Elias Voss is 59, spent 32 years building backcountry trails for the National Park Service before a lying foreman ran him out of the job he loved, and he’s avoided every small-town Haywood County community event for 12 years straight, ever since his wife left him for a real estate agent from Asheville. His only flaw, if you ask his few remaining friends, is that he holds grudges so tight they carve permanent lines into the space between his brows. He only agreed to bring his smoked venison chili to the fall cookoff because his neighbor’s kid needed the $50 first prize to fix his dirt bike, and Elias knew no one else’s entry came close.
The air stings sharp with October frost, wood smoke, and the tang of tomato and cumin from 27 crockpots lined up on folding tables under a canvas tent. Bluegrass trills from a rickety stage at the edge of the field, and half the town is yelling over each other to pass cornbread or spiked apple cider. Elias leans against a split-rail fence at the far edge of the crowd, paper bowl in one hand, cold can of Pabst in the other, doing his best to look unapproachable enough that no one stops to ask how his cabin’s holding up or if he’s finally going to start dating again.
He’s halfway through his second bowl when she stops next to him, so close her flannel elbow brushes the bare skin of his forearm when she sets a jar of homemade apple butter on the fence rail beside his cooler. Mara Carter, 57, runs the used bookstore on Main Street, ex-wife of the same foreman who lied about Elias stealing a $15,000 trail improvement grant back in 2011. Every local in a 10-mile radius knows they’re supposed to be enemies.
Elias tenses, ready to snap a retort and walk away, but then he looks down at her. She’s got a smudge of black ink on her left jaw, silver roots peeking out under the chestnut dye in her messy braid, work boots caked with mud from digging up peonies in her front yard that morning. She holds his gaze for three full beats longer than polite, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smirk when he flinches a little at the second brush of her sleeve against his arm, her shoulder pressed almost to his chest now that she’s shifted to face him. She smells like lavender hand cream and hard cider, the scent cutting through the smoke and chili fumes wrapping around them.
“I found your old trail journal in a box of crap my ex left when he moved to Tennessee last month,” she says, her voice low and rough from years of menthols, loud enough only he can hear over the music. She pulls a tattered, leather-bound notebook from the oversized pocket of her flannel, holds it out to him. When he reaches to take it, their fingers brush, and he feels the thick callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages, the warmth of her skin seeping into his for half a second before she pulls her hand back slow, like she doesn’t want to.
Elias stares at the journal, the frayed spine he stitched himself after a bear tore his pack on the Appalachian Trail in 2009, and his chest goes tight. He spent 10 years hating everyone associated with that foreman, refusing to even step foot in her bookstore, assuming she bought the same lies her ex told the whole county. “You knew it wasn’t true,” he says, not a question.
“Knew the second he said it,” she shrugs, and her shoulder rubs against his chest again, this time on purpose. “That man couldn’t balance a checkbook if his life depended on it, let alone write a grant proposal. I’ve been leaving paperback westerns in your mailbox for six months, by the way. Figured you’d get the hint eventually that I wasn’t on his side.”
Elias blinks. He’d wondered who was leaving those books, dog-eared, with little notes in the margins about which chapters were the best. He’d thought it was his neighbor’s grandma. The resentment he’s carried for a decade softens at the edges, mixes with a warm, slow pull low in his gut he hasn’t felt since before his wife left. He’s still half convinced this is some kind of prank, but the way she’s looking at him, dark eyes glinting in the light from the tiki torches, no mockery in her face, makes that thought fade fast.
“Got more of your old stuff at the store,” she says, tilting her head toward the road leading into town. “A set of your old trail maps, a bottle of 10-year bourbon I’ve been saving for someone who isn’t a complete waste of space. Close up at 8. Don’t be late.”
She doesn’t wait for him to answer before she turns to walk away, her shoulder brushing his chest one last time as she goes, and he catches a flash of silver hoop earring peeking out under her braid. Elias stands there for a full minute, holding the journal to his chest, the faint scent of her lavender still clinging to the leather cover, his chili forgotten next to him on the fence. He takes a sip of his Pabst, and it tastes sweeter than it did five minutes earlier, the cold bite cutting through the warmth spreading up his neck. He pulls his beat up flip phone out of his jeans pocket, types a quick text to his buddy telling him he’s bailing on the post-cookoff poker game, and shoves his hands in his pockets to wait for the clock to tick closer to 8.
