Clay Bennett, 58, retired forest ranger with 32 years patrolling Pisgah National Forest under his belt, leans against the scuffed linoleum bar of the Marshall VFW, calloused left hand curled around a lukewarm draft beer, right propped on the tooled leather chainsaw scabbard he’s been trying to unload for an hour. The scabbard is his work, carved with tiny trilliums the same shade his late wife Ellie used to paint before the cancer took her seven years prior. A scar splits the knuckle of his left index finger, leftover from a 2011 chainsaw mishap that had him sidelined from trail work for six weeks, the longest he’d ever gone outside without boots caked in mud. His biggest flaw, the one he’d never admit out loud, is that he still lets his poker group’s loud, lazy opinions dictate who he talks to, who he avoids, who he writes off as not worth the hassle.
The VFW smells like fried pickles, sawdust from the swap meet tables, and cheap domestic beer that’s been sitting in the tap line too long. Most of the crowd is guys he’s known for decades, ranchers, retired cops, mechanics, the same crew that grumbled for two weeks straight when Mara Hale, the 54-year-old new librarian, pushed the town council to vote down a book ban that would have pulled half the young adult section off shelves. They’d called her a troublemaker, an out-of-town liberal, said she was ruining the small town vibe they’d all grown up with. Clay had nodded along, even though he’d never spoken to her, even though Ellie used to volunteer at the old library twice a week before she got sick.
He spots her the second she walks through the door, rain dotted on the shoulders of her faded denim jacket, flannel tied around her waist, scuffed hiking boots caked in the same red clay that’s crusted on his own. She’s not wearing the frumpy cardigan the guys had joked she sleeps in, her dark hair pulled back in a messy braid, a tiny silver trillium stud in her left ear. He looks away fast, like he’s been caught staring at a woman who isn’t his wife, already bracing for Joe, his poker buddy, to elbow him in the ribs and make a crack about the town’s favorite radical stopping by to cause trouble.
She heads straight for him, stopping so close he can smell lavender hand cream and pine, like she’s been out hiking the same trails he’s been repairing all spring. “That scabbard,” she says, nodding at the leather slung over his arm, reaching out to run a finger along the carved trilliums. Her knuckle brushes his scar, and he flinches a little, the skin tingling like he’s touched a live wire. “You made this, right? Ellie talked about your leather work all the time. Said you carved trilliums into everything you touched for the first five years you were married.”
He blinks, stunned, his earlier irritation at the sight of her melting into sharp, unexpected curiosity. He’d had no idea she knew Ellie, no idea she’d even heard of him, let alone his terrible beginner leather work from the 90s. “You knew her?” he asks, leaning in a little without meaning to, the noise of the VFW fading into background static. She nods, leaning against the table next to him, their shoulders brushing every time someone walks past. They talk for 45 minutes, her laugh low and smoky, like she drinks too much dark roast, her hazel eyes flecked with green holding his steady the whole time, no awkward looking away, no small town polite deflection. She tells him she’s been hiking the shut-in trail every weekend, keeps finding the trail markers he repaints, the discarded granola bar wrappers he picks up, the little stacks of flat rocks he leaves for hikers to use as trail signs. He tells her about the time he rescued a group of college kids who got stuck on Mount Mitchell in a blizzard, and she snorts so hard she snorts beer out of her nose, wiping her face with the back of her hand like she doesn’t care if he thinks it’s unladylike.
The swap meet closes at 8, the bartender yelling last call, rain pouring so hard outside it’s bouncing off the asphalt. She admits she forgot her umbrella, lives three miles out of town down a dirt road that’s probably turned to mud. He hesitates for half a second, glancing over at Joe, who’s watching them from the bar, shaking his head, already mentally drafting the jokes he’ll make at poker next week. Then he grabs his keys off the bar, holds the door open for her, ignoring the catcalls from his buddies.
Her cottage is small, cluttered with hiking guides and dog-eared paperbacks, a jar of trillium seeds sitting on the kitchen table next to a half-empty jar of pickled ramps she foraged the week before. She invites him in for coffee, and he doesn’t say no. When she reaches past him to grab mugs from the upper cabinet, her chest brushes his arm, and he doesn’t step back, the warmth of her seeping through his flannel shirt. She tells him Ellie used to bring her trilliums every spring, said they were the only flower that didn’t wilt after three days in a mason jar on the library desk. He feels a sharp twist of guilt, realizes the “taboo” his friends had been whining about was nothing more than small town cowardice, that the faint disgust he’d felt at the idea of talking to her was never about her, it was about his own fear of letting anyone new in after Ellie died.
He stays for coffee, then another, then the pasta she pulls out of the fridge, their knees brushing under the small kitchen table, the rain tapping against the kitchen window. When he leaves later, the rain has stopped, the air smelling like wet dirt and blooming dogwood. He tucks the tiny wild trillium he’d picked that morning to leave on Ellie’s grave into the strap of her canvas hiking bag by the door, no big speech, no awkward explanation. When he gets in his truck, he reaches for his phone to text the poker group he’s skipping next week’s game, already knowing he’s going to ask her to hike the Craggy Gardens trail with him Saturday.
