Roland Voss, 62, has built custom cedar canoes for northern Michigan clients for 28 years, and he’s avoided the annual Traverse City harvest fest for the last seven, ever since his wife packed her bags and left him for a hot yoga instructor half his age. He only showed up this year because his old delivery driver threatened to leave a half-finished canoe hull out in the rain if he didn’t “get his grumpy ass out of the workshop for three hours.” He’s leaning against a weathered cedar post outside the brewery, holding a hazy IPA that’s already sweating through the paper coaster under it, watching drunk 20-somethings trip over hay bales, when he spots her.
Maeve Carter. His late best friend Joe’s little sister. He hasn’t seen her since Joe’s funeral three years prior, when she flew in from Portland, stayed for 48 hours, and hugged him so tight his ribs ached for two days. She’s wearing scuffed work boots, jeans with a hole at the knee, and a green flannel tied around her waist, her auburn hair pulled back in a messy braid that’s slipped out at the temples. She laughs at something the taco truck vendor says, tipping her head back, and Roland’s first instinct is to duck behind the post. He’d always thought of her as the annoying 12-year-old who’d tag along on their fishing trips, beg him to teach her to carve wooden figurines, steal sips of Joe’s root beer when he wasn’t looking. But now? He can’t stop staring at the freckles dusting her nose, the way her forearms are flexed as she lifts her cider cup to her mouth.
She spots him before he can move, her face lighting up, and she cuts through the crowd straight for him. The bluegrass band on stage cranks up a fast banjo number, so she has to lean in close to talk, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep through his worn Carhartt jacket. He can smell lavender and pine soap on her skin, the faint sweet tang of hard cider on her breath, and his throat goes dry. She yells over the music that she moved back to town two weeks prior, bought the old empty storefront on Front Street, is opening a small herbal apothecary for foraged teas and salves. She needs custom floating shelves for her dried herb bundles, she says, and he’s the only person she trusts to build them right.
Roland’s first move is to say no. He tells himself it’s a line he can’t cross, that Joe would roll in his grave if he so much as thought about his little sister as anything other than family, that letting someone new in will only end with him alone again, eating frozen burritos for dinner while he sands canoe hulls at 10 PM. But then she tilts her head, grins that same lopsided grin she had when she talked him into letting her take his new canoe out on the lake by herself when she was 16, and he can’t get the word out. He nods instead. She cheers, clapping a hand on his arm, and her palm lingers there for a beat longer than it needs to, her thumb brushing the frayed edge of his jacket sleeve.
When the fest wraps up at 8, the staff rolling up the hay bales and the band packing up their instruments, she asks if he wants to walk down to the Boardman River with her, watch the sunset. He almost makes up an excuse, says he has a hull to seal at dawn, that he has to feed his grumpy old tabby, but then he looks at her, her eyes bright in the fading golden light, and he says yes. The path down to the river is lined with maple trees, their leaves turning burnt orange and deep red, crunching under their boots as they walk. A cool breeze blows off the water, and he can smell wood smoke from the nearby campground, the sharp, earthy scent of damp fallen leaves.
She sits on a fallen oak log at the bank, patting the spot next to her. When he sits, their knees brush through their jeans, and neither of them moves away. She tells him she’s had a crush on him since she was 16, that she’d drive 45 minutes from her parents’ house just to hang around his workshop and watch him work, that she never said anything because he was married, then she got married, then Joe died and she felt like it was too late to say anything. Roland sits still for a second, his mind going blank, then he reaches up, brushes a stray strand of hair that’s blown across her face behind her ear. His fingers graze her cheek, soft and warm, and she leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second.
They stay there until the sun dips all the way below the treeline, the sky turning from tangerine to deep lavender, the first few stars pricking through the dark. He tells her he’ll be at her storefront at 9 the next morning with his tape measure and a notebook full of design ideas. She smiles, leans in, and kisses him soft, quick, the faint taste of cinnamon cider on her lips, before she stands up, slings her bag over her shoulder, and heads back up the path to her truck. Roland sits there for another five minutes, the cold of the log seeping through his jeans, the sound of the river gurgling over the rocks filling the quiet. He finishes the last of his now-warm beer, stands up, and starts walking back to his own truck, already running through shelf joinery plans in his head, a quiet, unshakable grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
