Roland Voss, 61, makes his living restoring antique typewriters out of a converted garage behind his cottage in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina. He’s lived there 8 years, ever since his wife Ellie died of ovarian cancer, and he’s structured every minute of his days to avoid unplanned interaction. Same 6am walk, same black coffee order from the corner shop, same 3 hours of bench work before lunch, same 10 minute stop at the farmers market on Wednesdays, same begrudging attendance at the monthly community center beer tasting to “check the social box” like Ellie used to nag him to do.
He’s leaning against a cinder block wall at the October tasting, holding a sticky can of hazy IPA, when he spots her. Clara Mendez, 58, the new head librarian who moved to town 6 months prior. He’d recognized her name on the library’s welcome sign the week she started, placed it from the stack of old college photos Ellie had tucked in the back of their 1984 UNC yearbook, and he’d gone out of his way to avoid her ever since. Guilt curdled in his gut every time he saw her, sharp and sour: 20-year-old Roland had had a dumb, obvious crush on Clara before he’d ever asked Ellie out, and Ellie had teased him about it for 35 years of marriage.
She spots him before he can slip out the side door, waves, and starts walking over. The floor is scattered with salted peanut shells, her scuffed leather work boots crunching with every step, and the bluegrass band in the corner cranks up a fast banjo track right as she stops in front of him, close enough he can smell lavender lotion and faint malt on her breath. “Roland Voss,” she says, grinning, and her voice is that same throaty, warm drawl he remembers from the one fraternity party he’d talked to her at, 40 years prior. “I thought that was you. Ellie sent me Christmas cards every year, always had a line about your typewriter business, said you could fix a cracked key block faster than any mechanic could change a tire.”
His knuckles go white around the beer can. He’d planned to mumble a greeting, make an excuse about having to get home to a half-finished restoration, leave before he had to acknowledge the stupid, hot flutter under his skin that he hasn’t felt since Ellie got sick. But she holds out her phone to show him a photo of a beat-up 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe, and her hand brushes his when he leans in to look, her fingertips calloused at the edges from decades of turning book pages. He flinches like he’s been burned, but he doesn’t pull away. The shoulder of her cream cardigan presses against his flannel-clad bicep as she talks over the banjo, explaining she found the typewriter in the library basement, wants to get it fixed for the after-school creative writing workshop for foster kids she runs.
Half of him is screaming that this is wrong, that he’s betraying Ellie by even standing this close to another woman, by liking the way her laugh rumbles through her shoulder into his arm, by noticing the flecks of gold in her dark brown eyes when she looks up at him. The other half of him is lighter than it’s been in 8 years, like a weight he forgot he was carrying is slipping off his shoulders. He agrees to restore the typewriter for free, before he can think better of it, and when she says she’ll drop it off Saturday morning, he says the words out before he can stop them: “I make cinnamon rolls every Saturday. Extra glaze, the way Ellie used to make them. You can stay for coffee, if you want.”
She blinks, surprise softening her face, and then she smiles, the same smile that 20-year-old Roland had stumbled over his words over, the same smile Ellie had once said could stop a wildfire. “I’d like that,” she says, and she holds his gaze for three beats too long, long enough that the tips of his ears go pink, long enough that he can feel the heat radiating off her cheeks even through the cool fall air seeping through the cracked side door. He walks her to her beat-up pickup truck, and when she turns to say goodbye, a strand of curly dark hair falls in her face, he reaches out without thinking, tucks it behind her ear, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek for half a second. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t step back, just nods, climbs in her truck, and waves as she pulls out of the parking lot.
He drives home with the windows rolled down, the crisp mountain air stinging his cheeks, and the guilt he’s carried for six months every time he thought of Clara is gone, replaced with something soft and unplanned. He pulls the 1984 UNC yearbook out of the box of Ellie’s things in his closet when he gets inside, flips to the photo of Ellie and Clara grinning at a sorority party, the note Ellie scrawled on the back in blue ink staring up at him: Roland says Clara has a smile that could light up the whole campus. I hope they get to be friends someday. He tucks the photo in the pocket of his flannel shirt, walks to the kitchen, and pulls the cinnamon roll ingredients out of the pantry. The timer on his oven ticks steadily on the counter, soft and steady, matching the new, lighter rhythm of his heartbeat.
