felt wrong, like he was breaking some unspoken rule, betraying the memory of the woman he’d loved for 12 years.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket, checked the time, and looked up at him, her head tilted to the side, the last of the sun catching the gold hoop in her left ear. “You wanna go get milkshakes at that old diner on State Street?” she asked, like it was the most normal question in the world. “Carol used to take me there after cookouts, get the chocolate peanut butter one with extra whipped cream. She always said you were too stubborn to treat yourself to anything that wasn’t straight off a camp stove.”
The mention of Carol’s name knocked the breath out of him for a second, and he hesitated. Then he thought about the empty cabin, the silence that waited for him there, the way Carol used to tease him for being a hermit even before she got sick. She’d always loved Lila, always said she was the only other person in the family who could put up with his grumpy silences. “Yeah,” he said, before he could overthink it. “That sounds good.”
They walked across the parking lot to his beat-up 2008 Silverado, and she stopped halfway, reaching up to brush a pine needle off the collar of his flannel shirt. Her fingers lingered on his shoulder for a beat, and he could feel the warmth of her hand through the thin fabric, static fizzing under his skin. He unlocked the truck, held the passenger door open for her, and she slid in, kicking her boots up on the dash like she’d done it a hundred times. He turned the key, and the old country station he always left it on blared to life, a Patsy Cline song Carol used to sing in the shower. She laughed, tapping her boot to the beat, and looked over at him, grinning. He shifted the truck into drive, pulled out of the parking lot, and didn’t glance in the rearview mirror once.
