Rafe Mendez is 62, a retired antique map restorer who spent 38 years patching faded parchment and reattaching frayed atlas edges for private collectors and East Coast university archives. His biggest flaw, the one his fishing buddies rib him about every Saturday at the small-town diner, is that he built a concrete wall around his personal life ever since his wife Elara died of ovarian cancer seven years prior. He turns down every setup, avoids any event where he knows single women his age congregate, and keeps a framed photo of Elara on his truck dash so no one gets the wrong idea. He only agreed to come to the county fall chili cookoff because his buddy Tommy owed him a case of his favorite bourbon barrel stout for helping fix the roof on Tommy’s hunting cabin.
He’s leaning against a splintered oak table by the craft beer tent, picking at a bowl of five-alarm chili that’s burning the edge of his tongue, when someone slams into his left side hard enough to slosh half his beer onto the grass. He blinks, ready to snap, and finds himself staring down at Lila Marquez, Elara’s younger cousin, who he’d only met once, at the funeral. She’s 58, he remembers, used to be a competitive horse trainer out in Wyoming, just moved back to town three months prior to take care of her mom who had a stroke. She’s holding a half-empty can of pumpkin spice hard seltzer, a little of it dribbled down the front of her worn denim jacket, and she’s laughing so hard her shoulders are shaking, like she can’t believe she just ran into the most reclusive man in the county.
“Sorry about that,” she says, stepping in close enough that he can smell lavender hand lotion and wood smoke in her wavy dark hair, streaked through with silver that she doesn’t bother to dye. She yanks a crumpled napkin out of her jeans pocket and dabs at the seltzer spot on the sleeve of his red flannel, her knuckle brushing the thick scar on his forearm he got when he crashed his dirt bike when he was 19. He freezes, half of him screaming that this is wrong, that Elara would hate this, that any attention from her cousin is a betrayal he can’t come back from, the other half acutely aware of how warm her hand is, how her eyes are the same warm amber as Elara’s but crinkle at the corners when she smiles in a way Elara’s never did.
He doesn’t step back. He doesn’t say anything for a full ten seconds, just listens to the bluegrass band playing a twangy cover of John Prine down by the food trucks, the sound of kids screaming as they chase each other with glow sticks, the faint pop of seltzer cans opening across the field. She holds his eye contact when she’s done dabbing the spot, doesn’t look away like most people do when they notice how quiet he is, how closed off. “I heard you fix old maps,” she says, leaning against the table next to him, their shoulders pressed together so lightly he’s not even sure she’s doing it on purpose. “I got a 1927 map of the Grand Teton range my dad left me, it got water damaged when my basement flooded last month. You think you could take a look at it?”
He says yes before he can think better of it. They talk for 45 minutes, him telling her about the map he restored last year that was carried across the Oregon Trail by a family of homesteaders, her telling him about the 12 rescue horses she brought with her from Wyoming, the one with a broken leg that she’s been nursing back to health for six months. He finds himself laughing, a low rusty sound he hasn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years, when she tells him about the time a miniature donkey escaped from her farm and broke into a neighbor’s garden to eat all their heirloom tomatoes.
When the sun starts to dip below the ridge, painting the sky pink and tangerine, she nods toward the trailhead at the edge of the field, the one that leads up to the old fire tower overlook. “You wanna walk up there?” she asks, kicking a pinecone across the grass. “No one goes up there this late, you can see the whole valley lit up for the harvest festival on the other side of the mountain.” He hesitates, his eyes flicking to the folded photo of Elara he has tucked in his wallet, the one he touches every morning before he gets out of bed. He thinks about all the times he told himself he’d never let anyone else in, that his life was done being messy, done having anything to lose. Then he looks at Lila, at the chipped blue nail polish on her fingers, the thin scar across her left eyebrow she got when she fell off a horse as a teen, and he nods.
The walk up is steep, leaves crunching under their scuffed work boots, the air sharp with the smell of pine and burning maple. Halfway up, she slips on a wet rock, and he grabs her hand to steady her, doesn’t let go when she’s back on her feet. Her palm is calloused, warm, a little dusty from mucking out stalls that morning, and his hand fits in hers like it was made to be there. When they get to the top, the valley below is strung with fairy lights, the faint sound of the band drifting up through the trees. She turns to him, leans in slow, so he has time to pull away if he wants, and kisses him.
He kisses her back. He doesn’t feel guilty, not like he thought he would. He feels light, like the weight he’s been carrying on his chest for seven years just lifted a little. They stay up there for another hour, sitting on the weathered wooden bench next to the tower, talking about nothing and everything, her head resting on his shoulder. When they walk back down, he offers to come over to her farm tomorrow to look at the map, and help her fix the broken fence panel she mentioned that the donkey broke.
She stops next to her beat up old Ford pickup in the parking lot, squeezes his hand before she pulls open the door. She tucks a crumpled piece of paper with her address and phone number into the pocket of his flannel, her fingers brushing his chest through the fabric. He stands there and watches her drive away, the taillights fading down the dirt road, the paper in his pocket warm against his ribs. He pulls his phone out of his jeans, texts Tommy to tell him he doesn’t need that case of stout anymore, he’s got something better to look forward to this weekend.
