Dale Rourke is 62, retired wildland fire crew foreman, spent 32 years chasing blazes across Idaho’s backcountry before a 2021 timber fall left him with a bad left knee and a mandatory pension. He’s stubborn to a fault, refuses to ask for help even when hauling engine blocks makes his knee throb so bad he has to sit on his shop floor for 10 minutes to catch his breath, hasn’t so much as asked a woman out for coffee since his wife died of breast cancer eight years prior. That Saturday, he’s at the downtown Boise farmers market for one reason only: grab the last flat of Elberta peaches for his 90-year-old mom, who still bakes pie every Sunday even if her hands shake so bad she sometimes spills sugar all over the counter.
He’s leaning over the wooden stall table, calloused fingers wrapped around the edge of the peach flat, when another hand brushes his. It’s smaller, ink-stained along the knuckles from stamping library books, chipped coral nail polish worn further at the tips like she’s been picking at them when she’s bored. He looks up, and the brim of her straw sun hat almost brushes his cheek, she’s that close. She smells like lavender hand salve and cold iced coffee, the kind with a shot of espresso that cuts through the sweet cream. Mara, he remembers her name, the new librarian who moved to town three months prior, the one the guys at the corner diner have been gossiping about nonstop since she showed up to a city council meeting alone, told the mayor he was an idiot for cutting the library’s after-school program budget. The gossip says she left her husband of 30 years for a 28-year-old art teacher back in Portland, that she’s “not the kind of woman you want to be seen with” in a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business.
He pulls his hand back first, half out of habit, half because he’s heard the gossip, doesn’t want to be the next topic of conversation over meatloaf specials at the diner. She laughs, a low, warm sound, not offended, and nods at the peach flat. “Your mom wants those, or you’re hoarding them for yourself?” she says, and he blinks, surprised she knows about his mom. Turns out his mom stops by the library every Tuesday to pick up western romance novels, talks about him nonstop, complains he works too much in his shop and never lets anyone take care of him. He feels the back of his neck heat up, that stupid embarrassment he hasn’t felt since he was a teenager getting caught sneaking out to camp in the woods with his friends. She holds his eye contact longer than polite, no demure look away, crinkles at the corners when he admits his mom still yells at him for leaving his dirty work boots on the kitchen table when he stops by for dinner.
They stand there for 20 minutes, talking, even as other customers brush past them on the crowded sidewalk. She mentions she bought a beat-up 1972 Ford F100 from a guy out in Meridian a month prior, can’t get anyone in town to return her calls about fixing the rusted-out wheel wells and the carburetor that dies every time she stops at a red light. He knows why no one’s calling her back. Everyone’s too busy listening to the gossip, too scared their wives will side-eye them for helping the “new troublemaker” in town. He’s torn, for a second. He’s spent the last eight years keeping his head down, avoiding drama, not rocking the boat. But she’s asking him about the thick, silvery burn scar running up his left forearm, listens when he talks about the 2012 Salmon River fire, when a falling branch almost took half his crew out, not just nodding along, asks how many of the guys he still keeps in touch with, asks if he ever misses the backcountry. No one’s asked him that in years, not even his mom, who’s just glad he’s not chasing fires anymore.
They start walking down the sidewalk toward the food trucks, and a stray golden retriever runs up, jumps on her legs, and she leans into him to steady herself, her shoulder pressed firm to his bicep, the thin cotton of her sundress soft against the worn flannel of his work shirt. He doesn’t move away. He can see the diner owner staring at them from across the street, wiping a mug with a rag so hard he’s probably going to tear a hole in it, and for the first time in years, Dale doesn’t care. He asks her to come by his shop the next afternoon, says he’ll take a look at her truck for free, won’t even charge her for parts if she brings him a slice of whatever pie his mom bakes that Sunday. She grins, pulls a crumpled library summer reading program flyer out of her tote bag, scribbles her cell number on the back in blue ballpoint, shoves it in the front pocket of his work shirt, her fingers brushing the thin scar on his chest he got from a chainsaw accident when he was 28. “I’ll bring the whole pie,” she says, “and a six pack of that hazy IPA you like, the one your mom says you keep hidden under your workbench.”
She shows up at his shop the next afternoon at 2 p.m. sharp, a tin of peach pie in one hand, a cold six pack in the other, already sporting a smudge of grease on her left cheek from popping the truck’s hood before he even made it out of the office. He walks over to meet her, takes the pie tin from her, and when their fingers brush this time, neither of them pulls away.
