Elias Voss, 62, retired Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge manager, leans against a scotch pine at the annual late August lake fish fry, picking at a paper plate of crumbed walleye and fried dill pickles. He’s got a half-drunk IPA in his other hand, the cold aluminum sweating through the sleeve of his well-worn Carhartt. His biggest flaw, as his late sister used to nag him, is that he holds grudges longer than the northern pines hold their needles. He’s spent 18 years actively avoiding Maren Hale, convinced she’d ratted him out back in 2005 for selling hand-carved duck decoys to out-of-state tourists without a county permit, a fine that almost cost him the refuge job he’d worked 12 years to land.
He spots her before she sees him, weaving through the crowd of flannel-clad locals and sunburnt vacationers, a plastic cup of spiked hard cider in one hand, the other pushing a strand of silver-streaked auburn hair out of her face. She’s wearing a faded red plaid flannel tied around her waist over a cream linen tank, a smudge of light blue paint on the inside of her left wrist from restoring a vintage oak bookshelf at her downtown bookstore that morning. His chest tightens, half familiar hot resentment, half something softer he’s spent almost two decades shoving down so far he forgot it existed.
She locks eyes with him across the picnic tables, and instead of turning the other way like she usually does, she walks straight over, boots crunching over fallen pine needles and discarded corn cob husks. She stops so close her shoulder brushes his bicep when she leans in to yell over the noise of the country cover band playing by the fry pits. “I’ve been trying to catch you alone for three years,” she says, grinning like she doesn’t notice the way his jaw tenses. “You’re harder to track down than the loons that nest on the north end of the refuge.”
He blinks, not sure what to say, so he takes a long sip of his beer instead. She nods at his plate, and before he can react, she reaches for a fried pickle, her calloused fingers brushing his knuckles for half a second, warm and rough from decades of turning book pages and sanding reclaimed wood. He feels a jolt run up his arm, sharp and warm, and he can smell lavender shampoo mixed with the campfire smoke curling off the fry pits and the faint sweet tang of the cider in her cup.
“It wasn’t me, you know,” she says, popping the pickle in her mouth, wiping crumbs off her jeans. “The permit fine. Everyone always said you thought I turned you in. It was that snot-nosed 19 year old intern you made pull discarded fishing line out of the marsh for three straight weeks. He bragged about it at the bar a month later, I was working the door that night. I tried to tell you back then, but you’d ignore me every time I walked into the hardware store or the diner.”
Elias feels the air leave his lungs, like someone just punched him in the gut. He’d spent 18 years mad at her, avoiding her, talking shit about her to his hunting buddies, and she didn’t even do it. He feels stupid, heat crawling up his neck, and he can’t look her in the eye for a second, staring at the paint smudge on her wrist instead. “I bought three of your decoys at Mrs. Henderson’s garage sale last year,” she says, softening, leaning in a little closer so he doesn’t have to yell to hear her. “They’re on my fireplace mantel. The detail on the mallard drake’s wing? No one around here carves like you do. I used to watch you sit on your front porch carving when I’d drop stuff off for your ex-wife. I always thought you looked peaceful, when you were working on them.”
He finds himself asking her to walk with him down the dirt trail that leads to the old wooden dock he built with his crew back in 2010, away from the noise of the band and the screaming kids running around with snow cones. She says yes without hesitation, falling into step next to him, their arms brushing every few steps. The sun is dipping low over the lake now, painting the water pink and tangerine, the air sharp with the first hint of the fall frost that’ll hit in a month. Loons call from the middle of the lake, high and wobbly, and crickets chirp in the tall grass on either side of the trail.
They sit down on the edge of the dock, Maren kicking off her boots to dip her bare feet in the cold lake water, Elias sitting close enough that their thighs press together through their denim jeans. He doesn’t move away. He tells her he’s an idiot for holding a grudge that long, for not even giving her a chance to explain. She laughs, nudging his shoulder with hers, says she’s just as much of an idiot for not cornering him sooner, she was scared he’d yell at her before she could get the words out.
He reaches into the front pocket of his jeans, pulls out a half-carved wood duck head he’d been working on that morning, the beak still rough, the outline of the crest just starting to take shape. He hands it to her, and she turns it over in her hands, running her thumb over the grain of the cedar, smiling so wide the corners of her eyes crinkle. She looks up at him, and the pink light from the sunset hits her face, and he leans in before he can overthink it, kissing her slow, tasting hard cider and the powdered sugar she’d eaten off a funnel cake earlier, her hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck, her fingers tangling in the short gray hair at his nape.
