Clay Bennett, 58, retired high school woodshop teacher, had been dragged to the neighborhood’s first post-pandemic block party against his better judgment. He’d spent seven years holed up in his ranch house after his wife Ellie died of ovarian cancer, only leaving to grab groceries or work on custom furniture orders in his garage, and the last three years of lockdowns had only made his hermit tendencies worse. His biggest flaw, as his next door neighbor repeatedly reminded him, was that he’d rather rot alone than risk looking like a sad old widower trolling for dates at community events. The August humidity clung to the back of his worn Carhartt shirt, and he leaned against an oak tree sipping a lukewarm Pabst, ignoring the shouts from the cornhole tournament 20 feet away. The air smelled like charred bratwurst, citronella candles, and the faint, sticky sweetness of shaved ice being served from a cart at the end of the park strip. A cover band slurred through a 1992 Alan Jackson track, the tinny speakers warbling at the high notes.
He spotted her first when she walked away from the grill, wiping her hands on the leg of her cutoff jeans. Mara Hale, Ellie’s baby sister, 52, who he hadn’t seen since the funeral, when she’d hugged him tight and slipped a note with her Portland phone number into his pocket that he’d never called. She had the same auburn hair as Ellie, streaked through with silver now, pulled half back with a frayed scrunchie, and a smudge of charcoal on her left cheek. She caught him staring, and a slow grin spread across her face before she wove through the crowd toward him.