Clay Bennett is 58, retired after 32 years as a U.S. Forest Ranger patrolling the Mount Hood National Forest, now living in a quiet Boise neighborhood he moved to after his wife Diane passed seven years prior. His biggest flaw, the one his fishing buddies rib him about every weekend, is that he’s stubborn to a fault—he’d rather sleep on a lumpy air mattress for three months than admit the new memory foam bed his niece bought him is more comfortable, and he’s spent the last 18 months publicly hating Maren Hale, the city council rep who fought to turn the empty lot on his block into a community garden instead of the extra parking most of the neighbors demanded. He called her a “pencil-pushing city suit who couldn’t tell loam from asphalt” at the last public hearing, and hadn’t spoken to her directly since.
He’s leaning against the dented stainless steel beer cooler at the garden’s grand opening block party, half-empty can of Rainier in one hand, sun searing the exposed skin of his forearms, when he spots her across the lawn. He’s only ever seen her in tailored blazers and sensible heels, hair pulled so tight at the crown it looked painful, so the sight of her in a faded cream linen button down, sleeves rolled to the elbows, high-waisted jeans cuffed above bare, grass-stained ankles, makes him blink like he’s seeing a stranger. She’s holding a mason jar of pink lemonade, laughing at something the kid from down the street says, a streak of silver in her dark blonde hair catching the late afternoon sun. He looks away fast, like he’s been caught snooping, and takes a long sip of beer.
The next minute she’s walking toward the cooler, and he’s mentally gearing up for a snappish exchange about the irrigation system he’s been arguing with her about for weeks, when she trips over a loose coiled garden hose half-buried in the clover. She stumbles forward, and he reacts without thinking, one hand wrapping around her upper arm to steady her, the other pressing flat to the small of her back. Her hip bumps hard into his ribs, her free hand flying to grip his bicep to keep her balance, and he can smell lavender laundry soap and citronella on her skin, the faint sweet stick of lemonade on her breath. She laughs, a rough, warm sound, and swats at the hose with her foot. “Sorry about that. Heels in council chambers I can handle. Grass and bare feet? I’m a disaster,” she says, and he realizes he’s still holding her, so he yanks his hands back like he’s been burned.
She doesn’t move away, though, leans against the cooler right next to him, close enough that their shoulders brush when she twists to grab a seltzer from the ice. She teases him about the comment he made at the hearing, says she kept the transcript of it taped to her desk for two weeks, because it was the first time anyone had talked about something other than property values at a council meeting all year. He’s stunned when she tells him she grew up on a dairy farm outside Pendleton, only wore the blazers to get the old men on the council to take her seriously, that she fought for the garden because her grandma used to grow blueberries in a patch behind their farm house, and she wanted kids in the neighborhood to have that same kind of thing instead of just asphalt and parking spots.
He finds himself talking before he can stop, tells her about the blueberry bushes he planted along the garden’s north fence last month, how Diane used to make blueberry pie every Fourth of July, the crust so flaky it would crumble if you looked at it too hard. He hasn’t talked about Diane to someone who isn’t his fishing buddy in years, and he expects that familiar twist of guilt in his chest, the one that always makes him shut down when a woman so much as smiles at him, but it doesn’t come. Not when she leans in closer, eyes bright, says she makes blueberry jam every August, has a whole shelf of it in her pantry.
The sun dips below the rooflines, string lights strung between the oak trees flicker on, most of the neighbors have packed up their coolers and headed home, and they’re still sitting on cinder blocks by the blueberry bushes, their legs almost touching. She plucks a ripe, dark blue berry from the closest bush, holds it out to him between her thumb and index finger, and he leans forward to take it, their fingertips brushing for half a second. The juice bursts sweet and tart on his tongue, and he doesn’t look away from her when she says she’s been wanting to talk to him for months, not about irrigation or soil pH, just him, because every time he stood up at those meetings, red-faced and furious about the city cutting down three mature maple trees to make room for a crosswalk, she thought he was the only person in the room who cared about something that didn’t show up on a budget sheet.
Her hand rests lightly on his knee, the worn cotton of his work pants thin under her palm, and he doesn’t move it. He thinks about the photo of Diane on his kitchen windowsill, the note she left him the week before she died, scrawled on a grocery receipt, telling him to stop being such a hard ass and live a little once she was gone. He thinks about the seven years he’s spent going home to an empty house, only talking to his dog and his fishing buddies, turning down every invitation to dinner or drinks, convinced that wanting anything good again would be a betrayal. It doesn’t feel like betrayal, though, not when she’s looking at him like she can see every part of him, even the parts he’s hidden away for years.
She stands, brushes grass off her jeans, holds out her hand to him. Says she has a frozen pie crust in her fridge, three jars of blueberry filling she canned last summer, they could have a slice in an hour if he wants. He stares at her outstretched hand for three full seconds, then takes it, his calloused palm fitting perfectly against hers, rough in all the same spots from years of outdoor work. They walk across the dark lawn together, crickets chirping in the grass behind them, the string lights glowing soft and gold in their periphery. He laces his fingers through hers as they turn onto her porch steps, the faint tang of blueberry still on his tongue.
