Elroy Voss, 62, spent 31 years teaching high school woodshop before retiring to make custom cutting boards full time out of his two-car garage outside Grand Haven, Michigan. His only consistent flaw, per his late wife’s annual birthday roasts, was holding grudges longer than he held a finish-grade sanding block against raw walnut. He’d nursed one against Maren Hale, his wife’s 10 years younger sister, for 18 years, convinced she’d bailed on their 2005 wedding as maid of honor just to go to a music festival with her then-boyfriend. Three weeks prior, he’d found an old email draft his wife had never sent, admitting she’d told Maren not to come, paranoid Elroy laughed more at her jokes than his own. He’d replayed the line 100 times since, wood shavings sticking to his sweaty palms as he ran the planer, wondering if he’d ever run into her again to apologize.
The September air at the downtown farmers market smelled like pressed cider, burnt kettle corn, and the briny lake wind curling off Lake Michigan. Elroy was wiping down a spalted maple board with food-grade mineral oil when he spotted her, leaning against a honey stand 10 feet away, holding a paper cup of spiced cider that steamed up into her face. She’d cut her auburn hair short, a thick silver streak running through the front, and she wore a faded denim jacket covered in outdoor concert patches, scuffed work boots caked with mud from the trail she’d clearly hiked that morning. He tensed up, his grip on the oil rag tightening so hard his knuckles went white, but she looked over, spotted him, and raised her cup in a half-wave before walking over.
He didn’t say anything at first, just nodded, his jaw tight. She leaned against the edge of his booth, her elbow brushing a stack of cherry wood blanks, and grinned, teasing him about still wearing the same frayed brown Carhartt he’d had back when they used to cut Christmas trees together at the farm outside town. The grudge bubbled up first, sharp and familiar, and he snapped that he was surprised she even remembered, considering she skipped his wedding to go dance in a field. Her grin faded, she pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket, tapped a few times, and slid it across the booth to him, the screen showing a grainy 2005 text from his wife’s old number, telling her not to bother showing up, that no one wanted her there. Elroy stared at the screen for a full minute, the roar of the crowd around him fading to a hum, and felt like an idiot.
They talked for the next two hours, while customers drifted in and out, Elroy selling half his stock without even paying attention. She told him she’d moved back to the area two weeks prior, divorced after 12 years of marriage to a guy who hated cold weather and hated her love of hiking even more. He told her about his wife’s three year battle with lung cancer, about the woodshop, about the way he still set out an extra coffee mug every morning out of habit. She leaned in to point out a tiny knot in a walnut board that looked like a loon, her hair brushing his forearm, and he caught the scent of lavender lotion mixed with the cinnamon from her cider, sharp and warm all at once. Their hands brushed when she reached for a small oak board he’d made for cheese plates, her fingers cold from holding her iced refills, and he flinched like he’d touched a live wire, half embarrassed, half giddy, the kind of feeling he hadn’t had since he was 16 and kissed a girl for the first time in the back of his dad’s pickup.
He knew it was wrong, on some level. She was his wife’s baby sister, the same woman he’d carried on his shoulders through a mud pit at a county fair when she was 19, the same woman who’d sent his wife care packages when she was sick, even though she thought Elroy hated her. He felt that old, familiar twist of guilt in his chest, fighting the warm buzz that spread up his neck every time she laughed so hard she snort-laughed, the same way his wife used to. When the market manager blew the whistle for closing time, she offered to help him load up his truck, slinging a crate of leftover blanks over her shoulder like it weighed nothing, even though he knew it was 40 pounds solid.
They were lifting the heaviest crate, the one full of finished large cutting boards, when their hands wrapped around the same wooden handle at the same time. They froze, only a foot apart, the last of the sunset painting the sky pink and orange over the lake behind her. Her eyes were shiny, and she said she’d thought about reaching out a hundred times after his wife died, but she’d been scared he’d slam the door in her face. He didn’t say anything, just laced his fingers through hers for a second, her skin soft against the calluses on his palms, before he hoisted the crate up and slid it into the bed of the truck.
He asked her if she wanted to get fried perch and curly fries at the old shack up the highway, the same one they’d all gone to after that Christmas tree cut back in 2003. She grinned, wiped a smudge of wood dust off her cheek, and said she’d follow him in her Subaru. He watched her walk across the parking lot, her boots kicking a pile of burnt orange maple leaves across the asphalt, before he climbed into his own truck, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the spot behind her, the radio playing an old Johnny Cash song he hadn’t heard in years.
