Roy Pacheco, 52, retired cattle auctioneer, had driven two hours to the Mesa County Harvest Fair only to dump his niece’s prize heifer off and hightail it back to his isolated 40-acre spread before anyone recognized him. He’d avoided small-town fairs for three years, ever since his wife Elara died of breast cancer—they’d spent 26 years hitting every fair within a 300-mile radius, working the auction blocks together, her keeping his books and heckling him when he let a rancher lowball a good steer. His biggest flaw, the one Elara had teased him about until the week she died, was that he’d rather hole up alone with his herd than admit he needed company.
The fair smelled like fried Oreos, alfalfa, and diesel fumes from the tractor pulling the hayride, the noise of the Tilt-a-Whirl’s screaming kids mixing with the twang of a cover band playing old Johnny Cash cuts in the beer garden. He’d almost made it to his truck when he realized he’d forgotten to grab the peach pie he’d pre-ordered from the contest tent—Elara had entered the same contest every year until she got too sick, won blue ribbons three times running. He cut through the crowd, shoulders hunched, and tripped over a stack of pie tins by the tent entrance, dropping his paper order slip on the dirt.
A woman bent to grab it at the same time he did, their foreheads knocking hard enough to make him see spots for half a second. When he blinked back to focus, he realized it was Marnie Hale, ex-wife of Jeb Hale, the auctioneer he’d hated for 20 years, the guy who’d undercut his bids and spread lies about him rigging sales across the state. She was holding the slip, grinning, her dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a braid, a smudge of flour on her left cheek. He smelled cinnamon and lavender from her hair, and when she handed him the slip her calloused, flour-dusted hand brushed his, the contact warm enough to make him flinch like he’d touched a hot branding iron.
She knew exactly who he was, of course. She told him she ran the pie contest now, had been running it for two years after she moved back to the area once her divorce from Jeb was final. He wanted to mumble a thanks and leave, but she leaned against the tent pole, crossing her arms, her flannel shirt pulling tight across her shoulders, and kept talking, asking about his herd, asking if he still had that beat-up gavel he used to carry, the one Elara had carved his initials into. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had asked him about something that wasn’t his cattle or his dead wife, and he found himself leaning against the pole next to her, their arms brushing every time someone walked past the tent, the heat from her arm seeping through the thin fabric of his work shirt.
The conflict twisted tight in his chest for an hour as they talked. He knew he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be laughing at her stories about Jeb getting so drunk at an auction afterparty he tried to sell a goat to a tourist as a “miniature prize cow,” shouldn’t be noticing how her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, how she kept holding his gaze a beat longer than necessary, like she was daring him to admit he wanted to stay. It felt wrong, like he was betraying Elara, like he was breaking some unspoken rule by being attracted to the ex-wife of the man he’d spent half his career hating. But when she asked him if he wanted to grab a beer after the contest winners were announced, he said yes before he could think better of it.
By the time the fair closed, the parking lot was half empty, most of the vendors packing up their stalls. She grabbed a tin of the first-place peach pie she’d won, and they climbed up onto the tailgate of his beat-up Ford F-150 to eat it. She cut him a slice with a plastic knife, and when he took a bite, the sweet syrup dribbled down his chin. She reached up to wipe it off with her thumb, her skin soft against his stubble, and then she licked the syrup off her thumb, never breaking eye contact. That was the point where the resistance snapped, where the guilt and the stupid grudge against Jeb melted away, replaced by something warm and sharp and alive, the first thing he’d felt that wasn’t grief or boredom in three years.
He asked her if she wanted to come back to his place, see the old gavel, see the herd of cattle he’d been raising, and she nodded before he even finished the sentence. She climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, tucking the pie tin between her feet, and he walked around to the driver’s side, his hands shaking a little, like he was 17 again asking a girl to prom for the first time. He turned the key, the truck rumbled to life, and she reached over to rest her hand on the gear shift right where his was, her palm warm through the worn rubber of the knob.
