Ronan O’Malley, 53, has sanded calluses into the pads of his fingers from 15 years of antique carousel restoration, and a permanent smudge of linseed oil in the crease of his left thumb that never fully washes off. He’d spent the bulk of that Tuesday hunched over a 1922 wooden mare, patching a crack in her carved flank that had sat ignored in the county fair storage shed for 40 years, so he’d ducked into the old feed store’s weekly craft beer pop-up as soon as the rain let up, just to get the wood dust out of his sinuses for an hour.
He was grabbing his hazy IPA off the bar when a woman turned at his elbow, and the rim of her rosé glass caught the shoulder of his frayed gray flannel, spilling pale pink liquid down the front. She yelped a quiet apology, grabbing a handful of napkins from the dispenser next to them, dabbing at the wet spot before he could even protest. Her fingers brushed the skin of his chest where the flannel gaped open at the collar, and he caught the scent of lavender hand lotion mixed with the rain on her leather jacket, sharp and soft all at once. She had freckles across the bridge of her nose, and a silver hoop earring that caught the strand of fairy lights strung above the bar when she tilted her head up to look at him, grinning like she knew she’d just caused a mess he didn’t mind cleaning up.
He learned her name was Lena, and 10 minutes into talking, she dropped the bomb that she was married to Hal Carter, the county commissioner who’d signed off on his $75,000 carousel restoration grant two weeks prior. He almost choked on his beer. He’d spent three years groveling for that grant, writing 12 rounds of proposals, showing up to county meetings at 7 a.m. in a starched button-down he hated, convincing the board the old carousel was worth saving instead of being scrapped for a new pickleball court. The last thing he needed was to be seen chatting up the commissioner’s wife, even if her laugh made the back of his neck feel warm, even if she kept leaning in when he talked about the mare’s hand-painted rosettes, her knee brushing his under the high-top table so often he couldn’t write it off as an accident.
He made a half-assed excuse to leave, grabbing his keys off the table, but she stopped him with a hand on his wrist, her palm cool against the raised scar he’d gotten from a rogue jigsaw blade two years prior. She said she’d ridden that carousel every summer as a kid, before her mom died of breast cancer, that she’d been the one who’d pushed Hal to approve the grant, even when the rest of the board thought it was a waste of taxpayer money. He froze, his hand still on the edge of the table, the conflict tight in his chest: he’d always judged guys who chased married women, hated the thought of being the kind of man who’d risk a project he’d poured years of his life into for a cheap thrill, had spent the better part of a decade swearing off any kind of casual connection because he thought it meant he was betraying the good parts of his old marriage, but he hadn’t felt this seen by anyone since his ex-wife left 8 years prior, hadn’t had anyone ask him about the details of his work instead of just calling him a “wood guy” and changing the subject.
She asked if he wanted to show her the workshop, said Hal was at a conference in Boise for two days, no one would ask where she was. He hesitated for 10 full seconds, then nodded. The drive back to his property was quiet, the rain tapping against the windshield of his beat-up F-150, the radio playing old Johnny Cash low enough that they didn’t have to fill the silence with small talk. When he flipped the switch on the overhead work lights, the half-restored mare glowed under the warm yellow bulbs, her patched flank still half-unpainted, her vintage glass eye glinting like she was watching them. Lena walked over to her, running a single finger along the curve of her carved mane, her shoulder brushing Ronan’s chest when he stepped up next to her.
He didn’t pull away when she turned to look up at him, didn’t make a stupid joke about getting caught, didn’t overthink it for the first time in years. When she leaned in to kiss him, he could taste the rosé on her lips, the faint mint of her gum, the quiet relief of not having to be alone for a little while. Three hours later, when she left, she handed him a folded piece of paper from her jacket pocket, the number for her personal cell phone scrawled on it, and told him she’d filed for divorce two weeks prior, hadn’t told anyone yet, that the grant was locked in no matter what happened between them.
He stood in his driveway long after her taillights disappeared down the dirt road, holding the crumpled paper in his calloused hand, the linseed oil smudge on his thumb smudging the ink a little at the edges.
