Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years gillnetting salmon off the Oregon coast before a winch snapped and shattered his left knee, forcing him into early retirement eight months after his wife, Maggie, passed from ovarian cancer. His biggest flaw, per his only sister, is that he’s spent the last eight years treating any flicker of interest in another woman like a personal betrayal, turning down three separate invitations from the widowed librarian in town before she stopped asking. He’d only dragged himself to the annual coastal beer festival that crisp October Saturday because his 19-year-old grandson was pouring samples for the microbrewery he’d been interning at, and the kid had begged.
The crowd was louder than he remembered, thrum of a bluegrass band mixing with the clink of pint glasses and the sharp, bright smell of hop resin and fried cheese curds. He was leaning against a splintered wooden post nursing a hazy IPA when a woman stepped up beside him, close enough that he caught a whiff of jasmine perfume, the same scent Maggie had worn on their wedding day. He glanced over, and realized it was Clara Bennett, Maggie’s second cousin, the pottery instructor who lived two towns over. He hadn’t seen her in three years, not since Maggie’s memorial.
She turned, caught him staring, and grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling the same way Maggie’s used to when she was about to tease him. When they both reached for the same stack of paper napkins on the food truck counter, their hands brushed, and Ronan felt a jolt go up his arm, warm and sharp, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was 17 and kissed a girl for the first time behind the town bait shop. He flinched back like he’d been burned, immediately ashamed. This was Maggie’s family. Off limits. Wrong.
The band picked up a faster track, so Clara leaned in to talk, her shoulder pressed firm to his bicep, her breath warm against his ear. She asked how his knee was holding up, mentioned she’d brought Maggie her favorite lemon popsicles every day during her last round of chemo, how Maggie had made her promise to check in on Ronan once a year and make sure he wasn’t eating only canned chili and frozen burritos. He laughed, surprised, and felt the tension in his shoulders loosen a little.
They wandered away from the festival an hour later, down the rutted gravel path to the empty public dock, Ronan wrapping his worn plaid flannel around Clara’s shoulders when she shivered. She sat down on the weathered wood, her knee brushing his bad one when she shifted, and told him she’d had a crush on him since she was 38, when they’d all gone deep sea fishing together and he’d jumped in the frigid water to pull her toddler son back from a riptide. She’d never said anything, she said, because she loved Maggie too much to ever cross that line, and she’d waited as long as she thought was respectful to even hint at it.
Ronan sat quiet for a minute, waves slapping against the dock pilings filling the space, and admitted he’d thought about her too, more times than he’d ever admit out loud, more times than he’d ever felt okay about. He leaned in slow, giving her time to pull away, and kissed her. It was soft, unhurried, tasted like the pear cider she’d been sipping and salt clinging to both their skin from the ocean wind. He didn’t feel guilty, not even a little, and that surprised him more than anything.
He walked her to her beat-up Subaru 20 minutes later, and she squeezed his hand before she climbed in, making plans to meet him for coffee at the Main Street diner the next morning. He stood on the curb watching her taillights fade down the coastal highway, the wind stinging his cheeks, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t cross his fingers and apologize to Maggie for feeling happy.
