Moe Halvorsen, 61, makes custom wooden fishing lures for a living out of the cinder block workshop behind his lake cabin outside Brainerd. He’s avoided most local community events for eight years, ever since his wife Linda died from a fast-moving pancreatic cancer, his biggest personality flaw being that he’d rather hole up sanding cedar for 12 hours straight than make small talk with people who only want to ask if he’s “finally ready to start seeing someone.” He only showed up to the fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his old highway maintenance crew (he retired three years prior, after 32 years patching potholes on Minnesota’s back roads) threatened to drag him out of his workshop if he didn’t.
He’d been hiding by the rolling beer and seltzer cooler for 45 minutes, half-listening to a group of retired loggers argue about ice fishing limits, when she reached for the same black cherry seltzer he did. Their knuckles brushed, the cold condensation on the can making the contact slick, and Moe flinched back like he’d been burned—old reflex, from all the times well-meaning widows from the local church had grabbed his arm to flirt. He looked up ready to mumble an apology and bolt, and froze.
She was 58 if he had to guess, streaks of silver in her dark braid, a smudge of blue ink on her left cheek, wearing a faded flannel shirt and steel-toe work boots caked with mud from the hiking trails. She didn’t pull her hand away right away, just quirked an eyebrow, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners like she was laughing at him without making fun. “Sorry,” she said, her voice rough, like she smoked a couple cigarettes a day and spent a lot of time yelling at kids to stop running in the library. “I’ve been chasing a group of 10-year-olds away from the ghost pepper chili table for half an hour, my reflexes are all messed up.”
She was Clara Voss, the new part-time librarian who’d moved up from Minneapolis six months prior, fresh off a messy divorce from a lawyer who’d cheated on her with his paralegal. Moe knew who she was, everyone in town did, but he’d never talked to her before, had gone out of his way to avoid the library when he’d needed to renew his fishing license last month. He didn’t want to be another guy hitting on the new woman in town, didn’t want to feel the familiar twist of guilt in his gut that came with even thinking about being interested in someone who wasn’t Linda.
They ended up leaning against the cooler for the next hour, the hum of the cooler’s compressor mixing with the chatter of the crowd and the sharp smell of cumin and burnt wood smoke from the fire pits. She asked about the thin, pale scar snaking up his right wrist, and he told her he’d slipped with a carving knife when he was 19, making his first custom lure for Linda, had gotten 17 stitches and still had the lopsided lure hanging on his workshop wall. She didn’t give him the sad, pitying look everyone else did when he mentioned Linda, just nodded, and told him she’d been trying to learn to fish for walleye since she moved up, kept snagging every cheap store-bought lure she bought on the lake’s rocky bottom.
Moe’s mouth moved before his brain could catch up. “I got a workshop full of lures that don’t snag,” he said, and his throat felt tight, like he was doing something forbidden. “I can take you out on my boat tomorrow morning, if you want. Show you how to use ‘em.” He braced for the guilt to hit, for the nausea he’d felt last year when a woman from his church had touched his arm at a potluck, but it didn’t come. He just noticed how close she was standing, her shoulder almost pressed to his bicep, the faint smell of lavender and pine soap on her skin, the way she was biting her lower lip like she was trying not to smile too big.
“7 a.m. sound good?” she said, and she leaned in a little when she talked, so he could hear her over a group of firemen yelling about who’d won the chili contest. “I’ll bring the good cold brew, not the gas station swill I saw you chugging when you walked in.” She scribbled her address on a receipt she pulled out of her flannel pocket, pressed it into his palm, her hand warm even though she’d been digging through the cold cooler for seltzer for most of the afternoon, her fingers lingering for half a second longer than they needed to, before she waved and walked off to help the fire department pack up the folding tables.
Moe drove home that night, the receipt crumpled in his jeans pocket, and stopped by his workshop on the way into the house. He pulled the lopsided 19-year-old lure he’d made for Linda off the wall, ran his thumb over the chipped red paint, and didn’t feel guilty. He brought it inside, set it on the kitchen counter next to his chipped old ceramic coffee mug, and pulled a brand new mug out of the cabinet, the one Linda had bought for guests before she got sick, and set it next to his. He set his alarm for 6:30, rolled into bed, and fell asleep before he could overthink it, the sound of the lake lapping against the dock lulling him under.
