Rufus Ortega, 62, retired cattle auctioneer from the Texas Panhandle, hasn’t spoken at full volume in 18 months. The fast, staccato patter that made him a local legend at cattle sales across three states dried up three weeks after his wife Elara died of lung cancer, like someone flipped a switch in his throat. He moved to Asheville last spring on a whim, bought a cottage on 3 acres at the edge of town, and has spent most of his days fixing up the old barn out back, avoiding small talk with neighbors, and making brisket chili the exact way Elara taught him, extra cayenne, no beans. The only person he lets hang around is Clara, Elara’s 50-year-old younger sister, who moved into his guest room three months prior to “help him settle” and never left. He’s spent every day of those three months fighting the stupid, unforgivable buzz in his chest every time she walks in a room, convinced wanting anything from her is a betrayal so big even Elara would never forgive it.
He’s manning his booth at the town’s annual fall chili cookoff when she shows up, flannel unbuttoned over a faded Nirvana tee, work boots caked in mud from her job at the local native plant nursery, a smudge of potting soil high on her left jaw. The air smells like burnt chili, wood smoke, and the sharp, metallic tang of incoming rain. She leans against the edge of his folding table, close enough that her elbow brushes his bicep when she reaches for a sample cup, and he flinches like he got burned. “Told you you’d get roped into this,” she says, grinning, and he can hear the same lilt in her voice that Elara had, the same West Texas drawl softened by 20 years of living on the east coast. He hands her a cup of chili, their fingers brushing when she takes it, and he feels a jolt run up his arm, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 19 and kissed Elara for the first time behind the sale barn. The callus on her thumb from pruning rose bushes matches the callus on his index finger from 30 years of holding an auction gavel, rough and warm in a way that makes his throat tight.
She takes a sip, coughs, and swats his arm. “Still put way too much cayenne, just like Elara always yelled at you for,” she says, and he laughs, a quiet, rusty sound he doesn’t make often. The first drops of rain hit the back of his neck a minute later, fat and cold, and the crowd around the cookoff starts to scatter, everyone hauling coolers and folding chairs to their cars before the storm hits. Rufus grabs one end of the heavy cooler full of leftover chili, Clara grabs the other, and they haul it under the tin awning of the nearby picnic shelter, rain coming down so hard now it’s bouncing off the asphalt two inches high. She trips over a half-folded camping chair on the way, and he reaches out to catch her, one hand on her waist, the other wrapped around her forearm, and she lands pressed against his chest, her hair falling in his face, smelling like cedar shampoo and wet dirt and something that’s just her, not Elara, something sharp and sweet that makes his head spin. He holds her there for two seconds too long, and when he lets go, his face is hot, and he can’t look her in the eye.
They huddle against the wall of the shelter, listening to the rain pound the tin roof so loud they can barely hear anything else, the rest of the cookoff crowd long gone. She turns to him first, her eyes dark, no trace of the goofy kid sister he used to take four-wheeling on the ranch when she was 16. “I know you think this is wrong,” she says, quiet enough he almost misses it over the rain, “I know you think it’s a betrayal. But Elara called me two days before she died. Told me if you ever moved out here, I should look after you. Told me she knew I always had a thing for you, even when I was a kid, and that she didn’t care, as long as you weren’t alone.”
Rufus’s stomach drops, and for a second he feels sick, like he’s going to throw up the beer he drank an hour earlier. He’s spent months hating himself for noticing the way her flannel fits her shoulders, for laughing too hard at her bad jokes, for waking up some mornings and hoping she’s already in the kitchen making coffee, because the sound of her singing off-key to old country songs makes the quiet of the house feel less heavy. He thinks of Elara, lying in the hospital bed, skin thin as paper, telling him she didn’t want him to spend the rest of his life grieving, that he deserved to be happy. He looks at Clara, the potting soil still on her jaw, rain dripping off the ends of her hair, and he realizes he’s not grieving Elara by being alone. He’s just wasting the time she wanted him to have.
He reaches up, brushes the smudge of potting soil off her jaw with his thumb, his callus catching on her soft skin, and for the first time in 18 months, he doesn’t feel guilty. “I’m an idiot,” he says, quiet, and she grins, the corners of her eyes crinkling the same way Elara’s used to, but different, her own crinkles, her own smile. She laces her fingers through his, her hand warm and rough in his, and they stand there for another 10 minutes, watching the rain slow to a drizzle, no one driving by, no one gossiping, no rules to break except the ones he made up in his own head. The sun breaks through the clouds right as the last of the rain stops, painting a faint rainbow over the tree line at the edge of the park, and she squeezes his hand, leaning her shoulder against his. He doesn’t kiss her yet, not here, not now, but he knows he will later, when they get back to the cottage, when they’re sitting on the porch drinking iced tea, no rush, no pressure, no more guilt. He lifts their intertwined hands to his mouth, presses a soft kiss to the back of her knuckles, and lets himself breathe for the first time in a year and a half.
