Roman Voss is 62, spent 38 years as a bridge construction foreman across western Pennsylvania, has a scar slicing across his left knuckle from a 2009 steel beam slip that almost took his whole hand, and hasn’t so much as had a cup of coffee alone with a woman since his wife Ellie died eight years prior. His worst flaw, per everyone who’s ever known him, is that he’d rather cut off his own other hand than let anyone think he’s dishonoring Ellie’s memory by moving on, even if she spent her last three months nagging him to stop being such a stubborn mule and find someone to laugh with when she was gone. He shows up to the VFW fish fry every Friday without fail, sits in the same scuffed vinyl booth by the back door, drinks two Pabst Blue Ribbons, eats one piece of cod doused in malt vinegar, and leaves by 8 p.m. sharp, no exceptions.
The April rain is tapping hard on the cinder block walls the night Maren Hale walks in alone. She’s 48, the new part-time librarian who moved to town three months prior, has a smudge of blue ink perpetually on her jaw from stamping checkout slips, and Roman has gone out of his way to avoid her every time he’s popped into the library to look up old truss design manuals. The last thing he needs is the gaggle of retired schoolteachers who hang out at the front desk gossiping that he’s “on the hunt” like some sad lonely widower cliche. He’s halfway through his second beer, listening to his old work buddy Joe rant about his grandson’s travel baseball team, when Joe’s phone buzzes, he curses, says he has to drive 20 minutes to pick the kid up from a sleepover that went sideways, and bails before Roman can offer to come with.
Roman’s picking at the last of his french fries when he notices her staring. She’s sitting three booths over, picking at a plate of hush puppies, her scuffed work boots propped on the empty seat across from her, and she smirks when he catches her looking, doesn’t look away. He feels his neck heat up, looks down at his beer bottle, twists the label off one tiny shred at a time, tugs absentmindedly at the chain around his neck that holds Ellie’s old wedding ring, the one he stopped wearing on his finger two years after she died because the band got too loose from him losing weight. Ten minutes later, she’s standing next to his booth, holding the beat-up leather notebook he’d swatted off the library table the week prior and forgot to go back for. “Figured you’d want this,” she says, and when she holds it out, her fingers brush his, calloused at the tips from turning old book pages, and he smells lavender hand cream under the faint smell of rain and fried batter.
He mumbles a thanks, gestures awkwardly at the empty seat across from him before he can think better of it. She slides in, doesn’t hesitate, and her knee brushes his under the table when she gets settled, doesn’t pull away. She teases him about the margin notes in the notebook, the ones where he ranted about his old foreman being a cheapskate who cut corners on concrete, the doodles of bridge trusses he drew during boring safety meetings, and he laughs so hard he snorts, a sound he hasn’t made since Ellie was alive. He tells her about the time they built the overpass across the Monongahela in 2003, how they worked 12 hour shifts for three straight weeks to beat the flood deadline, how the whole crew camped out on the bridge deck one night because the access road washed out, and she leans in, elbows on the table, eyes wide, like it’s the most interesting story she’s ever heard, not just the same old work war story he’s told a hundred times to guys who already know the punchline.
The room clears out around them, the bartender starts wiping down the counters for the night, and Roman doesn’t even notice the time until he glances at the old neon clock above the bar and sees it’s 9:30, an hour and a half past his usual departure time. The rain has slowed to a fine mist, and she stands, slings her canvas book bag over her shoulder, and asks if he wants to walk her home. It’s only three blocks, she says, but the streetlights are out on Oak Street, and she’d rather not walk it alone. For half a second, he panics, thinks about the ladies at the church bake sale who’ll spot them and spread the word by sunrise, thinks about the photo of Ellie he keeps taped to his truck dashboard, thinks about every stupid unspoken rule small towns have for widowers who aren’t supposed to want anything but to sit alone and grieve forever. Then he remembers Ellie’s voice, sharp and warm, telling him she’d come back to haunt him if he spent the rest of his life being a hermit on her account, and he stands, grabs his frayed canvas work jacket off the back of the booth, says yeah, sure.
They walk slow, the mist sticking to his gray hair, his shoulder brushing hers every other step, no awkward silence, no unspoken pressure hanging over them. When they get to her front porch, she stops, turns to him, and rests her hand lightly on his forearm, her thumb brushing the raised scar on his knuckle for half a second before she pulls back. She says she’s got a bottle of 10-year rye in the cabinet, and if he’s got time, she’d love to hear the story about the 2001 bridge collapse scare he almost mentioned an hour earlier. He nods, doesn’t overthink it, follows her up the weathered wooden porch steps, the screen door slamming shut behind them before he can talk himself out of it.
