Cole Henderson, 58, retired backcountry park ranger, has lived in his West Asheville cottage 11 months and hasn’t accepted a single home-cooked meal from a neighbor. It’s a stupid rule, he knows, but it’s the only line he’s drawn since his wife Diane died three years prior, the only way he hasn’t felt like he’s letting the life they built slip through his calloused fingers. He leans against a splintered pine picnic table at the first neighborhood block party since the HOA voted to drop all outdoor COVID restrictions last week, sweating through the collar of his faded Carhartt jacket even in 72-degree heat, can of Pabst sweating in his grip.
He’s staring at a golden retriever steal a hot dog bun off a kid’s plate when he spots her. Mara Carter, Diane’s second cousin, 49, runs the sourdough bakery three blocks from his house. He’d only met her once, at Diane’s funeral, where she’d hugged him so tight he could smell the yeast in her hair, told him if he ever moved to Asheville she’d keep a loaf warm for him. He’d brushed it off at the time, but now she’s walking right toward him, bare calves dusted with pollen, denim cutoffs slung low on her hips, a faint smudge of flour streaked across her left cheek. She stops six inches from his boots, closer than anyone’s gotten in months, and he can smell the lavender she uses in her honey oat loaves mixing with the citronella of the tiki torches strung between the oak trees.
“Still wearing that jacket like you’re patrolling the Tetons in January, huh?” She grins, leaning her hip against the picnic table so their biceps brush when she lifts her own beer to her mouth. Her laugh is lower than he remembers, rough around the edges like she’s spent years yelling over ovens. He mumbles something about the wind picking up, and she snorts, lifting a hand to swat a mosquito off the side of his neck. Her knuckles graze his jawline, warm and calloused from kneading dough, and he flinches so hard his beer sloshes over the edge of the can onto his jeans. He expects her to apologize, but she just smirks, wiping the excess beer off his thigh with the back of her hand, no hesitation.
She holds out a wrapped loaf of sourdough, crinkly brown paper tied with twine, and he shakes his head automatically, falls back on his stupid rule. “I don’t take handouts,” he says, and she rolls her eyes, shoving the loaf harder into his chest so he has to grab it to keep it from falling. Their fingers brush, and he feels a jolt shoot up his arm that has nothing to do with the beer or the heat. Guilt curls tight in his gut immediately, hot and sharp, like he’s cheating on Diane just by standing this close to her cousin, just by liking the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she teases him. He should leave, he thinks, go back to his cottage and heat up a frozen meatloaf dinner like he does every night.
“Handout my ass,” she says, kicking the toe of his work boot with hers. “I make 20 extra loaves a day just to give away. You’re not special. Though I do have a pot of bison chili simmering in the back of the bakery if you’re done being stubborn. Diane used to rave about my chili, you know. Said it was the only thing that could warm her up after we spent all day skiing in Boone.”
The mention of Diane’s name knocks the wind out of him for half a second. He’d been so focused on the guilt he hadn’t thought about how Diane would actually feel about him starving himself out of some stupid sense of loyalty. She’d called him a dramatic idiot more than once for that kind of garbage. The war in his chest eases a little, the disgust at himself softening under the quiet, warm pull of wanting to not eat alone for the first time in weeks. He hesitates for another beat, then nods, and her grin gets wider, so bright he has to look away for a second.
The walk to the bakery is two minutes, the sidewalk still warm from the afternoon sun under his boots. She unlocks the back door, and the smell hits him first, yeast and cinnamon and slow-cooked meat, so warm it wraps around him like a blanket. She pulls two chipped ceramic bowls out of the cabinet, ladles chili into both, slices a thick piece of sourdough and slathers it with salted butter before sliding the bowl across the small metal table to him. Their knees brush under the table when she sits down, and neither of them pulls away.
He takes the first bite, and his eyes burn before he can stop it. He hasn’t had a meal that didn’t come out of a microwave since Diane died, hasn’t had anyone care enough to make something for him that didn’t come with a side of pity. He swipes at his eye with the back of his hand, and she doesn’t mention it, just tells him a story about Diane dying her hair neon pink when they were 16, crashing her mom’s car into a mailbox the next day. He laughs so hard he snorts chili out his nose, and she cackles so loud the cat sleeping on the flour sack in the corner lifts its head and glares at them.
He stays for two hours, tells her about the time he had to rescue a drunk tourist from a tree in Yellowstone, about the way Diane used to bring him coffee at the ranger station every morning before sunrise. She walks him to the door when he leaves, presses the wrapped loaf into his hands again, scribbles her phone number on the paper in blue marker, says she makes lentil soup on Wednesdays if he ever gets sick of frozen garbage. He nods, tucks the loaf under his arm, and walks home, the paper still warm against his chest through his jacket.
He unlocks his front door, flicks on the kitchen light, sets the loaf on the counter next to his stack of frozen dinner boxes. He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket, taps her number into his contacts before he can talk himself out of it.
