Manny Rios, 52, makes his living restoring vintage camping gear out of the two-car garage behind his bungalow in central Oregon, and his biggest flaw is that he’s spent three years treating every invitation to leave his property like it’s a jury summons. His wife, Lila, died of metastatic breast cancer in 2020, and ever since, he’s clung to routine: sand rust off 1960s Coleman coolers at 9 a.m., eat a peanut butter sandwich for lunch at noon, test restored stoves at 3 p.m., drink one beer on the porch at 6, go to bed at 10. No deviations, no surprises, no chance to feel anything that isn’t either numb or familiar.
His sister Carla finally badgers him into attending the town’s annual summer street fair in mid-July, says she needs an extra set of hands to carry boxes for her candle booth, and he caves because he owes her for covering his vet bill when his old hound dog ate a tube of wood glue back in March. He hides by the craft beer tent for the first two hours, sipping a hazy IPA so cold it makes his teeth ache, watching families chase each other with cotton candy and smelling grilled elote and fried Oreos drift through the warm air. He’s halfway through his second beer when he realizes he’s staring at the woman running the foraged jam booth two spots down from Carla’s.
He recognizes her eventually: Jules Carter, who Lila played softball with in high school, who sent him a handwritten card after Lila’s funeral that he never answered. She’s got gray streaks running through her wavy auburn hair, a gap between her two front teeth, and a smudge of purple jam on her left cheek. He’s still staring when she looks up, catches his eye, and grins, and he feels his face heat up like he’s a 16 year old caught staring at a cheerleader. He walks over to make small talk, tells himself he’s just being polite, and reaches for a sample of blackberry jam at the exact same time she does. Their hands brush, her skin is warm and calloused from 15 years working as a backcountry park ranger, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove.
She laughs, loud and bright, and leans in to pass him the toothpick with the jam sample, her shoulder brushing his bicep hard enough that he can feel the soft cotton of her flannel shirt through his own. He can smell pine and lavender on her, mixed with the sweet-tart tang of the jam simmering in a small pot behind her booth, and he has to fight the urge to lean in closer. He eats the sample, tells her it’s the best jam he’s ever had, and she teases him for eating three more samples before he even asks the price. The conflict nags at him the whole time they talk: he feels sick to his stomach for even noticing how her cutoff jeans fit just right, how her eyes crinkle when she laughs, like he’s betraying Lila by feeling even a flicker of interest in someone else. He’s half ready to make an excuse and leave when she mentions she’s got a 1972 Coleman camp stove her dad left her that won’t light, asks if he’d be willing to take a look at it. She offers to trade him a whole case of huckleberry jam, Lila’s favorite, and he agrees before he can talk himself out of it.
He shows up at her house on the edge of the Deschutes National Forest that Saturday, sleeves of his worn gray flannel rolled up to show the tattoo of the Cascades he got with Lila on their 10th anniversary, and she leads him out to her detached garage. The whole space smells like pine sap and simmered berry, and she sits on the edge of her workbench next to him while he takes the stove apart, passing him flathead screwdrivers and frosty glasses of peach iced tea when he asks for it. Their knees brush under the warm glow of the overhead work light every time she shifts, and he doesn’t move away. She admits she’s been thinking about him since the funeral, didn’t want to reach out because she knew he needed space to grieve on his own terms, and he tells her he’s spent three years scared to feel anything that isn’t grief, like being happy would mean he was forgetting Lila entirely.
He gets the stove lit an hour later, the blue flame roaring steady and even, and she cheers so loud her golden retriever, Hank, comes trotting into the garage to see what the fuss is about. She pulls a jar of huckleberry jam out of the small mini-fridge mounted on the garage wall, grabs two dented metal spoons from a drawer, and hands him one. They eat the jam straight out of the jar, leaning against her workbench, while the wind carries the sharp, green smell of fir trees through the open garage door. She dabs a spot of jam on the tip of his nose, and he laughs, the sound coming out lighter and easier than it has in three whole years.
