Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 22 years jumping out of planes into raging forest fires before he retired to tap maple trees on the 40-acre plot he’d bought with his wife in central Vermont. Eight years after Maureen died of ovarian cancer, he still talked to her while he drilled tap holes in the sugar maples, still kept her favorite lavender mug on the edge of his syrup boiling shed, still refused to go on any of the blind dates his sister kept setting up. His worst flaw, he’d admit if pressed, was that he clung to guilt like it was a safety line, convinced any joy that didn’t tie back to Maureen was a betrayal. The county fair in mid-August was the only time he left his property for more than an hour or two, hauling crates of grade A amber syrup and jars of cinnamon-spiced maple butter to sell to tourists and locals alike. The air around his booth reeked of fried dough, hay, and diesel fumes from the tractor pull happening 100 yards away, and his boots were caked in a sticky mix of spilled soda and grass clippings by 7 p.m.
He was wiping a smudge of syrup off a glass jar when he looked up and saw Elara Voss standing in front of the booth, squinting at the handwritten price signs. Elara was Maureen’s former sister-in-law, 48, a pottery teacher who’d split from Maureen’s younger brother Liam three months prior, after 19 years of marriage. Ronan had avoided her for nearly a decade, ever since the two of them had gotten snowed in at his boiling shed for 14 hours during a freak April blizzard in 2013. Nothing had happened that night, not even a handhold, but he’d left the cabin feeling like he’d cheated on Maureen anyway, the spark between them so thick you could stir it with a maple tapping spile. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts, a faded Grateful Dead t-shirt, and a flannel tied around her waist, her auburn hair streaked with gray pulled back in a messy braid, flecks of dried clay stuck under her fingernails. He froze mid-wipe, the rag still in his hand.
She smiled, the same lopsided grin he remembered from that blizzard, and leaned in over the booth to get a better look at a jar of maple butter, her forearm brushing his bare bicep as she reached. He could smell lavender lotion mixed with the earthy, mineral scent of clay on her skin, and his throat went dry. They made awkward small talk first, about the fair, about the weirdly warm August weather, about his daughter who’d had Elara as an art teacher in high school. He passed her a tiny plastic spoon with a sample of the maple butter, and their fingers brushed when she took it, the callus on the pad of her thumb catching on the scar across his knuckle from a 2019 fire. She held eye contact for four full beats before she licked the syrup off the spoon, and he looked away first, his face hot, a reaction he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager fumbling with his first girlfriend’s bra strap in the back of a pickup truck.
A part of him screamed that this was wrong, that Elara was family, that Maureen would roll her eyes so hard she’d give herself a headache if she saw him flustered over her ex-sister-in-law. The other part of him, the part that hadn’t felt anything but quiet grief and routine for eight years, hummed so loud he could barely hear the kid screaming on the Ferris wheel 50 yards away. He’d spent so long punishing himself for outliving Maureen that he’d forgotten what it felt like to want something that wasn’t related to keeping her memory alive. The sky turned dark purple all at once, and the first fat raindrops hit the top of his booth’s tin roof with a sharp crack, fairgoers scattering for cover as thunder rumbled low in the distance.
The fair shut down immediately, vendors rushing to pack up their stock before the rain soaked everything. He grabbed the heavy wool smokejumper coat he kept draped over the back of his chair, and offered to walk her to her car, parked on the far end of the fairgrounds. She nodded, and ducked under the coat with him, their sides pressed tight together as they ran through the rain, his arm slung around her shoulders to hold the coat up. He could feel the heat of her hip through the thin fabric of her shorts, her shoulder digging gently into his ribs, the rain cold on the side of his face that wasn’t pressed against her hair. They made it to her beat up 2008 Subaru in five minutes, both of them laughing, their jeans soaked from the knees down. She didn’t unlock the door right away, turning to face him instead, the two of them still huddled under the coat, rain dripping off the brim of his baseball cap onto her cheek.
“I thought about that blizzard every single year,” she said, quiet enough that he almost couldn’t hear it over the rain. He didn’t say anything, just leaned in and kissed her, slow, the taste of maple butter and peppermint gum on her lips, her hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck, her fingers cold from the rain. It didn’t feel like a betrayal. It felt like breathing, for the first time in eight years. When they pulled apart, she smiled that lopsided grin again, and scribbled her phone number on the back of a pottery business card, shoving it into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “Meet me for pancakes at the diner on Route 7 tomorrow at 8,” she said, before she unlocked the car door and climbed in, waving as she pulled away.
He walked back to his booth, the rain slowing to a soft drizzle, the fairgrounds empty except for a handful of vendors packing up their stalls. He pulled the business card out of his pocket, ran a thumb over the smudge of clay on the corner, and tucked it back into his shirt, right over his heart.
