Elias Voss, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher from Akron, had kept to a strict, unchanging routine since he moved to northern Michigan 11 months prior. He woke at 6 a.m. sharp, drank black coffee while he sanded duck decoys on his back porch, grabbed lunch at the only diner in town three days a week, and was in bed by 9:30, no exceptions. His biggest flaw, one he’d admitted only to his late wife’s old ash tree in his backyard, was that he’d spent 8 years convinced any joy not tied to her memory was a betrayal. He’d turned down three separate invitations to the annual fall chili cookoff the year prior, but the bluegrass band playing the main stage had been his wife’s favorite, so he’d caved, shoving a crumpled $20 bill in his flannel pocket and lacing up his worn work boots before he could talk himself out of it.
The air bit at his cheek when he stepped out of his truck, sharp with the smell of turned earth and wood smoke from the fire pits strung along the fairgrounds. He wandered past booths for the local fire department, the 4-H club, the county historical society, sampling thin, watery chili that tasted mostly of tomato paste and regret, ignoring the friendly waves from people he’d nodded at in the hardware store but never spoken to. He was half ready to head home when he spotted the animal shelter booth, stacked high with neon dog toys and handwritten signs begging for donations for the senior dog foster program.
Maeve, the woman running the booth, had dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a red bandana, a smudge of chili powder high on her left cheekbone, and a smattering of freckles across her nose that looked like they’d been left by decades of summer sun on the lake. She laughed when he tripped over a bin of rubber chew toys by the booth’s leg, leaning over the folding table to steady him by the elbow, her hand warm through the thin fabric of his shirt. “Watch yourself,” she said, her voice low and rough, like she spent half her day yelling to get skittish dogs to come out from under porches. “We can’t afford to have you break an ankle and sue us. We’re already $200 short on new heating pads for the old hounds.”
He laughed, a rusty, unused sound, and leaned against the table to right himself. She slid a paper sample cup of chili across the wood toward him, their fingers brushing when he reached for it. The contact sent a jolt up his arm he hadn’t felt since his first date with his wife, 37 years prior, and he flinched back like he’d touched a hot pan, his face heating up. She didn’t comment, just nodded at the cup, watching him take a sip. It was smoky, with a slow burn of habanero that lingered at the back of his throat, a hint of sweet cherry cider cutting the heat just enough. “My grandma’s recipe,” she said, wiping her hands on the front of her faded flannel shirt, her nails short and chipped, coated in clear polish that was peeling at the edges. “She swore the cider was the secret to keeping even the grumpiest old men coming back for seconds.”
He stayed at that booth for 27 minutes, by his count, talking through three more sample cups of chili, ignoring the line forming behind him of people waiting to donate. He told her about the decoy carving, about moving up north after he retired, about the old ash tree in his yard he talked to when he thought no one was listening. He didn’t mention his wife, not at first, but when he stumbled over the sentence when she asked if he lived alone, he thought he’d ruin it, that she’d back off, that he’d go back to his empty house and his decoys and his routine. But she just nodded, tapping the small silver widow’s ring on her left hand. “My husband passed 6 years ago,” she said. “Used to hunt ducks every weekend up here. Left me a beat up old decoy he carved himself, has a crack right through the base I haven’t been able to fix. I’ve been hauling it to every craft fair for two years looking for someone who knows what they’re doing with wood.”
The old guilt flared in his chest then, sharp and familiar, the voice in his head hissing that he was being unfaithful, that he should grab his cup and leave, go back to his quiet, safe life where no one could make him feel this unmoored. But then she leaned in a little closer, and he could smell vanilla lotion and cinnamon on her shirt, see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes, and the guilt softened, just a little. It wasn’t betrayal to want to talk to someone who got it, who knew what it was like to wake up in an empty bed, to talk to a tree or an old decoy when you missed someone. His wife had always teased him for being a hermit, had told him a hundred times if she went first, he better not spend the rest of his life moping alone.
He agreed to fix the decoy before he could talk himself out of it, and she handed him her phone to type in his number. Their fingers brushed again when he passed it back, and this time he didn’t flinch, let his thumb graze the back of her hand for half a second, the scar there from a dog bite when she was 19 rough under his skin. She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and typed out a text to him right there, her thumb moving fast. “Saturday, 10 a.m., my cabin on the west side of the lake,” she said. “I’ll make pancakes. Extra blueberries, if you’re nice.”
He left the cookoff an hour later, a paper quart of her chili tucked under one arm, the bluegrass band playing his wife’s favorite slow song fading behind him as he walked toward his truck. He stopped by the lake overlook on the way home, leaning against a gnarled oak tree to take a bite of the chili, the sweet cherry aftertaste lingering on his tongue. His phone buzzed in his pocket, a photo of the cracked decoy sitting on a kitchen counter next to a chipped blue mug, the text under it reading “don’t judge the mug, it was his favorite.”
He smiled, a slow, easy thing, no guilt clinging to it this time, and typed back a reply, his fingers moving slower than they used to but steady. He tucked his phone back into his flannel pocket, adjusted the hand-carved decoy he’d brought to sell tucked under his other arm, and turned toward his truck, boots crunching over crumpled orange maple leaves.
