Manny Ruiz, 62, retired air traffic controller, hasn’t gone a single Saturday without hitting the Cannon Beach farmers market in the seven years since he moved north from Portland. He followed the retirement plan he and his late wife Lila mapped out over 30 years of midnight shifts and missed holidays: buy the cottage with the ocean view, fish the Nehalem River three times a week, grow tomatoes in the backyard, avoid any situation that might force him to acknowledge he’s been alone longer than he was with her. That last part was his addition, the flaw he’s never bothered to fix, convinced any attempt to move on would be a slap to the memory of the woman who sat with him through every near-miss panic attack and every holiday spent in the control tower.
He’s reaching for a jar of extra-sour dill pickles when their hands collide, cold glass pressing between his calloused palm and hers, and he yanks his hand back like he’s touched a hot stove. He glances down first, notices worn work boots caked in black berry mud, then up, and his chest tightens. Clara, Lila’s younger cousin, the one who moved to Alaska to work on a fishing boat right after Lila’s 40th birthday, the one he hadn’t seen in 15 years, is grinning at him, hazel eyes crinkled at the corners exactly like Lila’s. She’s got sunspots across her nose, strands of sun-bleached auburn hair stuck to her sweat-glistened forehead, and the sleeve of her denim jacket is torn at the elbow, stained purple with berry juice.
“Sorry, I swear I didn’t see you there,” she says, and her laugh is lower, rougher than Lila’s, but it hits him the same way, warm right behind his sternum. He mumbles that it’s fine, he’s got enough pickles at home to last him through the winter anyway, and she snorts, leaning in a little closer so her shoulder presses against his flannel shirt as she waves at the pickle vendor behind the table. He can smell lavender hand cream and the sweet, sharp tang of blackberry on her shirt, and his neck goes hot, a jolt of attraction shooting up his spine so fast it makes him dizzy. He wants to walk away, go home, heat up the same frozen meatloaf he eats every Saturday night, but his feet won’t move.
She says she moved to town three months prior, bought a five-acre berry farm ten minutes outside of city limits, sells jam and preserves at the market every weekend. She nods at his canvas tote, the one with the hand-stitched sunflower on the side, and says “I made that for Lila, remember? For her 40th. She carried that thing everywhere.” He nods, his throat tight, because he does remember, Lila brought it to every grocery run, every picnic, every doctor’s appointment in the last year of her life. He’s never used any other bag.
When the vendors start packing up their stalls, the bluegrass band at the end of the row wrapping their final set, she huffs a laugh and nods at the three heavy coolers stacked next to her jam table, says she’s dreading hauling them to her truck alone. Before he can think better of it, he offers to help. She grins, accepts, and they walk side by side down the dirt path between the stalls, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the sound of kids yelling as they chase a stray dog mixing with the clink of mason jars in boxes. Halfway to the parking lot, he trips over a stack of empty wooden crates, stumbles, and she grabs his bicep to steady him, her fingers calloused from weeks of berry picking, warm through the thin cotton of his shirt. She doesn’t let go for three full seconds, and he doesn’t pull away.
They get to her beat-up 2008 Ford F-150, he hefts the coolers into the bed, and she reaches into the cab, pulls out a jar of seedless blackberry jam, the label handwritten in the same loopy cursive Lila used to use for grocery lists. “For you,” she says, holding it out, and when he takes it, their fingers brush again, no glass between them this time, the contact soft and deliberate. He meets her eyes, and she doesn’t look away, her voice soft when she says “Lila called me two weeks before she died. Made me promise if I ever ended up out here, I’d check on you. Said you’d hole yourself up in that cottage and forget how to have fun. Said she didn’t want you to be alone forever.”
The tightness in his chest loosens all at once, the guilt he’s carried for eight years melting like frost in the sun, because he knows she’s telling the truth. Lila never was one for letting people wallow, even when she was the one lying in a hospital bed. He doesn’t feel disgusted with himself anymore, doesn’t feel like he’s betraying the woman he loved for 34 years. He feels light, like he can breathe for the first time since the day the doctor handed him that diagnosis.
He asks her if she wants to grab a beer and a basket of fried cheese curds at the Sand Trap, the dive bar half a mile down the road, later that night. She tilts her head, grins, says she’ll bring the jam and a frozen pie crust, they can bake it at his place after, eat it with the vanilla bean ice cream she knows he still keeps in his freezer for when Lila’s sister visits. He laughs, because he does still keep that ice cream, hasn’t touched it in two years.
He walks back to his own truck, the jam jar heavy in his tote, the faint smell of lavender still clinging to the sleeve of his flannel. He unlocks the door, sets the tote on the passenger seat, and pulls out his phone to send her the address to his cottage, his fingers only shaking a little.
