Roman Voss, 62, has spent the last eight years holed up in his Boise basement restoring antique topographical maps, a career shift he made after 20 years as a wildland firefighter left his left wrist crisscrossed with burn scars and his hands holding a faint, permanent tremor he’s embarrassed by. He avoids most public events, hates small talk, and still feels a twist of old anger every time someone mentions his ex-wife Lila, who left him for a Scottsdale real estate agent in 2015 and hasn’t spoken to him since. He only agreed to man the local historical society’s booth at the summer park festival because his next door neighbor begged, saying no one else knew enough about the old Idaho backcountry maps they were selling to answer questions.
The first two hours are torture. He wears a faded Pendleton even though it’s 82 degrees, keeps the sleeves pulled down to hide his wrist scars, grunts one-word answers to people asking if the maps are “vintage enough for Instagram.” He’s already mentally mapping out the fastest way to sneak out when a shadow falls over the stack of 1970s Salmon River survey maps he’s laid out. He looks up, and his throat goes tight. He recognizes her immediately: Mara Hale, Lila’s younger cousin, 58, who he’d only met once at his wedding 22 years prior, when she’d showed up late with a black eye and a story about hooking a steelhead so big it’d slammed the rod into her face. She’s lean and sun-leathered now, a faint scar slicing through her left eyebrow, wearing cutoff denim shorts and a flannel tied around her waist, holding a seltzer can that smells like citrus and pine when she leans across the table.
Her forearm brushes his when she points to a red X marked on one of the Salmon River maps, the callus on her elbow rough against his bare wrist where his sleeve had ridden up. She doesn’t flinch at the sight of his burn scars, just holds eye contact, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, and says she remembers him hiding in the groomsmen’s tent during the wedding reception, ignoring Lila’s requests to dance so he could flip through an old atlas he’d found earlier that day. He freezes, first hot with old shame – he’d spent the entire wedding sneaking glances at her, back then, had felt sick with guilt for weeks after for even thinking about his wife’s cousin that way – then softens when she laughs, loud and rough, over the bluegrass band playing 50 feet away.
He tells himself he should send her away, that getting involved with anyone related to Lila is the kind of messy drama he’s spent years running from, that she’s probably just here to get a discount on a map for her fly fishing guide service out of McCall. But when she asks if he’s ever fished the Middle Fork, he finds himself talking for 15 minutes straight about the trip he took back in 2003, before the big fires, and she leans in, elbows on the table, asking questions like she actually cares what he has to say. When a kid runs past with a melting snow cone, she grabs his wrist to yank him out of the way, her hand warm and firm around his scarred skin, and he doesn’t pull away.
She nods toward the craft beer tent down the path when his neighbor shows up with the master gardener he’s been flirting with for months, and asks if he wants to ditch the booth. He hesitates for half a second, then nods, slipping his lanyard off and dropping it on the table before following her. They sit on a splintered picnic table far from the crowd, drinking cold IPAs that taste like pine, their shoulders brushing every time one of them shifts, her knee pressed against his under the table. She tells him she’s been divorced twice, moved back to Boise from McCall last month, looked him up three years ago when she needed a restored map for veteran clients, but didn’t reach out because she’d heard he wanted nothing to do with Lila’s side of the family.
He admits he’s barely spoken to anyone outside of grocery cashiers and UPS drivers in three months, that he hates how awkward he feels around people now, that he’s embarrassed by the tremor in his hands. She reaches across the table, laces her fingers through his for two slow beats, and says the tremor doesn’t bother her, that most guys his age spend all their time bragging about golf handicaps instead of talking about the places they’ve seen and the maps they’ve fixed. The sun dips low, painting the sky pink and orange, when she pulls a folded, water-stained 1968 Salmon River survey out of her backpack and slides it across the table, saying she’ll pay him for restoring it in guided fishing trips and the peach pie she bakes every Sunday. He takes the map, his fingers brushing hers, and tells her he’s free next Saturday. She grins, taps her phone against his to exchange numbers, then leans in and presses a quick, warm kiss to his cheek before she walks away to meet her friends. He sits there for a minute after she’s gone, holding the crinkled map in his hand, and traces the faint red X she’d marked earlier on the spot where she says the biggest steelhead in the river spawn.
