Manny Rios is 58, spent 32 years as a forest fire crew supervisor out of Coos Bay, now picks up casual shifts leading wild mushroom foraging walks for the county extension when the weather’s cool enough to keep the ticks down. He’s got a scar splitting his left eyebrow from a falling cedar limb in the 2017 blaze that took his youngest crew member, and a rule he hasn’t broken in 12 years, not since his ex loaded her Honda Civic with her favorite pie plates and drove east without a note: no letting anyone get close enough to leave a mark he can’t sand off with a week of backcountry foraging alone.
He’s at the county fall harvest fair to drop off a 12-pound crate of chanterelles he pulled from a stand of old Douglas firs the day before, the mushrooms still dusted with pine needles, the scent of earth and apricot clinging to the flannel sleeve of his work shirt. He’s been avoiding the pastry contest tent like it’s a patch of death caps, because his ex used to enter her salted caramel apple pie every year, took home first place seven years running, but the wind shifts and he catches a whiff of cinnamon, burnt sugar, and warm vanilla, and his feet carry him over before he can talk himself out of it.
The ground is soft under his work boots, crusted with hay and crushed cotton candy sticks, the bluegrass band at the main stage tuning up their fiddles so loud his molars rattle a little. He’s stepping back to avoid a kid sprinting past with a face covered in blue slushie when his elbow knocks into a metal pie tin, and he hears a soft curse next to him. The pie’s still warm through the tin, the top crust cracked clean down the middle, streaks of apple and cinnamon oozing out the split. The woman holding it is 54, he’d guess, flour dusted on the cuff of her denim jacket, a smudge of nutmeg on her left cheek, hazel eyes flecked with gold that lock onto his and don’t dart away like most people’s do when they see the scar on his eyebrow.
He stammers out an apology, already reaching for his wallet to offer to pay for the ingredients, but she laughs, a low, rough sound like she’s spent half her life yelling over restaurant kitchen exhaust fans. She says she’s Clara, moved to town three months ago to run the pastry counter at the bistro on Main, got sick of Chicago customers asking her to make desserts that looked pretty for Instagram instead of tasting like something you’d want to eat after a long day in the rain. She’s been practicing this pie for six weeks, she says, and the crack is an easy fix, she brought extra crust trimmings in her tote just in case.
They huddle together at the edge of the tent to patch it, their shoulders brushing every time one of them moves, the heat from her arm seeping through his damp flannel, still cold from the morning fog rolling off the coast. Her hand brushes his when she passes him a ball of extra crust, her palm calloused from rolling out dough 12 hours a day, warm even in the crisp October air. He finds himself telling her about the chanterelle patch he found last week, the mushrooms so thick they were pushing up through the moss, and she leans in, her hair brushing his jaw when she nods, says she’s been dying to get her hands on fresh wild mushrooms to fold into a pear and brie tart she’s testing, but she’s too scared of picking something poisonous to go out alone.
He’s halfway through telling her she’d be fine with a guide before he catches himself, his throat going tight, that old familiar voice in his head yelling that he’ll just mess this up, that anyone who gets close to him ends up hurt or gone. He’s about to mumble an excuse and walk away when a gust of wind blows a strand of her chestnut hair into his face, the ends smelling like apple cider and lavender. He tucks it behind her ear before he can overthink it, his calloused thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and the words come out before he can stop them: I’m heading out to that patch tomorrow at dawn. I’ve got an extra thermos of the dark roast I roast myself in a cast iron pan on my wood stove, if you want to come. You can bring leftover pie.
She pauses for half a second, a slow grin spreading across her face, and she holds out her hand for his phone. Her thumb brushes the back of his hand when she passes it back, her number saved under “Clara (Pie Girl)” with a little mushroom emoji next to it. She winks, says she’ll bring enough pie for both of them, and extra tart tins to carry whatever mushrooms they find, before she turns to carry her now-patched pie over to the contest judges’ table.
He stays for the announcement, leans against the split rail fence when they call her name for first place, and he claps so hard his palms sting. He stops at the grocery store on his way home to pick up a pack of lemon drops, the kind his ex used to love, and he leaves them on the porch of the little rental house he knows his ex moved into outside of Salem on his way to the trailhead the next morning, no note, no name, just a quiet closing of the loop he’s been dragging around for 12 years. He’s got a dented stainless steel thermos of coffee in one hand, a paper plate with the slice of pie Clara handed him after she won, still wrapped in foil, in the other, when he sees her beat-up Ford pickup come over the hill, dust kicking up behind the tires. She rolls down the window, grinning, holding up a wicker basket stacked high with empty tart tins, and he tosses his crumpled, 12-year-old no-romance rule into the ditch next to the trailhead without a second thought.
