Manny Ruiz, 57, has spent the last 24 years as a wildfire mitigation foreman for Nevada County, California, his hands crisscrossed with scars from falling branches, rogue chainsaw nicks, and the time a cornered rattlesnake struck his boot when he was surveying a burn zone outside Truckee. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few people who know him well, is that he’s frozen himself in time since his wife Elara died of ovarian cancer eight years prior. He avoids every community mixer, turns down every dinner invitation from his crew, only leaves his 5-acre property for work and the occasional supply run to the hardware store. The only exception, every single August, is the Nevada County Fair, where Elara used to take first place in the peach pie contest three years running before she got sick.
He’s leaning against the wooden rail outside the pie contest booth when she walks up, wearing a linen work shirt embroidered with the county ag department logo, frayed denim shorts, and work boots caked with red clay. He recognizes her instantly from email exchanges: Mara Carter, the new agricultural inspector he’s been coordinating with all summer to get permits for prescribed burns on private farmland. He’d only ever seen her headshot on the county website, and in person she’s sharper, brighter, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, a small silver hoop through her left nostril. She stops less than a foot away, close enough that he can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the fried dough and caramel apple fumes wafting from the food stand ten feet over.
“Manny, right?” She holds out a hand, and when he takes it, her thumb brushes the faint scar running along the base of his wrist, the one he got from a bee sting when he was 12, climbing a peach tree in Elara’s parents’ orchard. He flinches, not from pain, from the shock of someone touching him that softly, that intentionally, in almost a decade. Her grip doesn’t loosen. “I’ve been dying to meet you in person. The burn plan you put together for the organic peach farm on Oak Road? Saved 18 jobs this season. I grew up in Paradise, lost my grandma’s house in the Camp Fire. I know how much that work matters.”
His throat goes tight. He’d spent six months fighting every urge to ghost her when they were emailing back and forth, partly because he hated paperwork, mostly because he’d caught himself looking forward to her snarky one-liners at the end of her formal permit updates, the way she’d add little fire extinguisher emojis next to reminders to submit his crew’s safety forms. He’d told himself it was stupid, that he was too old, that getting close to anyone connected to the county, to the life he’d shared with Elara, was a betrayal. He steps back to put space between them, but a kid darting past with a tower of blue cotton candy slams into his back, and he stumbles forward, his shoulder pressing flush against hers. He can feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of her shirt, and she laughs, a low, warm sound, doesn’t step away.
“Was just about to judge the pie entries,” she nods at the table behind her, stacked high with foil-covered tins. “I saw Elara’s name on the old plaques in the fair office. My aunt used to buy peaches from her roadside stand every summer. Said they were the sweetest in the whole county.”
The announcement for the community service awards blares over the loudspeaker then, and he hears his name called first. He freezes, had forgotten he was even supposed to accept an award for his crew’s work reducing fire risk for 120 low-income homes this year. Mara grabs his wrist, her fingers light, not holding him down, just anchoring him. “C’mon. They’re waiting for you. You earned this.”
He lets her lead him through the crowd, her small hand wrapped around his wrist, his skin prickling where her fingers press. He notices the callus on her index finger, the same kind he has, from holding tools all day, not the soft, unmarked hands of people who sit in offices their whole lives. When he steps up on the small stage, he looks down, and she’s leaning against the rail, holding a paper plate with a slice of peach pie on it, grinning up at him, winking when he makes eye contact.
His acceptance speech is short, just a thank you to his crew, no fancy lines. When he steps off the stage, she shoves the plate into his hand. “Entry number 17. I used the recipe off Elara’s old blog. Took me three years to get the crust right.”
He takes a bite, and for a second he thinks he’s going to cry. It tastes exactly like Elara’s, the perfect mix of sweet and tart, the crust flaky enough to crumble onto his flannel shirt. He swallows, looks up at her, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel guilty for wanting something. “I’ve got a peach orchard out on my property. Elara planted it, I’ve been tending it since she died. Got a cooler of hard cider in the fridge, too, if you want to come by later. See if the fruit’s as good as the ones she used for this.”
She smiles, tucks a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “I’ve got to drop off the contest supplies at the ag office first. I’ll be there in an hour.”
He nods, walks to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, sits behind the wheel for a minute, running his thumb over the spot on his wrist where her hand had been. The radio clicks on when he turns the key, blaring Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” the song Elara used to sing while she canned peaches in their kitchen every fall. He smiles, shifts into drive, pulls out of the fair parking lot, his windows rolled down, the warm August air blowing through the cab.
