Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years gillnetting salmon on the Columbia River before a 2019 winch accident crumpled his left knee and pushed him into early retirement. He’s stubborn to a fault, hasn’t let anyone besides his 11-year-old granddaughter so much as bring him a casserole since his wife Ellen passed from lung cancer eight years prior, convinced leaning on anyone else is a sign of weakness he can’t afford. The August street fair in downtown Astoria is the last place he wants to be, but his granddaughter begged him to pick up cotton candy and a jar of the wild blackberry jam she’d sampled the year before, so he’s limping through the crowd, salt wind tangling the gray strands of his hair, the smell of fried scallops and vinegar-soaked fries sticking to the back of his throat.
He spots the jam booth tucked between a homemade candle stand and a local band cranking out 90s country, and he veers toward it to get out of the press of people, his knee throbbing so bad he’s half convinced he’ll have to sit down on the curb. The woman running the booth looks up as he approaches, and he freezes. It’s Maeve Carter, ex-wife of his old deck boss Jimmie, the woman he’d spent 15 years avoiding looking at for too long when they’d all gather for post-season barbecues, the one he’d thought about more than he’d ever admit to anyone, even Ellen. She’s got silver streaks cutting through her wavy auburn hair, tied back in a messy braid, and there are smudges of deep purple jam on her left wrist and the corner of her mouth. She grins, and the crinkles around her hazel eyes are the same as he remembers.
They make awkward small talk at first, him leaning against the edge of the booth to take weight off his knee, her passing him a sample spoon of the seedless blackberry his granddaughter likes. When their fingers brush as he takes the spoon, he feels the rough callus on the tip of her index finger, from stirring giant vats of jam for hours on end, and a jolt runs up his arm that has nothing to do with his old nerve damage. She mentions she and Jimmie finalized their divorce three months prior, that she’d kept the small berry farm they’d owned out near Seaside, that she’s been doing fairs all summer to make extra cash for a new roof on her cottage. She notices him shifting his weight again, and she nods toward a folding chair tucked behind the booth, half hidden under a table stacked with mason jars. He tries to wave her off, says he’s fine, but she rolls her eyes and pulls the chair out, says she’s heard him lie about worse things when he was out on the river with a broken rib and refused to turn the boat early.
He sits, and they’re close enough that their shoulders almost brush when she leans forward to hand a jar to a tourist. He can smell lavender hand cream mixed with the sweet, tart scent of blackberries, and the sound of her laugh when he teases her about the time Jimmie tried to help her pick berries and came back covered in poison oak makes his chest feel light, a feeling he hasn’t had since Ellen was still around to tease him about burning the toast on Sunday mornings. He’s torn, half of him screaming that this is wrong, that he’s betraying Ellen, that the whole town will gossip if they see him hanging around her booth, the other half desperate to stay right there, next to her, for the rest of the afternoon.
A group of kids dart around the edge of the booth, chasing a golden retriever with a cotton candy stuck to its collar, and one slams into the table, sending a full jar of spicy habanero blackberry jam teetering off the edge. Ronan leans forward to catch it before it hits the asphalt, his knee buckling the second he puts weight on it, and he stumbles. Maeve grabs him by the shoulders to steady him, one hand splayed flat against his chest, and he wraps his arm around her waist to keep from falling, their faces inches apart. He can feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek, the fast thud of her heart under his palm, and he doesn’t pull away. She says she’s liked him since the first time she saw him, soaked to the bone, carrying a 50 pound salmon over his shoulder to Jimmie’s barbecue, that she never said anything because they were both married, that she didn’t want to be that person. He admits he’s felt the same, that he’s been so scared of getting hurt again he shut everyone out, that he didn’t think he deserved to feel this light ever again.
They clean up the spilled jam together, him dabbing at the asphalt with paper towels while she restocks the table. When he pays for the seedless jar for his granddaughter, she slips an extra jar of the spicy habanero blend into his bag, winking, and writes her cell number on the lid in thick purple marker, says she’s free next weekend if he wants to take her out on that old fishing boat he still keeps docked out at the marina. He limps back to his beat up Ford F150, knee still throbbing, but he’s grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, and he stops at the grocery store on his way home to pick up a half gallon of vanilla bean ice cream, already thinking about how he’ll call her as soon as he drops his granddaughter’s jam off. He twists the jar lid in his hand as he crosses the grocery store parking lot, the purple ink of her number already smudging a little from the sweat on his palm.
