Roland Voss, 62, spent 28 years teaching high school woodshop before retiring three years prior, and he’d spent the 15 years before that avoiding any and all ties to his ex-wife’s side of the family. The divorce had been messy, her leaving him for a realtor 12 years younger who’d sold them their first house, and he’d made a point to skip every family gathering, block every cousin on Facebook, even drive an extra 10 minutes to the grocery store across town so he wouldn’t run into any of them. He was stubborn to a fault, that was his sister’s favorite line about him, and he’d earned it, spending most of his days alone in his garage building custom cedar birdhouses, selling them for 25 bucks a pop at the weekly Grand Haven farmers market. The scar slicing across his right palm, from a table saw accident the same week she’d moved out, still ached when the humidity spiked, like a reminder not to let anyone get close enough to mess up his routine again.
The honey stand popped up next to his spot on a sticky mid-August Tuesday, the air thick with the smell of cut clover and roasted almonds from the nut stand three rows down. The woman running it had sun-bleached auburn hair streaked with gray, a thin scar cutting across her left eyebrow, and wore faded Carhartt overalls with a bee pin stuck to the breast pocket, work boots caked in dark mud from her hives. He spotted her last name stenciled on the side of her folding table first, Hale, and his gut twisted. Marnie Hale, his ex-wife’s first cousin, the one who’d been a bridesmaid at their wedding 31 years prior, who he’d barely spoken to before she moved to Alaska straight out of high school. He stacked three extra rows of unfinished bluebird houses between their stands like a barrier, told himself he’d ignore her for the entire 8-hour market shift. He could smell her honey, warm and thick and sweet, mixing with the pine scent of his cedar blanks, and it took every ounce of his self control not to glance over.
Midday, a golden retriever on a retractable leash bolted past, yanking a 7-year-old kid in a dinosaur backpack behind it, and the kid’s shoulder slammed into his stack of birdhouses, sending half a dozen clattering to the asphalt. Marnie was over before he could even set down the sandpaper he was holding, kneeling next to him to grab the scattered pieces, their hands brushing when they both reached for the same carved cedar roof. Her skin was warm, a rough callus on her index finger from handling hive tools, and she laughed, low and rough, when she saw the confused look on his face. “Don’t act so surprised,” she said, brushing sawdust off the piece and handing it to him. “My dad still has that cutting board you made us for the wedding. Won’t let anyone set a hot pan on it, says it’s the only good thing that came out of that marriage.” He froze, his throat tight, because he’d assumed everyone in that family only remembered the screaming fights, the way his ex had thrown his work boots in the front yard the day she left.
He spent the next three hours warring with himself. Part of him was disgusted, angry that he was even entertaining the thought of talking to her, that he was letting some random woman from his ex’s family crack the wall he’d spent 15 years building. His sister would scream if she found out, the whole town would whisper for months, small towns didn’t let that kind of thing slide. But the other part of him couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t stop noticing the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she laughed at a customer’s bad joke, the way she wiped honey off her chin with the back of her hand, the way she kept glancing over at him, like she was waiting for him to make the first move. She brought him a small paper sample cup of wildflower honey at 3 p.m., holding it out so her arm brushed his bicep when he took it, and it tasted like clover and summer rain, nothing like the cheap processed stuff he bought at the Walmart in town.
By 6 p.m., the rest of the vendors were packing up their trucks, the sun hanging low over the parking lot, painting everything soft orange. Marnie was lifting a 5-gallon bucket of raw honey off the table when her grip slipped, the top sloshing open, thick amber liquid splattering across the toes of his worn work boots. She cursed, yanking the red bandana off her neck, kneeling down to wipe it off, her shoulder pressing firm against his calf as she dabbed at the leather. He looked down at her, the sun catching the flecks of gold in her green eyes, and before he could talk himself out of it, he asked if she wanted to get a beer at The Wooden Spoke, the dive bar two blocks over, the one his ex had forbidden him from going to because the bartender had once hit on her. She looked up, grinning so the dimples in her cheeks showed, and said she’d been wondering how long it would take him to get the nerve to ask.
They sat in the back booth, the vinyl sticky under their forearms, the jukebox playing Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” low enough that they could talk over it. She told him she’d run a dog sledding tour company outside Anchorage for 20 years, moved back three months prior to take care of her dad who was in the early stages of COPD, had never gotten married, never found anyone who didn’t mind that she’d rather spend her days covered in bee stings than dressed up for dinner. He told her about the birdhouses, how he donated half of every week’s batch to the local nature center, how he still kept the old table saw that had cut his palm, even though his sister kept begging him to get a new safer one. She slid her hand across the table, resting it on top of his, her calluses rough against the raised scar on his palm. He didn’t pull away, just laced his fingers through hers, and flagged the waitress down for another round of draft.
