Clay Bennett, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service ranger, has spent the last eight years perfecting the art of being left alone. His greatest flaw is a stubborn, guilt-fueled loyalty to his late wife Ellie that has him turning down every dinner invite, every set-up, every soft smile from a woman at the hardware store, like any crack in his loneliness would be a betrayal of the 32 years they had together. He’d only agreed to man the fire safety booth at the county summer street fair because his 16-year-old niece had begged, batting her eyelashes and saying she’d skip her summer math camp if he said no.
The July air hangs thick enough to sip, sweet with fried dough and cotton candy, the distant rattle of the Tilt-A-Whirl mixing with the high squeal of kids chasing each other with water guns. Clay has already given out half his stack of wildfire prevention pamphlets, most to harried parents looking for something to occupy their sticky-fingered toddlers for ten seconds, when a glass jar of spicy garlic dills slides across the asphalt and bumps the toe of his work boot.
He looks up to see Marnie Carter, 54, Ellie’s second cousin by marriage, leaning over the edge of her adjacent pickle booth, sun glinting off the silver hoops in her ears. She moved back to town two years prior after a messy divorce from a dentist in Portland, and Clay has gone out of his way to avoid her every time they’ve crossed paths since. Everyone in their small Montana town whispers that they’d be “wrong” to get close, that Marnie’s practically family, even though there’s not a drop of shared blood between them. The thought has pinged around Clay’s head more times than he cares to admit, a sharp push-pull of disgust at the idea of breaking that unspoken small-town rule and a hot, quiet desire that tugs low in his gut every time he sees her laugh.
She kneels to grab the jar, her shoulder brushing his forearm as she straightens, and he catches a whiff of lavender shampoo tangled with the sharp, briny tang of dill vinegar clinging to her clothes. “Thanks for guarding that,” she says, grinning, wiping a smudge of pickle brine off the leg of her cutoff jeans. “Spicy ones are my best seller. Would’ve hated to lose a whole jar to the asphalt.”
Clay grunts in response, but he can feel the tips of his ears heating up, a stupid reaction he hasn’t had since he was a teenager sneaking beer behind the high school gym. He watches her stack jars on the edge of her booth, her hands calloused at the knuckles, a thin white scar wrapping around her index finger from the time she and Ellie tried to build a treehouse in Clay’s backyard back in 1998 and she’d slipped with a circular saw. He’d forgotten that detail, until now.
A gust of wind picks up out of nowhere, sending a stack of her sample cups flying across the grass, and he moves without thinking, bending to grab as many as he can. Their hands brush when they both reach for the same cup half-buried in a patch of clover, and the spark of it makes him jerk his hand back like he’s been burned. “I remembered you hate sweet pickles,” she says, like she hasn’t noticed, nodding at a crate of sealed jars under her booth. “Batched a whole run of half-sours last week, extra briny, just how you like ’em.”
The words hit him square in the chest, soft and unexpected, and for a second he can’t think of anything to say. Before he can, the sky opens up, a sudden, torrential summer downpour that sends fairgoers scrambling for cover. Clay grabs the corner of the tarp draped over his booth and helps her tie it down over her stack of jars, his fingers fumbling with the wet rope, both of them soaked through in under a minute. When the wind dies down, they huddle under the edge of her tent, pressed shoulder to shoulder to stay out of the rain, their knees knocking together every time one of them shifts.
The rain hammering on the tarp drowns out every other sound for ten full minutes. Marnie looks up at him, her dark hair stuck to her forehead, eyelashes clumped with raindrops, and she doesn’t look away when their eyes lock. “I know you think everyone would talk,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear. “I know you think it’s some kind of betrayal. But Ellie would’ve kicked your ass for being this stubborn for eight whole years, you know that right?”
The words cut through the guilt he’s carried around like a lead weight for so long he forgot what it felt like to not hold it. For half a second he thinks about stepping back, about grabbing his pamphlets and bailing, about going home to his empty house and his frozen dinners and the photo of Ellie on the mantel. But then he lifts his hand, brushes a wet strand of hair off her face, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and she leans into the touch, no hesitation.
The rain stops as quickly as it started, sun breaking through the clouds, a faint rainbow arching over the fairgrounds. She grabs a jar of the half-sours from under the booth, shoves it into his hand. “Bring that over tonight,” she says, wiping water off her jaw. “I’m making chili. No pressure. If you don’t show, I’ll just eat the whole jar myself.”
He nods, tucks the jar under his arm, doesn’t say anything else before he packs up his booth and drives home. He spends an hour staring at the photo of Ellie on the mantel, running his thumb over the edge of the frame, before he showers, throws on a clean flannel, and drives to the small cottage on the edge of town that Ellie left Marnie in her will. The porch light is on, and he can smell chili simmering through the screen door before he even knocks.
She opens the door wearing faded gray leggings and an old college hoodie, her hair pulled back in a messy braid, and steps aside to let him in. He sets the jar of pickles on the kitchen table next to two open bottles of beer, and when she leans against the counter next to him, her hip pressed warm against his, he doesn’t overthink it. He leans down and kisses her, slow, the faint taste of mint gum and dill on her lips, the sound of crickets chirping through the open kitchen window mixing with the soft bubble of the chili on the stove.
