Elias Voss, 59, semi-retired custom cabinet maker, hunches against the cooler at the annual Eden Falls fireman’s picnic, half-wishing he’d told Ron to go to hell when his old buddy banged on his front door at 4 p.m. It’s the first town event he’s attended in three years, not since Clara died, and every overly friendly pat on the back, every “How you holding up, Eli?” makes his jaw tighten. He wears the same faded navy flannel he wears to the shop, sleeves rolled to his elbows, sawdust still crusted in the creases of his knuckles even though he spent 20 minutes scrubbing his hands before he left. The air smells like charred bratwurst, charcoal, and cut clover, the low thrum of a 90s country cover band mixing with the shriek of kids chasing each other across the baseball diamond.
He’s just crumpling his empty beer can, plotting his escape to the truck, when she steps up beside him. Mara Carter, 47, the new county forest ranger who bought the old Hale farm three miles down the road from his place, the one he’s spoken to exactly twice over the split-rail fence between their properties, both times he was so gruff he’s pretty sure she thinks he’s a reclusive asshole. She’s in her uniform, green shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sun-bleached auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, a faint scar snaking up her left forearm from the tree fall she’d mentioned offhand the last time they talked. She reaches for a black cherry seltzer at the same time he reaches for another beer, their knuckles brushing hard enough that he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot router bit.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, staring at the scuffed toes of his work boots.
She snorts, popping the tab on her seltzer. “Relax. I don’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.”
He blinks, heat creeping up the back of his neck. He’s not used to people teasing him, not since Clara stopped laughing at his terrible dad jokes. He’d avoided Mara on purpose, at first because he didn’t want to deal with a new neighbor prying into his business, then because every time he saw her hauling fence posts or walking her hound dog along the road, his chest felt tight in a way he hadn’t felt since he was 16 and asking Clara to prom. The quiet voice in his head that sounds exactly like Clara keeps calling him an idiot for hiding, but the louder, guiltier part of him has spent three years convincing himself he doesn’t get to want anything new.
She nods at the empty spot on the picnic bench beside him. “Mind if I sit? The rest of the crew is cornering me to help judge the pie contest, and I’d rather eat glass than tell Mrs. Henderson her peach pie is dry for the third year running.”
He shrugs, sliding over to make room. Their knees brush under the table, and he freezes, half expecting her to move away, but she doesn’t. She leans back, stretching her arms over her head, and he catches a whiff of lavender hand cream mixed with the pine sap stuck to her uniform cuffs. She tells him she found a box of Clara’s old poetry collections at the town yard sale last month, that she’d recognized Clara’s name from the little plaques on the library bookshelves Clara used to restock every Saturday, that she’d been meaning to bring them by his place but didn’t want to intrude.
His throat goes tight. He’d thought all of Clara’s poetry had gotten donated to the thrift store when he’d cleaned out her home office after she died, too raw to look at the pages covered in her messy handwriting in the margins. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, staring at the way the golden hour light catches the freckles across her nose, and she doesn’t push, just sips her seltzer, watching the firemen hose down the kids who ran through the mud pit by the bleachers. She holds eye contact with him longer than most people do, no pity in her expression, no awkward “I’m sorry for your loss” line waiting to drop, just a faint, amused smirk like she knows exactly how flustered he is.
A group of teens runs past, one of them slamming into the edge of the table hard enough that a half-full cup of pink lemonade teeters off the edge, heading straight for his flannel. She grabs it mid-fall, her palm pressing flat against his chest for half a second to steady herself, the warmth of her hand seeping through the thin cotton of his shirt. He can feel his heart hammering under her touch, and she grins when she pulls back, wiping a drop of lemonade off her wrist with the back of her hand.
“Nice reflexes,” he says, quieter than he means to.
“Comes with the job,” she says. She digs a crumpled napkin out of her pants pocket, scribbles her cell number on it in blue ballpoint, slides it across the table to him. “I need built-in bookshelves for the front room of the farm. The previous owners cut a hole in the wall for a TV that doesn’t fit, and I don’t trust any of the handymen in town to not mess it up. I’ve seen the oak table you built for the church basement. You’re good.”
He stares at the napkin, the ink smudged a little where her finger dragged across it. He’d told himself he wasn’t taking any more side jobs, that he only did small projects for Ron and the pastor these days, that he liked the quiet of his shop alone. But he looks up at her, the way she’s biting the corner of her lip like she’s half expecting him to say no, and he nods.
“Saturday, 10 a.m.,” he says. “I’ll bring my tape measure.”
She stands up, slinging her work bag over her shoulder, and taps the napkin with one finger. “Don’t be late. And don’t pretend you’re not looking forward to it. I see you staring at my house when you drive down the road in your pickup.”
She walks off before he can say anything, heading over to help two firemen lift the heavy cast iron grill onto the back of their truck. He sits there for a minute, holding the napkin, rubbing the edge of it between his thumb and forefinger, the faint scent of lavender still clinging to the paper. He takes a sip of his beer, looks out over the diamond where the kids are still screaming, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel the urge to rush home to an empty house.
