Roy Pacheco, 62, retired highway construction foreman, had spent the last three years avoiding every small town event west of the Gunnison River. He hated the pitying looks, the offhand “how you holding up” questions that always came right before someone mentioned his late wife Linda. The only reason he’d showed up to the VFW chili cookoff that crisp October Saturday was his old paving crew had threatened to tow his pickup off his property if he bailed again.
He leaned against the cinder block wall by the beer cooler, plastic cup of lukewarm PBR in one hand, picking at a frayed cuff on his work flannel with the other. The air reeked of cumin, burnt hamburger, and the pine-scented cleaner the bartender used on the sticky linoleum. George Strait crooned about Amarillo on the beat-up jukebox, and a group of ranchers yelled over a game of pool at the far end of the hall.
He was just calculating how early he could sneak out without his crew noticing when she tripped over a folding chair leg two feet away. Marnie Hale, 48, the county’s new wildlife officer, had a bowl of bright green chili in one hand, work boots caked in mud, flannel rolled up to show sun-freckled, calloused forearms. She stumbled right into him, her hip pressing firm against his denim-clad thigh for half a second, her free hand clamping around his bicep to steady herself. A spoonful of chili sloshed over the edge of her bowl, splattering dark red across the front of his shirt.
She looked up at him, wide hazel eyes crinkling at the corners as she laughed, and Roy felt his throat go dry. He’d known Marnie since she was a snot-nosed 14 year old tagging along with her older sister to Linda’s weekend barbecues, had felt a stupid, guilty flick of attraction the day she’d turned 17 and showed up to a cookoff in cutoffs and a cowboy hat, and had spent the last 45 years shoving that feeling down hard. She was off limits, always had been. Too young, too tied to Linda, too much the town’s “kid sister” for a guy like him to even look at twice.
“Shit, Roy, I’m so sorry,” she said, dabbing at the chili stain on his shirt with a crumpled napkin she pulled from her jeans pocket. Her hand brushed his chest through the thin flannel, warm and rough, and he could smell pine and chili powder and cedar shampoo on her. “I was looking for you, actually. Found your old dog Bo’s collar out on BLM land last week, the one with the custom brass tag you had made for him? Couldn’t track you down until someone told me you’d be here today.”
He nodded, still trying to get his breathing under control, and followed her over to a quieter corner by the back screen door, the cold mountain air seeping through the mesh to nip at his neck. She leaned against the doorframe, one boot propped on the lower step, and tilted her head when he told her Bo had run off two years prior, a month before Linda got diagnosed, that he’d searched the woods for three days and never found a trace of him. She was close enough that her shoulder brushed his every time someone squeezed past them to go out to the picnic tables, close enough that he could see the faint scar across her left eyebrow from the time she’d crashed a four-wheeler when she was 19.
He kept telling himself he was an idiot, that he should step back, that half the people in the room were already staring, that he was supposed to still be grieving, that wanting anything this warm after Linda felt like a betrayal. But when she reached out to tap the thin, silvery scar on his left wrist, the one from the backhoe accident 10 years prior, he didn’t flinch away.
“I remember that,” she said, her thumb brushing the scar once, soft, before she pulled her hand back. “Brought you a tuna noodle casserole back then. Was too scared to knock, though. Left it on your porch. Figured Linda would think it was from the church ladies.”
He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in years. “I saw you leave it. Was too embarrassed to say anything. Had a stupid crush on you back then, felt like an idiot even talking to you.”
Her grin softened, and she leaned in a little more, so their foreheads were almost touching, the noise of the cookoff fading to a low hum in the background. “I knew. That’s why I was too scared to knock. Thought you’d laugh at me for being a kid with a dumb crush on her sister’s friend’s husband.”
Roy let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. For three years, he’d locked himself up in his ranch house, convinced any joy he felt after Linda was gone would be a slap in the face to the 34 years they’d had together. But he could almost hear her voice, sharp and amused, telling him to stop being a dumbass, that Marnie was a good woman, that he deserved to stop moping around the house eating frozen burritos for dinner every night.
“I’ve got the collar in my truck out back,” she said, nodding toward the parking lot, her hand brushing his as she shifted her weight. “Can give it to you now, if you want. And I know a little diner down in Delta that makes the best green chile cheeseburgers west of the Rockies. If you’re not in a hurry to get home.”
Roy wiped the last smudge of chili off his shirt with the crumpled napkin she’d given him, and nodded. He followed her through the crowd, her hand brushing his every few steps as they wove between the folding chairs and picnic tables. His old crew catcalled from the pool table, and one of them whooped that he owed them a round of beer the next week.
He didn’t even flip them off. For the first time in three years, he wasn’t counting the minutes until he could go home to an empty couch and a silent house.
