Elias Voss, 62, retired rural fire department dispatch supervisor, wiped a bead of sweat off his upper lip with the back of a calloused hand, the fabric of his faded department cap scratchy against his forehead. He’d spent the last three hours manning the chili booth at the annual station benefit, the air thick with the tang of charcoal, sweet cherry cobbler from the ladies’ auxiliary, and the low roar of guys from the engine crew heckling each other over who’d made the spiciest batch. His knuckles were still scraped from fixing up the 1978 John Deere he kept out behind his trailer the night before, a habit he’d picked up after his wife, Joan, died 18 years prior, something to keep his hands busy when the quiet got too loud. His biggest flaw, he’d admit if you pressed him, was holding grudges longer than he held onto anything else, even the custom leather work boots Joan got him for their 25th anniversary.
He spotted her the second she walked through the open fire bay doors, string lights glinting off the silver streaks in her auburn hair. Clara, Joan’s younger sister, 58, the woman he’d fought so viciously with at Joan’s wake he’d stormed out before the eulogies finished, hadn’t been back to town in almost two decades. He’d spent all those years convinced she hated him, that she thought he’d wasted Joan’s last years putting his 12-hour dispatch shifts over the European river cruise she’d always assumed Joan wanted. He tensed up when she walked straight toward his booth, her linen blouse unbuttoned one too many times at the collar, a smudge of navy ink on the pulse point of her wrist, the same spot Joan used to get ink stains when she’d stay up scrapbooking the grandkids’ soccer games.
She stopped a foot away from the counter, close enough he could smell lavender and old paper on her, not the cloying funeral home perfume he remembered from the wake. “Heard your chili’s the only batch here that doesn’t taste like lighter fluid,” she said, her voice lower than he remembered, a little rough from decades of smoking the same menthol cigarettes Joan used to sneak when he was at work. He grunted, ladled a bowl full for her, their fingers brushing when he passed it across the counter. The contact sent a jolt up his arm he hadn’t felt since Joan was alive, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched a hot stove, shame curling tight in his chest. He had no business feeling that kind of spark for his wife’s sister, not after all the years he’d spent hating her.
She didn’t pull away, just smiled, paid him the five dollar donation, and sat down at the rickety picnic table across from his folding chair, picking the sliced onions off the top of her bowl before she took a bite. “Remembered you hate onions,” she said, when he stared. “Joan used to complain for hours about how you’d make her pick them off everything for you.” He blinked, taken off guard. He’d assumed she’d forgotten every small thing about him, that all she saw was the guy who’d “let her sister die without seeing the world,” as she’d screamed at him at the wake.
She leaned in across the table, her knee brushing his under the wood, when she told him she’d found Joan’s old journal in a box of her things when she was cleaning out their mom’s house earlier that year. “She never wanted that cruise,” she said, her voice soft enough only he could hear it over the hum of the crowd. “She wrote that she’d rather sit on the back porch with you and watch the fireflies than go anywhere else. I was an idiot. I was grieving, and I took it out on you.” She reached across the table, rested her hand on his forearm for a beat, her palm warm and calloused from the book restoring work she did for a living, the rough edge of a paper cut on her index finger catching on the frayed sleeve of his work shirt.
Elias sat frozen for a full ten seconds, the grudge he’d carried for 18 years dissolving so fast he felt lightheaded. He’d spent almost two decades angry, lonely, convinced he’d failed the only woman he’d ever loved, and it had all been for nothing. He’d spent so long pushing everyone away he’d forgotten what it felt like to be seen, to have someone remember the stupid small things about him, like how he hated onions, how he liked his coffee black, how he’d cry every time they played old Patsy Cline songs on the radio. Shame warred with sharp, bright desire in his chest, the kind he’d thought died with Joan. He felt guilty for even looking at Clara like that, for wanting to feel her hand on his arm longer, for wanting to know what her laugh sounded like when it was just the two of them, no crowd, no old grief hanging over their heads.
She pulled her hand back, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and told him she was staying in the old lake cottage Joan had left her, the one they’d spent every Fourth of July at when the kids were little. “I’ve got the journal there if you want to come look through it later,” she said, her hazel eyes holding his, no hesitation, no awkwardness. “No pressure. I just thought you’d want to see it.” He nodded before he even thought about it, his throat too tight to talk.
They exchanged quick goodbyes a few minutes later, agreeing to meet at the cottage in an hour, when the benefit wrapped up. He watched her walk to her beat-up Subaru, her jeans fitting snug across her hips, and took a long sip of the warm beer he’d been nursing all afternoon. The sun was dipping below the tree line now, painting the sky pink and orange, crickets chirping loud in the grass along the edge of the parking lot. He’d spent 18 years waiting for something to feel right again, and he hadn’t expected it to show up in the form of the woman he’d spent half his adult life hating. He wiped the last of the chili grease off his hands on his jeans, grabbed his keys off the counter, and smiled for the first time in longer than he could remember.
