Russell Voss, 62, retired upstate New York high school woodshop teacher, leaned against a splintered beer tent pole and stared at the dregs of his sour ale. He’d only shown up to the town’s annual summer beer garden because his niece ran the bratwurst stall and had threatened to hide all his specialty sanding blocks if he bailed. For 15 years, he’d avoided large community events like this, ever since his wife left him for Jake Hale, a 26-year-old former student of his who’d gone on to teach math at the same school. His flaw was obvious to anyone who knew him: he’d built a wall so thick around his routine—wake at 6, sand vintage Adirondack chairs for 4 hours, eat a turkey sandwich at noon, watch old westerns after dinner—that he’d forgotten how to talk to anyone who didn’t ask about oak grain or weather sealant.
The air smelled like charred onion, pine from the nearby state park, and yeast spilling from overfilled beer cups. A cover band strummed the opening to Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” off to his left, and fireflies darted between the string lights strung over the picnic tables. He was just about to toss his cup and head for the parking lot when a woman stepped in front of him, holding a frothy radler, silver streaks cutting through her dark wavy hair, a faded Pearl Jam flannel tied around her waist, scuffed work boots caked with topsoil.