Ronan O’Malley, 62, retired lighthouse keeper from Maine’s Mount Desert Island, leaned against the gnarled trunk of an Aleppo pine at the neighborhood chili cookoff, sweat beading at his hairline under a frayed Red Sox cap. He’d shown up only because his next door neighbor Marnie had banged on his door at 2 p.m. holding a six pack of craft root beer, threatening to report his untrimmed palm trees to the HOA if he didn’t come out and stop moping. He’d spent the last 18 months in this Phoenix suburb holed up in his ranch house, watching old maritime documentaries and fixing vintage clock radios he picked up at garage sales, convinced anyone his age chasing connection was just setting themselves up for more grief. His wife Elara had died of ovarian cancer two years prior, and he’d left Maine to outrun the fog that seemed to seep into every crack of the lighthouse they’d lived in for 29 years, the fog that smelled like her lavender hand cream and salt.
The air reeked of smoked paprika, charred hamburger patties, and pine sap. A portable speaker on a nearby picnic table blared old Johnny Cash, and kids chased each other around the edge of the community green, screaming as they dodged folding chairs. Ronan took a bite of the chili he’d grabbed from the first table he passed, and his throat burned so bad he coughed, eyes watering. He was reaching for the bottle of water at his feet when a woman tripped over the leg of a rolling cooler two feet away, and grabbed his forearm to steady herself.
Her hand was warm, calloused at the palm from what he later learned was hours holding grooming clippers for her mobile pet grooming business, her nails chipped a faded pale blue. She smelled like coconut shampoo, mint gum, and the faint, sweet, earthy scent of golden retriever fur. “Sorry,” she said, laughing as she righted herself, hazel eyes flecked with gold crinkling at the corners. She was Lara Bennett, 54, the ex-wife of Greg Hargrove, the HOA president who’d been leaving passive aggressive notes on Ronan’s door about his palm trees for six months. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Greg was petty enough to blacklist anyone who so much as said hello to her after their messy divorce six months prior, and Ronan had avoided her on principle, not wanting the hassle.
“Clumsy as hell,” she said, nodding at his half-eaten plate of chili. “That’s Greg’s batch. He puts three habaneros in every pot to try and win, even though the contest rules say no more than one. I told him he’d make someone pass out one of these days.” She held out a plastic cup of cold root beer, and when he reached for it, their fingers brushed for half a second, and neither of them pulled away fast. He took a long sip, the cold fizz cutting through the burn in his throat, and told her he used to trip over the iron lighthouse stairs all the time when the fog was so thick he couldn’t see his own boots. She leaned against the tree next to him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his when she laughed at the story he told about a seagull stealing his sandwich off the lighthouse catwalk in the middle of a nor’easter.
He knew he should pull away, knew Greg would see them and make his life even more miserable, knew he’d told himself he wasn’t going to let anyone get close enough to hurt again. Disgust warred with desire in his chest: disgust at the idea of letting some petty HOA dictator tell him who he could talk to, disgust at himself for still wanting anything after losing Elara, and a sharp, warm desire he hadn’t felt in years, the kind that made his ears warm and his hands tingle. He found himself asking her about the small anchor tattoo on her wrist, and she told him her grandma had been a fisherman in Oregon, she’d gotten it the day her divorce was finalized.
Greg walked over ten minutes later, jaw tight, holding a clipboard like it was a weapon. “Lara,” he said, his voice sharp enough that a few people at the nearest table turned to look. “I thought I told you to stop bothering people who don’t follow community rules.” He nodded at Ronan, his lip curled. Ronan didn’t hesitate, rested his hand light on the small of her back, the fabric of her sunflower print button down soft under his palm. “She’s not bothering anyone,” he said, his voice low, the same tone he used to use to scare off trespassers who tried to climb the lighthouse after dark. “Beat it before I make you eat that whole pot of your garbage chili.”
Greg stared at him for three long seconds, then huffed, turned on his heel, and stormed back to the picnic table where his friends were sitting. Lara laughed, leaning into his side for half a second before she pulled back, her cheeks pink. She pulled a folded stack of postcards out of her purse, old hand-painted lighthouse postcards from the 1940s, told him her grandma had collected them, she’d been trying to figure out where each one was from for years. She asked him if he wanted to come over to her place later, she had a peach pie in the fridge she’d baked that morning, and they could go through the postcards together.
Ronan nodded, no hesitation, no overthinking about the rules he’d made for himself, no worrying about what Greg would do. He watched her walk back to her table, the hem of her denim skirt swishing against her calves, and she glanced over her shoulder halfway there, winking at him before she sat down. He took another sip of root beer, and for the first time since he’d left Maine, the sun didn’t feel too hot, and the noise of the cookoff didn’t feel too loud.
