He was halfway through slipping past a group of drunk sorority girls wearing cherry-themed tiaras when he collided with something soft, the cider sloshing out of his cup and down the front of a cream linen blouse. He stammered out an apology, grabbing a handful of scratchy paper napkins from the nearest table, and froze when he looked up. Clara Hale, 42, wife of the county commissioner running for state rep, her face plastered on every yard sign within 15 miles, was staring back at him, a faint smirk playing on her lips. The cold cider had seeped through the thin fabric, leaving a dark splotch across her left shoulder and collarbone, the faint edge of ivory lace bra visible under the damp cloth, and when he dabbed at the spot clumsily with a napkin, his calloused finger brushed the warm skin of her throat. She didn’t flinch. She smelled like cherry pie filling and coconut shampoo, the same scent he’d caught a whiff of every morning for the past month when she walked her golden retriever past his cottage on the shore.
“Relax,” she said, leaning in so her elbow brushed his bicep, the noise of the crowd fading a little when she got close. “I’ve been looking for an excuse to get out of the stupid meet-and-greets all night. Tom’s been shaking hands and kissing babies for three hours, hasn’t asked me if I wanted a drink once.” Moe nodded, still flustered, and offered to buy her a replacement cider, his face heating up when she said yes. They slipped to the far edge of the tent, leaning against a weathered pine support beam far from the cluster of campaign volunteers and local reporters, and she asked him about the rowboat he’d been sanding down on his dock the week before, not the lighthouse, not the silly tourist stories everyone else wanted. He found himself talking longer than he’d talked to anyone in years, telling her about the way the lake turned pink at dawn, the way the northern lights danced so bright some winter nights you could read a book by them, the way the seals would sun themselves on the rocks below the lighthouse like lazy, fat tourists.
He felt guilty the entire time, a low hum of disgust in the back of his head. She was married, 25 years younger than him, her husband’s name was on signs taped to every lamppost in town, and he hadn’t so much as looked at another woman since his wife Ellen died in 2006. But every time she laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the noise of the band, the guilt faded a little. She leaned closer when he talked, her shoulder pressed against his, her eyes never leaving his face, and when a group of Tom’s campaign staffers walked past, she stepped even closer, her chest brushing his arm for half a second, tilting her chin up like she was about to kiss him. The staffers waved and kept walking, and she grinned, like they’d just pulled off a heist.
When the band started playing a line dance, the crowd surged forward, and she slipped a crumpled receipt into the front pocket of his oilskin jacket, her fingers lingering on the worn fabric for a beat. “I want to see the lighthouse,” she said, so quiet he almost missed it over the music. “No cameras, no campaign staff, no one asking me for a photo for the local paper. Just… quiet. Like you get out there.” He knew better. He knew if anyone saw them driving to the ferry dock together, if anyone saw them stepping onto the lighthouse grounds, it would blow up the local news, tank Tom’s campaign, turn both of them into town gossip for the next year. He knew he should hand the receipt back, tell her it was a bad idea, go home to his empty cottage and his old lighthouse lens and his frozen dinners. But he nodded instead. “I got a key,” he said. “Dusk next Saturday. The lantern room’s still open. You can see all the way to North Manitou when the sky’s clear.” She squeezed his arm once, then turned and walked back toward the cluster of campaign volunteers, throwing a small wave over her shoulder when she got to Tom’s side.
He pulled the receipt out of his pocket when he got home, the edge smudged with cider, her cell number scrawled in blue ink on the back, no campaign staffers just me written under the digits. He stuck it to his fridge with a magnet shaped like a lighthouse, and spent the next week sanding the last of the old paint off his rowboat, buying a new wool blanket for the ferry ride, making a thermos of spiced cider with extra cinnamon, the way Ellen used to make it, the guilt sitting low in his chest but not heavy enough to make him cancel.
He was waiting on his dock at dusk the next Saturday, the ferry tied up bobbing in the waves, the sky turning soft orange over the lake, when he saw her walking down the dirt road, no makeup, wearing jeans and a faded flannel shirt, her golden retriever trotting at her heels, a small duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She waved when she saw him, the wind off the lake carrying the faint scent of cherry pie and coconut shampoo, and he stepped forward to untie the ferry rope. He curled his calloused, salt-stained fingers around her soft, warm hand, and pulled her gently over the gunwale.
