Ronan O’Malley, 59, has worked as the sole lighthouse keeper on Lake Superior’s Devils Island for 10 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for a travel blogger she met on a press trip to Aruba. His biggest flaw is that he’s spent the entire decade walling himself off from any connection that requires vulnerability, driving the 90 minutes into Grand Marais only once every two weeks for supplies, skipping the weekly fish fries and summer street fairs whenever he can to avoid small talk that might lead to something more. This year, he can’t skip the fair. The old lady who sold the no-cinnamon wild blueberry jam he eats on toast every morning passed last winter, and the only place he can find a replacement is the jam booth at the annual port fair.
She’s leaning across the splintered pine counter to hand a jar of seedless raspberry jam to a toddler in a neon orange life jacket, sun-bleached auburn hair falling over one shoulder, the sleeve of her gray flannel shirt riding up to show a tiny constellation of freckles on her left bicep. He recognizes those freckles instantly, from the night she spilled a full flute of champagne on his tuxedo shirt and blotted it dry with a cocktail napkin, her arm pressed to his chest for 10 long seconds while his then-fiancee fumed on the other side of the dance floor. She looks up, blinks twice, then her mouth tugs up into that same lopsided grin, the tiny gap between her two front teeth just as he remembered.
He steps up to the counter, his throat suddenly dry. They exchange awkward pleasantries at first, she explains she moved back to Grand Marais three months prior to care for her mom, who’d suffered a stroke, and took over the jam booth from her late aunt. He mumbles something about the lighthouse, about needing blueberry jam with no cinnamon. When they both reach for the same jar on the top shelf at the same time, their knuckles brush over the cool glass, her skin warm even through the thin layer of jar condensation. He yanks his hand back like he touched a live wire, his ears burning. She laughs, a low, throaty sound that makes his chest feel tight, and teases him for still being as skittish as he was when she caught him staring at her during the wedding reception.
He stays at the booth longer than he planned, leaning against the counter while the line of fairgoers dies down, talking to her for 45 minutes straight. He finds out her ex-husband left her last year for a 28-year-old paralegal at his Minneapolis law firm, that she hates northern Minnesota winters but loves the way the lake looks when it freezes over in January, that she specifically made a batch of no-cinnamon blueberry jam for him, even before she knew he’d be the one showing up to the booth. Half of him screams to leave, to grab the jam, pay, and hightail it back to the lighthouse where no one can make him feel exposed, where no one will whisper about him hanging out with his ex-wife’s cousin. The other half of him can’t move, can’t stop looking at that grin, can’t stop listening to that laugh.
When she locks up the booth, tucking the metal cash box under her arm, she asks if he wants to walk down to the public pier to watch the sunset. He hesitates for half a second, then nods. They walk side by side down the gravel path to the water, their arms brushing every few steps, neither of them pulling away. They sit on the edge of the weathered concrete pier, their feet dangling six inches above the cold, choppy lake water, the sky bleeding pink and tangerine and soft lavender as the sun dips below the horizon, the noise of the fair fading into a low hum behind them. She leans into his side, her shoulder pressing firm against his, the heat of her seeping through his thick wool jacket. She says she always thought he was too good for her cousin, that she’d thought about him every few years, wondered what he was up to, but never wanted to cross a line when he was married.
He admits he thought about her too, that he’d almost looked her up once a few months after his ex left, but chickened out, convinced he’d just be opening himself up to another heartbreak. He lifts his hand, brushes a strand of gray-streaked auburn hair behind her ear, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek. She leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut for half a second.
They sit there until the first fireflies blink to life in the tall grass along the shore, until the first star pricks through the darkening indigo sky. When they walk back to her small SUV parked on the side street, she hands him two jars of blueberry jam, no charge, and scrawls her cell phone number on the lid of the top jar in thick black Sharpie, adding a tiny doodle of a lighthouse next to the digits. He tucks the jars into the canvas supply bag slung over his shoulder, says he’ll call her tomorrow. He drives back to the lighthouse as the full moon rises over the glassy lake, the jars clinking softly in the passenger seat, and when his phone buzzes 20 minutes later, a text from her that says “Don’t be a stranger”, he smiles and hits reply before he can overthink it.
