Clay Bennett leans against the scuffed oak bar of The Hitching Post, 20 minutes removed from the town’s annual harvest parade, his Coors Light sweating through the paper napkin wrapped around its base. He’s 58, 32 years retired from the Forest Service now, his hands still crisscrossed with thin scars from felling fallen pines and prying panicky hikers off cliff edges. His biggest flaw, the one his old patrol partner ribs him about every time they grab breakfast, is that he’s carried guilt like a lead weight in his chest since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer seven years prior. He’s turned down every set-up, skipped every family gathering that felt like it would end with a distant aunt shoving her single neighbor’s phone number in his pocket, convinced any joy not tied directly to Linda’s memory was a betrayal.
The smell of fried dough and pine drifts through the bar’s open screen door, mixing with the stale beer and peanut shells under his boots. The jukebox spits out a slow Johnny Cash track, the kind Linda used to blast while she baked apple pie on rainy Sundays, and he’s just about to take a sip when a shoulder brushes his bicep, warm and solid through his worn Carhartt shirt. He glances over, and his throat goes tight. It’s Mara, Linda’s younger cousin, the one who moved to Portland after her divorce six years ago, the one he’d avoided every time she came to town since Linda’s service. She’s 54 now, a streak of silver cutting through the auburn hair she’s pulled back in a loose braid, a tiny scar curving across her left wrist from the time she slipped on a wet rock on their 2012 camping trip up the Bitterroot.
She flags the bartender with a quick wave, her knee brushing his under the bar when she shifts on the stool, and the scent of vanilla and cedar hits him, the same perfume she wore back then. She smirks when she catches him staring, the corner of her mouth tugging up the same way Linda’s used to when she caught him sneaking an extra slice of pie before dinner. “Thought that was you. Still wearing that beat up Carhartt even when it’s 65 degrees out?” She orders a cranberry seltzer, and Clay nods, suddenly unable to form a full sentence, the old guilt flaring sharp and hot in his ribs. He should leave, he thinks. This is a line he doesn’t cross, family, Linda’s family, it’s wrong to notice the way her jeans fit her hips, the way her laugh cuts through the bar’s chatter like something bright.
They make small talk first, about the parade, about the way the high school marching band still can’t play the fight song right, about her pottery business she runs out of a garage in Portland, the mugs she sells at farmers markets up and down the coast. He admits he saw a photo of her work on Facebook once, bought one for his niece’s birthday, and she blushes, her hand brushing his when she reaches for her seltzer at the same time he reaches for his beer. Her skin is warm, calloused at the fingertips from shaping clay, and he doesn’t pull away immediately, even when his brain screams that he should. She brings up Linda first, offhand, talking about the time they snuck sips of Linda’s homemade peach brandy when Clay was out on a late patrol, how Linda used to complain that Clay was too stubborn to let himself be taken care of, that he’d shut the whole world out the second she was gone.
The guilt warps then, mixes with the low hum of desire he’s been shoving down since she sat down, and he tells her he thought it was disrespectful, that moving on felt like he was erasing the 34 years they had together. She leans in closer, the side of her arm pressed fully to his now, and her voice drops so only he can hear it, over the sound of a group of college kids cheering over a game of darts in the corner. “Linda would have rather you lived a single day happy than 20 years miserable. I told her that the week before she died, and she agreed. Said she’d haunt you if you spent the rest of your life drinking beer alone in a bar instead of letting someone keep you company.”
A group of rowdy freshmen on fall break push past their stools a second later, jostling Mara hard enough that she falls forward into his chest, her hands splayed across his flannel under the open Carhartt. He wraps his arm around her waist on instinct to steady her, his palm flat against the small of her back, and they’re inches apart, he can smell the cranberry and lime on her breath, see the flecks of gold in her green eyes, the same shade as Linda’s. She doesn’t pull away, just tilts her chin up a little, her thumb brushing the edge of the old dog tag he wears around his neck, the one Linda got him for their 25th anniversary. He doesn’t say anything, just brushes a stray strand of hair that fell out of her braid off her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone, and she leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second.
He asks her if she wants to walk down to the river bend where they used to camp, the one where Linda taught them both to skip stones, and she nods, grinning, when he holds out his hand to help her off the stool. They walk slow, the cool fall air stinging his cheeks, their hands brushing a dozen times in the first block before he laces their fingers together, no hesitation, no guilt, just the quiet thrum of something he thought he’d never feel again. The streetlights are strung with orange and gold crepe paper for the festival, and a couple of kids run past them carrying paper lanterns, laughing so loud it echoes off the storefronts. He squeezes her hand a little tighter, the crunch of fallen maple leaves under their boots the only sound he cared to hear for the rest of the night.
