Manny Ruiz, 53, has been the sole lighthouse keeper at Split Rock on Lake Superior for six years, ever since his wife packed her car and drove south without a note. His biggest flaw is that he’s turned being a recluse into a competitive sport: he avoids the town’s monthly potlucks, waves off invitations to fish with the local charter captains, and only drives into the county seat every other Tuesday for non-perishables and the dill pickles the Amish stand sells by the jar. He’d planned on making this trip quick, but a surprise October squall rolled in off the lake fast enough to catch even him off guard, so he’s stuck huddled under the drafty beer tent at the town’s annual harvest festival, surrounded by hay bales and people who’ve spent the last six years gossiping about why he lives alone.
The crowd shifts when the first fat raindrops start slamming into the tent roof, and suddenly she’s pressed up against his left side, her flannel sleeve brushing the oilskin of his work jacket hard enough that he can feel the warmth of her arm through the fabric. He recognizes her immediately: Clara, the woman who bought the run-down cottage half a mile down the shore from his lighthouse three months prior. He’s waved at her twice from his truck when he passed her digging in her front yard, but he’s never stopped to talk, too used to keeping the barrier between himself and everyone else firmly in place. She smells like pine and raw clay and the spiked hard cider the volunteer is handing out in red plastic cups, and when she turns to look at him, her hazel eyes hold his for a full three seconds before she smirks, like she knows exactly how much he hates being here.
“Figured I’d find you hiding in the least crowded corner of the whole festival,” she says, passing him a cup of cider before he can ask. Her fingers brush his when he takes it, and he notices her nails are chipped with faded cobalt glaze, the tips of her fingers calloused from throwing pots, the mobile pottery business she runs out of a converted camper van the only thing anyone in town has mentioned about her that isn’t idle speculation. He doesn’t want to like her, doesn’t want to let anyone get close enough to learn the stupid, petty details of his life that his ex-wife left because she couldn’t stand the quiet of the lake, couldn’t stand how he’d rather fix old fishing reels than go out to dinner. But she doesn’t press him for small talk, doesn’t ask why he’s alone, just rants about how the festival’s apple pie contest was rigged, how the judge gave first place to his sister-in-law even though her crust was burnt around the edges.
The rain picks up, drumming so loud on the tent roof they have to lean in to hear each other, their shoulders pressed together the whole time. He tells her about the 1972 Penn Spinfisher reel he’s been restoring for three months, the one his dad left him when he died, how he’s been hunting for a tiny brass gear that’s impossible to find online. She lights up when he says it, tells him she’s been hoarding scrap metal parts to use as weights for her kiln, that she found a box of old fishing reel parts in the attic of the cottage when she moved in, that she’s been wondering who she could give them to. He feels that tight pull in his chest, the one that warps between disgust at himself for wanting to let her in, and sharp, bright desire, the kind he hasn’t felt in close to a decade, when she leans in a little closer, her hair brushing his cheek as she points out her scruffy beagle tied to a fence post outside the tent, chewing on a discarded corn cob.
When the rain slows to a light drizzle forty minutes later, the dirt road leading back to the shore is slick with mud, and she asks him if he wants to walk back with her, says she doesn’t want to slip on the gravel path that cuts through the woods to the lake. He almost says no, almost makes up an excuse about having to get back to check the lighthouse beacon, even though he knows it’s on an automatic timer that hasn’t failed in three years. But then she reaches up, brushes a wet maple leaf off the collar of his jacket, her thumb brushing the skin of his neck for half a second, and he agrees before he can talk himself out of it.
They walk slow, the beagle trotting between them, stopping every ten feet to sniff at a puddle or a fallen acorn. She slips once on a patch of mud halfway down the path, and he catches her by the elbow, her free hand pressing flat to his chest for two beats, and he can feel her heart racing through the thin cotton of his undershirt, can feel the heat of her palm seep into his skin. She laughs, quiet, when she steadies herself, doesn’t pull her hand away right away, just looks up at him, the last of the sun breaking through the clouds and gilding the edges of her hair.
They reach his lighthouse first, the red and white stone glowing pink in the sunset, and he pauses on the porch steps before he unlocks the door. He’s never invited anyone inside besides the park service technician who comes once a year to check the equipment, not since his wife left. He nods toward the door, tells her he can make coffee if she wants to stay to look at the reel, to sort through the parts she brought. She grins, stepping past him onto the porch, the beagle trotting in ahead of them both, shaking rain off his fur onto the worn pine floor by the front door.
