Ray Voss, 58, retired first-class lineman for Toledo Edison, had spent the last six months talking trash about Clara Bennett with his VFW buddies over cheap draft beer. The new county public health director, a 52-year-old transplant from Portland, had pushed through a temporary school mask mandate during a winter RSV surge, and half the town still treated her like she’d burned the local football field to the ground. Ray’s flaw, one he’d never admitted out loud, was that he rarely formed his own opinions of people before the guys in his friend group did. He’d been widowed four years prior, his wife Jan lost to a fast-moving breast cancer, and the VFW crew was the only routine he had left that didn’t feel like it was coated in grief. He spent most weekends selling jam Jan had taught him to make, peach and blackberry and sour cherry, at the small town’s seasonal markets, and he’d purposely avoided making eye contact with Clara every time she’d wandered near his stall in prior weeks.
The October harvest festival was winding down, cold rain spitting from a gunmetal gray sky, most vendors already folding up their tables when Clara approached his spot. She was wearing a faded red flannel under a black puffer vest, rain drops beading in the chestnut hair streaked with silver at her temples, a half-empty cup of spiced cider in one chapped hand. She didn’t beat around the bush. “I know you probably don’t want to sell to me,” she said, a dry lilt in her voice, “but I’ve heard your peach jam is the best within 50 miles, and I’m willing to pay double if you’ll stop glaring long enough to hand me a jar.”
Ray blinked, the gruff retort he’d had planned dying in his throat. He leaned forward to grab a jar from the back of the table, and his elbow brushed the cuff of her flannel. The fabric was soft, worn thin at the edge, and he felt a stupid little jolt shoot up his arm when she didn’t step back. She was standing less than half a foot away now, close enough that he could smell cinnamon and apple on her breath, the damp wool of her vest, the faint vanilla of the lotion she wore. He set the jar on the table between them, and when she reached for it, her bare fingers brushed his. Her skin was ice cold, calloused at the fingertips, and he noticed the tiny, pale scar wrapping around her left wrist, the kind you get from a medium-sized dog that got too excited.
“Got bit by a golden retriever when I was doing a vaccine clinic at the park in June,” she said, following his gaze. She laughed, a low, warm sound that cut through the patter of rain on his tent’s plastic roof. “I cried. Not because it hurt, but because he was so sweet I felt bad he’d gotten in trouble for it.”
He found himself laughing too, before he could stop himself. She told him she’d pushed the mask mandate because her younger sister, who lived with her, had cystic fibrosis, and a single bad respiratory infection could land her in the ICU. She’d cried for an hour after the first school board meeting, where a man had screamed in her face that she was a communist who hated kids. She’d moved to Ohio because the cost of living was low, and she was tired of renting a closet-sized apartment in Portland, and she still hated that the local McDonald’s didn’t carry the spicy breakfast burritos she’d loved on the west coast.
The rain picked up, hard enough that the tent poles started to shake a little, and Ray offered to walk her to her car, holding up the dented navy umbrella he’d carried for 12 years, the one with the Toledo Edison logo peeling off the side. They huddled close under it, his arm brushing her shoulder the entire three minute walk across the square, his side warm where it pressed against hers. When they reached her beat up 2017 Subaru, covered in dog decals and a faded NPR sticker, she turned to face him, holding eye contact for three slow, quiet seconds, the rain hitting the umbrella loud enough that no one passing by could hear what she said next. “I make a pretty good pot roast,” she said, her voice a little softer than before. “No strings attached. You wanna come over?”
Ray hesitated for half a beat, thinking about the guys at the VFW, the jokes they’d make, the way they’d rib him for fraternizing with the “mask lady.” He thought about the last four years, the quiet nights alone in his house, the way he’d stopped looking forward to anything but jam sales and Friday fish fries. He thought about the sound of her laugh, the way her hand had felt against his, the fact that she hadn’t once asked him about Jan, hadn’t given him that sad, pitying look everyone else did when they found out he was widowed.
He said yes.
He followed her to her small ranch house on the edge of town, the rain slowing to a soft drizzle by the time he pulled into her driveway. When he walked through her front door, Johnny Cash’s *At Folsom Prison* was playing low on a record player by the couch, and a golden retriever with a white patch on his chest trotted over to nudge his hand. She handed him a cold Bud Light from the fridge, their fingers brushing again when he took it, and he realized the grudges he’d held, the rules he’d followed just to fit in with the guys, didn’t mean a damn thing next to the quiet buzz under his skin, the first spark of excitement he’d felt in years. He set the extra jar of peach jam he’d slipped into his coat pocket on her kitchen counter, and smiled.
