Elias Voss, 67, makes his living restoring water-damaged 19th century Great Lakes survey maps from the cramped workshop tucked behind the apartment he’s lived in since he married Mara, 42 years prior. He’s a creature of rigid routine: coffee black at 6 a.m., three hours of careful ink touch-ups before lunch, a single draft beer at the dive bar two blocks over at 4 p.m., no detours, no small talk, no exceptions. His biggest flaw is that he’s held a grudge against newly elected county sheriff Beau Hargrove ever since Hargrove called him a “dusty irrelevant relic” during a public town hall last spring, arguing Elias’s historic shop should be bulldozed for a downtown parking lot. He hasn’t set foot at the weekend farmers market since Mara died of ovarian cancer 8 years prior, too sharp the memory of her selling peach jam from a rickety folding table, but his visiting 22-year-old niece shoves a canvas tote in his hand before he can protest, saying she’s not driving back to Chicago until he’s eaten a fresh strawberry straight from the patch.
The air smells like cut grass and grilled sausage and sweet corn when they step onto the closed-off main street, and Elias tugs his worn linen work shirt tighter around his shoulders, already planning his escape. He’s halfway to the strawberry stand when a voice calls his name, warm, low, not the nasal lilt of a retiree looking to complain about property taxes. He turns, and there’s Clara Hargrove, leaning against a folding table stacked with glass jars of jam and pickles, a streak of auburn cutting through her dark brown hair where the sun’s bleached it, mud caked on the toes of her work boots, a faded Pearl Jam flannel tied around her waist. He’s only ever seen her in the background of town events, standing three feet behind Hargrove, face blank while he rants, and he’s spent the last six months lumping her in with her husband’s loud, entitled crew.
She pushes off the table and steps closer, close enough he can smell lavender soap and blackberry on her clothes, and holds out a jar of jam, label handwritten in looping cursive. “I saw your presentation on the 1872 Sleeping Bear Dunes survey last month,” she says, no preamble, and Elias blinks, because most people left that presentation 10 minutes in to grab free donuts. “Beau called it a waste of time, but I thought it was fascinating. I grew up camping up there with my grandma.” She leans in further when he starts explaining how the surveyors used star positions to map hidden coves that don’t show up on modern GPS, her elbow brushing his forearm when she reaches to move a jar of dill pickles out of the way of a running toddler, and the heat of her skin lingers on his arm long after she’s pulled back. He’s equal parts horrified and giddy, first at the thought of anyone seeing him talking to the sheriff’s wife, second at the way she’s holding eye contact, no polite half-glances, no glancing over his shoulder for someone more interesting to talk to.
He doesn’t even realize he’s been standing there for 15 minutes until she holds out a small wooden spoon slathered in dark purple jam, and his fingers brush hers when he takes it. It’s exactly the same blackberry jam Mara used to make, seeds caught in the crevices of his molars, sweet and tart all at once, and he says so out loud before he can catch himself. Her face softens, and she laughs, quiet, like she’s sharing a secret. “I know. She taught me when I was 16, before I married Beau. I was the kid who’d hang around her booth every weekend stealing samples.” She leans in, voice dropping so no one passing can hear, and tells him she was the one who leaked Beau’s secret parking lot paperwork to the local paper the week prior, the same paperwork that would’ve let him seize Elias’s shop for pennies on the dollar. She’s filing for divorce next month, she says, once the public outcry over the corruption dies down enough she can move out without the whole town gossiping nonstop.
She tucks a small jar of the blackberry jam into his tote bag without charging him, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckles for half a beat longer than necessary, and tells him she’d love to see his map collection sometime, when the town isn’t watching. His niece is leaning against a streetlamp 10 feet away, grinning like she’s just watched the best scene of a rom-com, when he walks back over, and he tells his niece they can stay for another hour, if she wants to get a grilled sausage from the food truck at the end of the street. He hears Clara laugh loud when a kid knocks over a jar of bread and butter pickles two booths down, and he turns his head to catch her eye again, already thinking about which map he’ll pull out first when she comes to visit.
