Clay Hollister, 58, retired U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighter turned custom woodturner, had avoided the Saturday farmers market for three straight years before that July afternoon. He’d gotten sick of the pitying smiles from neighbors who still asked how he was holding up, seven years out from his wife Elaine’s breast cancer diagnosis and six years, eleven months, three weeks out from her funeral. His biggest flaw, if you asked the few friends he still had, was that he’d frozen every part of his life that didn’t involve sanding cedar blanks or fixing fence lines on his 12-acre property outside Missoula, convinced any joy that didn’t tie back to Elaine’s memory was a betrayal. He’d worn the same frayed Carhartt jacket, even in 80-degree heat, for four years, the left cuff frayed where Elaine had sewn a patch of a pine tree on it before their 20th anniversary camping trip.
The air that day smelled like roasted sweet corn, cut alfalfa, and the sharp, sweet tang of lavender from the booths lining the sidewalk. He’d only come to drop off a custom turned maple mortar and pestle he’d made for a local jam maker, had planned to be in and out in 10 minutes, when his boot caught on a loose cinder block at the edge of a booth stacked with glass jars of dried herbs, knocking a full jar of calendula petals off the edge. He reached down to grab it the same time the vendor did, their foreheads knocking hard enough to make them both grunt, then laugh when he fumbled the jar and petals spilled across the weathered wood of the booth counter.