Manny Ruiz, 62, retired Forest Service hotshot crew supervisor, stood in the VFW fish fry line the third Friday of October, rain lashing the cinder block siding so hard the overhead fluorescent lights flickered every few seconds. He’d grabbed his usual spot third from the front, work boots caked in pine duff from clearing dead fir off his property that morning, the familiar burn hole on the left cuff of his Carhartt frayed at the edges from 14 years of wear. The air smelled like fried cod, apple cider vinegar coleslaw, and the cheap burnt coffee the VFW kept on tap 24/7, and he was already mentally mapping his route home, planning to crack a Pabst and finish restoring a 1978 Stihl he’d picked up at a garage sale the week before, when the hand passing his paper plate across the counter brushed his.
The touch lasted half a second longer than it should have. He looked up, and froze. She was in a faded navy VFW volunteer t-shirt over a cream cable knit sweater, dark hair pulled back in a loose braid with a single silver streak running from her temple to the nape of her neck, a smudge of flour on her left cheek. It took him three full seconds to place her: Lila, his late wife Elena’s youngest cousin, the kid who’d been 19 and too loud and covered in temporary tattoos at Elena’s funeral seven years prior, who he’d helped load her U-Haul back to Portland after the service, who he hadn’t heard a word from since.
“You still wear that ratty Carhartt, huh?” She grinned, leaning forward across the counter, elbows propped on the Formica, and he could smell her perfume, pine and wild honey, nothing like Elena’s lavender that he’d boxed up and donated to Goodwill six months after she died, too sharp to keep around the house. He mumbled a hello, fumbling for his wallet to pay, and she waved him off, already sliding an extra slice of pecan pie onto his plate. “On the house. I’ve been in town three weeks, asked the guys at the bar when you’d show up. Figured you’d be here for the fish fry, you never missed it when Elena was alive.”
He walked to his usual table in the back, the one by the window where no one bothered him, vinyl tablecloth sticky with years of spilled soda and syrup, and sat, suddenly too hot under the Carhartt. He felt stupid for the way his heart was hammering, for noticing how the sweater stretched across her shoulders when she turned to grab another plate for the guy behind him, for the flicker of something warm in his gut that he hadn’t felt since before Elena got sick. It was wrong, he told himself. She was Elena’s cousin, 26 years younger than him, for Christ’s sake, he’d changed her tire when she was in high school. He took a bite of cod, the batter crispy and salty, and tried to force the thought out of his head.
Five minutes later, she pulled out the chair across from him, holding a can of root beer, and sat. Her knee brushed his under the table, denim on denim, and he didn’t move. She told him she’d left her husband, the real estate broker she’d married a year after the funeral, that he’d cheated on her three times and broken her favorite pottery wheel when she’d confronted him, that she’d moved back to Bend to reset, rent a small studio downtown, sell her mugs at the Saturday farmers market. He listened, for the first time in years not just grunting and nodding when people talked to him, asking her questions about the kiln she’d just bought, about the kinds of clay she liked to use. He told her about the woodworking shop he’d built in his garage after he retired, about the Adirondack chairs he built for the local park, about the vintage chainsaws he restored.
The guilt didn’t go away, not entirely. Every time she laughed, loud and bright, he thought of Elena, of how she’d always said Lila was the only member of her family who didn’t drive her crazy. He thought of all the guys at the VFW who’d give him hell if they saw him sitting here, chatting up his dead wife’s cousin, of the voice in the back of his head calling him a dirty old man, of the years he’d spent convinced he didn’t deserve anything good after the Grizzly Complex fire, after he’d sent three of his guys into a blaze he should have known was too hot, after he’d lost Elena six months later to the pancreatic cancer she’d hidden from him for three months so he wouldn’t worry about her while he was on the fire line.
She reached across the table then, slow, like she was approaching a spooked deer, and brushed a strand of gray hair off his forehead. Her thumb brushed his cheek, calloused from working clay, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away. “I’m not Elena,” she said, soft, like she could read every thought running through his head. “I know you feel guilty. But she’d yell at you for moping around alone this long, you know that.”
He stared at her for a long time, the rain still lashing the window, the fryers crackling in the background, the hum of the other VFW regulars talking about football and hunting seasons fading out. He thought of all the rules he’d set for himself after Elena died: no dating, no letting anyone get close, no doing anything that made him feel like he was moving on. He thought of the empty house waiting for him, the Stihl on his workbench, the three empty chairs at his dining table that he hadn’t had the heart to get rid of.
“Got a pile of reclaimed cedar in the garage,” he said, quiet, so only she could hear. “Was gonna make some mug stands for the farmers market. If you wanna come take a look. We could split the profits, give half to the VFW.”
Her grin widened, and she nodded, grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair. They walked out to his beat-up 2012 Ford F-150, rain soaking the shoulder of his Carhartt, and she grabbed his hand for half a second before letting go to climb in the passenger seat. He noticed the faint burn mark on her wrist, from a kiln accident she’d mentioned earlier, matching the one on his own wrist from the Grizzly Complex fire. He turned the key in the ignition, the heater blowing warm air over their cold knuckles, and for the first time in seven years, he didn’t feel the weight of all the things he thought he couldn’t have pressing down on his chest.
