Elroy Voss, 62, spent 32 years picking through charred drywall and melted wiring as a fire investigator for the state of Texas, and he can still spot a lie faster than he can spot the source of a grease fire. His biggest flaw, the one his old crew ribbed him for every Friday coffee, is that he lies to himself more than anyone else he’s ever interviewed. He’d spent 8 years telling himself he was fine alone, that any new connection after his wife Linda died of liver failure was a betrayal, that he’d be perfectly content splitting his days between restoring vintage hunting knives and entering the annual town chili cookoff Linda had dragged him to back in 2002.
The cookoff air stuck to his skin thick with cumin, smoked brisket fat, and the sugary fumes of the cotton candy stand by the bounce house. He’d already sampled 17 entries by 2 p.m., his tongue buzzing with capsaicin, his plastic judging cup crumpled in his calloused left hand, scarred shut across the knuckle from a 2017 apartment blaze that almost took two of his rookies. He was reaching for his third root beer of the day when a woman’s voice pulled his gaze up from his score sheet.
He’d know that crinkle at the corner of her eyes anywhere. Mara Carter, 58, Linda’s second cousin, the woman he’d had a stupid, all-consuming crush on for three months right before he met Linda at that 1990 lake party. He hadn’t seen her in 28 years, not since she moved to New Mexico to open a pottery studio after her first wedding. Her auburn hair was streaked thick with silver now, pulled back in a messy braid, her forearms dusted with what looked like clay dust, a silver ring shaped like a coyote wrapped around her index finger. She set her chili entry down on the folding table in front of him, and when she pushed the sample cup toward him, her fingers brushed his. He felt the rough callus on her middle finger, the kind you get from years of throwing clay, and his throat went dry.
She sat down on the folding chair next to him, her knee brushing his denim-clad thigh under the table, close enough he could smell lavender shampoo and the sharp, smoky heat of chipotle in her chili. She talked like no time had passed, asked about his old fire crew, mentioned she’d gotten the Christmas cookies Linda sent every year up until the year she died, said she’d always thought Elroy was the best thing that ever happened to her cousin. He sat there half listening, half screaming at himself internally for noticing how her worn flannel shirt rolled up to show a tattoo of a sunflower on her wrist, for laughing so hard at her story about a pottery wheel mishap that he snort-laughed, something he hadn’t done since Linda was alive.
The guilt hit him like a punch to the gut a half hour later, when she leaned in to point at a mistake on his score sheet, her hair falling forward to brush his cheek. He almost flinched, ready to make an excuse about having to get home to his two hound dogs, ready to run from the warm, low hum of excitement he hadn’t felt in almost a decade. He hated himself for even thinking about another woman, for letting himself forget, even for a second, how much he’d loved Linda. But then Mara pulled back, held up her hands like she knew exactly what he was thinking, and said Linda had called her six months before she died, told her if she ever moved back to town, she had to look Elroy up, said he’d shut himself off from the world the second she got sick.
The sun was dipping low over the oak trees by the time the awards were announced, Mara taking second place for her chipotle brisket chili, Elroy taking third for his traditional Texas red. He walked her to her beat-up 2008 Ford F150, the crunch of peanut shells under their boots, the string lights strung between the trees flickering on, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the last of the crowd noise. She stopped at the driver’s side door, twisted the coyote ring on her finger once, and asked if he wanted to come back to her place to split the peach cobbler she’d baked that morning, said she had that vanilla bean whipped cream Linda used to rave about every Fourth of July.
He hesitated for three full seconds, every self-punitive bone in his body screaming to say no, to go home to his empty house and his old hunting knives and the photo of Linda on the mantel. Then he looked at her eyes, no pity, no expectation, just the same warm glint he’d remembered from that 1990 lake party, and he nodded. He climbed into the passenger seat, the vinyl warm under his jeans, and she handed him a cold bottle of sweet tea from the cooler on the floor, their fingers brushing again when he took it, this time he didn’t pull away. She pulled out of the fairground parking lot, turned on the old country station, and George Strait’s voice drifted over the speakers, soft and familiar. He looked out the window at the oak trees passing by, and for the first time in 8 years, he didn’t feel the heavy weight of guilt sitting on his chest.
