Elias Voss, 67, spent 28 years manning the Whitefish Point lighthouse before he retired, the week after his wife, Carol, lost her fight with ovarian cancer. For eight years after that, he barely left the clapboard cottage they’d shared half a mile from the old light station, only venturing into town for canned beans and motor oil, avoiding the annual fish fry like it carried a contagious strain of pity. He hated the way the regulars at the general store lowered their voices when he walked in, the halfhearted pats on the shoulder, the unspoken assumption he’d never be anything but a widower stuck in the past. His only consistent companion was Mabel, a 7-year-old golden retriever Carol had brought home as a puppy two months before she got sick.
He’d planned to spend the day of the fry re-caulking his boat, but Mabel had other ideas. The second he unclipped her leash for her afternoon walk, she bolted down the dirt road toward the town park, the sound of the bluegrass band and the smell of fried lake trout pulling her like a magnet. Elias tripped over a root chasing her, spilled half the lemonade he’d been sipping down his flannel shirt, and crashed straight into a woman standing behind the pie contest booth, the rest of the drink soaking the front of her flour-dusted rhubarb-patterned apron.
He stammered an apology, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in his pocket, and their hands brushed when he reached out to dab at the wet spot on her apron, the rough callus on her index finger from decades of gardening scraping against his knuckle. She didn’t step back. She held eye contact for three full beats, her dark brown eyes crinkling at the corners when she laughed, a warm, rough sound that cut through the noise of the crowd. The air around her smelled like lavender hand salve and ripe peaches, sharp and sweet over the charcoal and brine hanging over the park. Her sun-bleached denim shirt was rolled up to the elbows, revealing a smattering of freckles across her forearms and a thin scar wrapping around her left wrist, and there was a smudge of cherry pie filling on her left cheek.
For half a second, Elias felt a hot, sharp twist of guilt in his gut, like he was doing something wrong just standing this close to a woman who wasn’t Carol, like he should turn and run before anyone he knew saw them. But then she leaned in a little, her shoulder brushing his bicep, and teased him that he was the third person that day to spill something on her apron, so he shouldn’t feel too bad. She introduced herself as Maeve, 62, the new county extension agent, just moved up from Madison six months prior to run the local agricultural outreach programs. She didn’t ask him if he was the widower from the point, didn’t mention Carol, didn’t look at him like he was a broken thing that needed fixing.
Mabel curled up at their feet, chewing on a leftover fish stick a kid had dropped, and Maeve pushed a slice of peach pie across the picnic table toward him, the crust still flaky and warm, glistening with juice. He tried to say he didn’t have any cash, and she waved him off, said the first slice was free for anyone who could keep up with her stories about her old dairy farm back in Wisconsin, the time her prize cow got loose and wandered into the local high school football game. He found himself laughing before he even realized it, telling her stories about the lighthouse, the time a group of kayakers got caught in a storm and he’d had to guide them back to shore in the middle of the night, the way Carol used to leave sticky notes with bad jokes on the light control panel for him to find on his overnight shifts.
When he mentioned Carol’s name, he tensed up, waiting for the pitying look he’d gotten so used to, but Maeve just nodded, twisting the silver wedding band she still wore on her left finger, and said she’d lost her husband three years prior to a hay baler accident, that she’d moved up north because she couldn’t stand walking past the empty barn every morning. Grief doesn’t get lighter if you lock it in a closet with all the old photo albums, she said, picking a crumb of pie crust off the table and popping it in her mouth. It just gets moldy.
The sun dipped low over the lake by the time the fish fry started wrapping up, the sky turning pink and orange, the bluegrass band packing up their instruments. Maeve brushed a crumb of pie off his shirt, her fingers lingering on his chest for half a second longer than necessary, and asked him if he wanted to take a walk along the shore before it got dark. He hesitated for half a second, the last eight years of guilt and isolation weighing on him, then he nodded, whistling for Mabel to follow.
They walked slow, Mabel trotting ahead of them chasing seagulls, their shoulders brushing every few steps, the cool lake wind tangling their hair. He didn’t feel like he was betraying Carol, not anymore. He felt like she’d be laughing at him for waiting so long to stop moping. He tucked a strand of windblown silver hair behind her ear, and for the first time in eight years, he didn’t feel like he was leaving someone behind.
