Rafe Castillo, 52, makes his living tearing apart rusted 1970s snowmobiles and putting them back together better than they were new, and he’d rather spend a Saturday hunched over a seized engine in his unheated Traverse City garage than wander a small-town craft fair. His 16-year-old niece all but dragged him out the door that morning, saying he hadn’t spoken to a woman who wasn’t a parts supplier or her mom in three years, and he’d caved mostly to avoid listening to her nag him all month. The air smelled like crushed maple leaves and fried dough, his cider was spiked with cinnamon so strong it made his eyes water, and he was already plotting his escape when he spotted the candle booth.
He recognized Mara first by the thin, silvery scar snaking up her left wrist, the one she’d gotten when they crashed a Ski-Doo into a snowbank on Torch Lake back in 2009, when he and Lila were still married and the whole extended family rented a cabin for New Year’s. She was Lila’s first cousin, the one who’d always laughed at his dumb jokes instead of rolling her eyes like the rest of Lila’s family, the one who’d dropped off a cooler of soup and beer at his house two weeks after Lila left, no questions asked, no pitying looks. He’d had a stupid, useless crush on her back then, one he’d buried so deep he’d almost forgotten it existed, because she was Lila’s family, off-limits, the kind of thought you didn’t let yourself have if you wanted to keep your marriage intact. He froze half a step away from the booth, ready to turn and walk the other way, but she looked up from labeling a jar of pine-scented wax and locked eyes with him, a slow, lopsided grin spreading across her face.
She waved him over, and he couldn’t make his feet move fast enough to leave, so he walked up, his boots crunching on loose hay scattered across the fairground. She was leaning against the booth’s counter, hip tilted, wearing a thick wool flannel that was a little too big, a streak of gray cutting through the auburn hair tucked behind one ear. “Thought that was you,” she said, her voice lower than he remembered, rougher from years of smoking menthols she still thought she hid from everyone. He leaned in to smell a candle on the counter in front of her, and their shoulders brushed, the scratch of her flannel against his work jacket sending a jolt up his spine he hadn’t felt in years. When she passed him a sample tin, their fingers brushed for three full beats too long, and she didn’t pull away first.
They talked for 40 minutes, standing so close their knees knocked every time one of them shifted their weight. He told her about the 1976 Arctic Cat he’d just restored for a collector in Alaska, she told him she’d moved back to Michigan from Portland a month prior, was renting the old family cabin up on Torch Lake for the winter, had a beat-up 1978 Ski-Doo sitting in the garage that hadn’t run in 12 years. He knew he should leave, knew that anyone who saw them talking would text Lila before the sun went down, knew that getting involved with his ex-wife’s cousin was the kind of small-town drama he’d spent seven years running from. The logical part of his brain screamed that it was a bad idea, that it was cheap, that he’d regret it, but every time she laughed at one of his jokes, every time she held his gaze a little longer than necessary, that voice got quieter.
“You could come fix it, if you want,” she said, nodding at the sample tin in his hand, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckle when she reached for a jar behind the counter. “I’ll pay you, obviously, plus I’ve got that hazy IPA you used to drink at the cabin. The one Lila hated because it tasted like pine soap.” He hesitated for half a second, thinking of the group chat Lila had with all her cousins, thinking of the gossip that would spread through town faster than wildfire, thinking of all the ways this could blow up in his face. Then he thought of how quiet his house was every night, how he’d eaten the same frozen burrito for dinner three nights in a row, how she was the first person who’d asked him about his snowmobiles in months who didn’t think it was a stupid hobby for a grown man. “Sure,” he said, and she scribbled her address on a scrap of wax paper, pressing it into his palm so her fingers lingered on his wrist.
He showed up at the cabin at 7 that night, his toolbox in the bed of his truck, a six pack of that same IPA tucked next to it. She opened the door before he could even knock, wearing the same flannel, no socks, the cabin smelling like the pine candle she’d been selling at the fair. She took the six pack from him, her thumb brushing the faded scar on his knuckle from a time he’d dropped an engine block on his hand last winter, and he stepped inside, letting the screen door click shut behind him.
