Ronell Hodge, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against the cinder block wall of the VFW hall and picked at a pine splinter stuck under the skin of his left thumb. He’d driven 22 miles into town that morning for the monthly chili cookoff, same as he did every second Saturday, and he’d planned to be back at his late wife’s lake cabin by 7, beer in hand, watching loons dive for minnows off his dock. He’d not planned on her.
She was standing by the punch table, laughing at a dumb joke the fire chief was telling, wearing a faded red plaid flannel over a black turtleneck, scuffed work boots caked with lake mud instead of the frumpy cardigans Ron still associated with librarians. He’d heard she was the new library director, 58, moved to town six months prior after a messy divorce, but he’d avoided running into her on purpose. His wife Elaine had been a librarian for 32 years. Looking at another woman with the same job title felt like cheating, even eight years after she’d been buried in the small cemetery off Main Street.
He turned to grab a plastic cup of root beer, and their hands hit the ladle at the exact same time. His knuckles were rough, calloused from 40 years of planing wood and sanding table legs, hers were cool, nails chipped with navy polish, no wedding band on her left finger. She didn’t yank her hand away. She held eye contact for three full beats, the corner of her mouth tugging up into a smirk that made the back of his neck warm. “You’re Ron, right? The guy who builds those Adirondack chairs that sell for $300 a pop at the county fair?”
He grunted, not trusting his voice. He’d never been good at talking to women he found attractive, not even when he was dating Elaine, and he was wildly out of practice. He tried to step back, but his boot caught on a loose cinder block, and she reached out to steady him, her hand wrapping around his forearm for half a second. She smelled like pine and peppermint lip balm, nothing like Elaine’s vanilla lotion, and that tiny, stupid detail made the tight knot of guilt in his chest loosen just a little.
She followed him outside to the weathered picnic table by the parking lot, carrying two bowls of the extra spicy chili the sheriff’s department had entered. She slid one across the table to him, and their fingers brushed again. “I need a favor,” she said, picking a chunk of ground beef out of her bowl and tossing it to a stray dog curled up under the table. “I’m putting in a little free library at the lake campground, and every carpenter in town is booked three months out. I heard you don’t mind side jobs, as long as you don’t have to deal with too many people.”
He froze. He’d turned down every side job anyone had offered him in the last two years. He liked his quiet, liked his routine, liked not having to explain why he still kept a jar of Elaine’s favorite pickles on his kitchen counter even though he hated dill. But she was leaning forward, elbows on the table, and he could see the faint scar on her left eyebrow from where she’d crashed a motorcycle when she was 22, a story she’d offhandedly dropped ten minutes earlier, and he found he wanted to hear more stupid anecdotes about her dumb mistakes.
The conflict had been brewing in his chest since their hands first touched: sharp, quiet disgust at himself for even considering saying yes, for even looking at her, tangled up with a warm, thrumming desire he’d thought was dead and buried with Elaine. She didn’t push. She just sat there, sipping root beer, watching the group of teens light sparklers down the street for the end of summer festival, the faint crackle of the fireworks stand mixing with the sound of the VFW’s jukebox playing old Johnny Cash.
“I haven’t talked to anyone who wasn’t a cashier or a gas station attendant for more than five minutes in seven years,” he said, finally, his voice rougher than he intended. “I’m not good company. And my wife was a librarian. This feels… wrong.”
She nodded, no pity on her face, just quiet understanding. “I get it. I left my ex after 31 years, and I felt guilty for six months just for buying coffee that wasn’t the cheap garbage he liked. Guilt’s a bad travel partner. I don’t need you to be good company. I just need someone who can build a box that won’t fall apart when it snows.”
He laughed, a real, rumbling laugh, the kind he hadn’t let out since before Elaine got sick. He agreed to build the library, told her she could come out to his cabin next Saturday to pick out the pine he’d stacked by his workshop, said he’d even carve a little loon into the side of it if she brought good coffee, not the instant crap he kept in his cabinet.
She scribbled her phone number on a crumpled library checkout slip, the exact kind Elaine used to tuck into Ron’s lunchbox when he was working at the high school, and leaned across the table to tuck it into the breast pocket of his flannel. Her fingers brushed the skin of his chest through the thin fabric, and she held his eye contact again, that same lazy smirk tugging at her mouth. “I’ll bring the good stuff. Extra creamer. I heard you take yours sweet.”
She waved as she climbed into her beat up Subaru, mud tires kicking up gravel as she pulled out of the parking lot. He stood there for a full five minutes, his hand pressed to the pocket where the checkout slip was tucked, the faint warmth of her fingers still lingering on his chest. A loon call drifted through the air from the direction of the lake, sharp and clear, and he smiled before turning to unlock his own truck.
