Roland Voss, 52, has spent the last eight years perfecting the art of disappearing. A minor league baseball scout who logs 30,000 miles a year crisscrossing the Midwest tracking DIII and high school left-handed pitchers, he only comes home to his riverfront cabin outside Marietta, Ohio, for three weeks every October. He’d skipped the town’s annual fall chili cookoff every year since his wife Lila died in a car crash in 2015, but his old high school baseball coach, now 78 and fighting COPD, had called him three times in two days begging him to make an appearance, so he’d caved, showed up in his worn Ohio State hoodie, scuffed work boots, and a scowl he hoped would ward off the inevitable “how you holdin’ up, buddy?” questions.
He’d parked himself by the beer cooler at the far edge of the park 45 minutes earlier, only speaking to two people: the kid running the cooler, and his former next door neighbor who’d rambled for two minutes about his grandson’s travel ball team before Roland had nodded so slowly the guy got the hint and left. The air smelled like hickory smoke, overcooked beef, and the sharp, sweet tang of the apple cider donuts being sold by the high school cheerleading squad. A bluegrass band played off by the picnic tables, their fiddle player sawing so hard his face was bright red. Roland was half considering bailing early when he saw her walk up.
Marnie Hale, 48, the county’s new public health director, had moved back to town three weeks prior, and everyone had an opinion about her. She’d put mandatory outdoor water usage restrictions in place two days after starting, after a cracked sewer line at the old factory on the edge of town leaked E. coli into the river for three weeks before anyone noticed. Half the town thought she was a power-hungry tyrant, the other half thought she was the first local official who’d ever given a shit about public health. Roland had only met her once, 12 years prior, at Lila’s cousin’s wedding, when she was a fresh-faced grad student with dyed blue hair and a lip piercing, tagging along to every family event like a lost puppy. Now she was wearing a faded green flannel, worn work jeans, and steel-toe boots, a smudge of dark grease on her left wrist, her chestnut hair pulled back in a messy braid that had come half loose. She didn’t look like a bureaucrat. She looked like she’d spent the morning fixing a fence, then decided to swing by the cookoff on a lark.
She spotted him immediately, and a slow, lopsided smile spread across her face as she walked over, her boots crunching on the fallen oak leaves scattered across the grass. He tensed up, his first instinct to turn and walk the other way. This felt wrong, somehow, talking to Lila’s distant cousin, especially when he’d already felt a stupid, unprompted jolt of attraction the second he saw her. He’d spent eight years shutting that part of his brain off, had convinced himself any romantic interest was a betrayal of Lila’s memory, not to mention guaranteed to become town gossip before the sun went down.
“Roland Voss, right?” she said when she was three feet away, close enough that he could smell the pine soap she used, and a faint hint of vanilla perfume. “I don’t know if you remember me, Marnie Hale, Lila’s cousin from Akron. I used to beg you to throw batting practice to me at those family cookouts back in the day.”
He nodded, his throat suddenly dry. “I remember. You used to hit better than half the JV players I was scouting back then.”
She laughed, a low, warm sound that made the back of his neck prickle. She leaned against the cooler next to him, their shoulders almost touching, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her flannel through his hoodie. “Appreciate that. I gave up softball after grad school, though. Got too busy yelling at people for poisoning the water supply, apparently.” She nodded at the group of farmers across the park, who were glowering at her over their paper bowls of chili. “Half the town wants to run me out on a rail right now. Fun first month back.”
He snorted. “Small towns. Everyone’s got an opinion, no one wants to do the work to fix anything.” He reached down to grab a root beer from the cooler at the exact same time she did, their hands brushing hard. He felt the rough callus on the side of her right knuckle, from splitting wood or fixing her truck, he guessed, and she didn’t yank her hand away immediately, just held it there for three long beats, her dark eyes locking with his. There was no awkwardness, no embarrassment, just a quiet, steady heat that made his chest feel tight.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back, even though he didn’t want to.
“Nah,” she said, picking up the root beer, popping the top, and splitting the pour between two paper cups she pulled out of her jacket pocket. “I don’t mind sharing.” She handed him one cup, then nodded toward the tree line at the edge of the park. “Wanna go sit on your truck tailgate? I saw your old F-150 parked over there when I pulled up. Figured you’d rather talk there than get stared at by every gossiper in town.”
He didn’t even hesitate before nodding. They walked over to his truck, the leaves crunching under their boots, the sound of the bluegrass band fading behind them. They sat on the tailgate, their knees touching as they sipped the root beer, and she told him about the sewer line, about how she’d quit her job in Cleveland after her mom got sick, about how she’d been asking around about him for three weeks, ever since she’d seen his name in the local paper when he signed a local teen pitcher to a minor league contract. He told her about life on the road, about the tiny towns he stayed in, about how he’d avoided every town event for eight years because he was sick of people giving him the sad widower eyes.
The sun started to dip below the river, painting the sky pink and orange, and the air got cold enough that their breath fogged a little when they talked. She shivered, and he pulled the extra fleece blanket he kept in the back of his truck for scouting trips out, draping it over both their shoulders. Their sides were pressed tight together under the blanket, and he could feel the steady thud of her heartbeat through her flannel. He’d spent eight years telling himself he didn’t deserve this, that any happiness he found after Lila was a betrayal, but sitting there, with her shoulder pressed to his, the smell of pine soap and root beer and wood smoke in the air, all that guilt felt smaller, quieter, like it could fade if he let it.
He reached up, brushing a stray piece of hair that had fallen across her face behind her ear, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She leaned into the touch, her eyes closing for half a second before she leaned in, kissing him slow, the sweet fizz of root beer still on her lips. Somewhere in the distance, the bluegrass band started playing a slow country song, and a group of people cheered as the chili cookoff winner was announced. He didn’t care who won. He didn’t care what anyone in town said. He just pulled her closer, the blanket wrapped tight around both of them, as the last of the sun dipped below the horizon.
