Moe Pritchard, 59, has spent the last 22 years repairing vintage typewriters out of his cinder block garage in southwestern Michigan, and the last 8 avoiding the town’s annual peach festival like it carried a contagious strain of small talk. His wife, Elara, had dragged him to it every year they were married, gorging on cobbler and entering every peach pie baking contest she could fit into her schedule, and when she died suddenly of a stroke in 2015, he’d written the whole weekend off as permanently off-limits. His 19-year-old niece, Lila, had guilt-tripped him into manning the small business association booth for a single hour that Saturday, though, and he’d caved, showing up in a faded Carhartt shirt and work boots, already mentally tallying how fast he could sneak out once she got back from the Tilt-A-Whirl.
The air hung thick and sweet, heavy with the smell of grilled sweet corn, burnt sugar from the cotton candy stand, and the sun-warmed fuzz of the peaches stacked in wicker baskets on the table in front of him. The local country cover band was off to his left, grinding through a slow, twangy version of a Johnny Cash song he’d heard Elara sing in the shower a hundred times, and he’d already turned down three invitations to join a group of former high school classmates for beer when the woman running the used bookstore booth next to his leaned across the gap between their tables to bang a wobbly leg on their shared canopy back into place. Her shoulder brushed his bicep as she leaned over, and he caught a whiff of jasmine hand lotion and peach iced tea on her shirt, sharp and bright enough to cut through the stickiness clinging to his skin.
He knew her, sort of. Lena Marquez, 56, had owned the bookstore on Main Street for 14 years, divorced for 7, had a son in college in Chicago. She’d brought him a 1953 Royal Quiet De Luxe to fix 12 years prior, and had dropped off a whole peach pie as a thank-you, one Elara had raved about for weeks after. She held eye contact with him for a beat longer than polite when she stood back up, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and nodded at the scowl on his face. “You look like you’d rather be cleaning rust out of a typewriter carriage than talking to anyone here,” she said, and he huffed a laugh, surprised. He didn’t usually let people call him out on his grumpiness that fast.
They talked off and on for the next two hours, while customers wandered up to browse his typewriter key keychains and her stack of secondhand beach reads. He dropped a stack of keychains when a kid ran past the table screaming, and they both knelt down to pick them up, their hands brushing when they both reached for the same one, a brass cursive Q that had been Elara’s favorite initial. The callus on her palm, from years of stacking hardcovers, caught on the frayed edge of his work glove, and he felt a jolt go up his arm that had nothing to do with the bad wiring in the canopy string lights. He felt a twist of guilt in his gut immediately, like he was doing something wrong, like he was supposed to stay frozen in grief forever, just because Elara was gone.
She didn’t push him to talk, but when he mentioned he hadn’t been to the festival since Elara died, she nodded, no pity in her eyes, just understanding. “I started coming every year after my ex left,” she said, leaning in close enough that he could feel her breath warm against his ear over the noise of the band. “He hated peaches, hated crowds, hated anything that didn’t revolve around his golf schedule. This was my way of taking the weekend back for me.” She pulled a pack of sour peach candy out of her apron pocket and held it out to him, her fingers brushing his again when he took one, and he didn’t pull away this time.
The sun dipped below the tree line right as the festival’s closing fireworks show started, and the crowd surged toward the open field at the end of the street, leaving their booths mostly empty. She grabbed his wrist, her grip firm and warm, and pulled him up from the folding chair he’d been slouched in all afternoon. “C’mon,” she said, grinning, her silver hoop earrings catching the pink and orange glow of the first firework exploding over the trees. “They’re way better from right here, no crowds blocking the view.” He didn’t resist, didn’t make an excuse about needing to get home to feed his cat, didn’t let the guilt that had been sitting in his chest all afternoon win.
By the time the last firework fizzled out, the street was starting to clear, vendors packing up their booths, kids yawning as their parents herded them toward parked cars. She wiped a smudge of blue cotton candy off her chin with the back of her hand and tilted her head at him, that same half-smile on her face. “The diner on Oak stays open late on festival nights,” she said. “They serve peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream until 2 a.m. You wanna come?” He didn’t even hesitate before he said yes. He tucked the loose strand of wavy dark hair that had fallen across her face behind her ear, his thumb brushing the soft skin of her cheek, and followed her through the dispersing crowd, the faint jingle of the cursive Q keychain he’d slipped into her palm ten minutes prior bouncing over the noise of laughing kids.
