“No,” Jack muttered, before glancing away.
A hushed silence fell over them.
“I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you.”
“Thanks. When he died, he left his business to me, so I took it over and transformed it into what it is today. We still run a few tours to the islands now and then, but mostly we cater to folks looking for trophy bass or crappie.”
“Just like you said you wanted to. It sounds like you’re happy.”
“For the most part,” he said, nodding along. “What about you, are you happy in Indiana?”
“How happy is anyone, really?” she mused. “Content is perhaps the best way to describe it.”
“What about a family—a husband, kids?”
She turned her face away. “Someday, maybe.”
He sensed there was more to the story but decided not to press his luck.
“I don’t see a ring on your finger,” she said, turning the tables. “No woman ever tied you down?”
Jack quirked his lips. “Someday, maybe.”
“Any particular reason?”
Jack eyed her narrowly. “I guess I haven’t found the right woman.”
“Now that you’re rich and famous, I figured you’d have every eligible bachelorette from Nashville to Charlotte knocking on your door.”
He breathed a laugh through his nose. “Hardly. Besides, you know me. I prefer to keep a low profile.”
They motored around Rock Island to the head of Flat Creek where Jack had first taught Ellie how to fish.
“This feels familiar.” Her eyes gave a sweeping glance. “Over there is where I caught my first fish. And there,” she said, pointing to a rocky outcropping, “is where I caught that lunker, remember?” She ran a hand through her hair and rested her gaze on him. “God, that seems like a lifetime ago.”
“It was.” Jack locked eyes with her. “And it wasn’t. Time is a funny thing. Sometimes when I’m out here on the water, I’ll hear or see something that makes me think of you, and for a moment I’m eighteen again.” He eased along the shore, letting the wind ruffle his hair. He watched Ellie’s face, her hair, her everything. Despite the walls he’d spent years constructing and reinforcing, she had managed to breach them in two days. How weak he felt in her company. And his heart, which had waxed cold long ago, beat once more.
“Your accent,” said Ellie. “Where did it go?”
Her question amused him. “This place isn’t the only thing that’s changed since you been away. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Ellie.”
“Care to enlighten me?”
Jack smiled, realizing little about her had changed. He considered telling her everything that had happened since she last saw him but opted to reveal only the details he thought she needed to know. “I’m not sure we have enough daylight.” He chuckled, then went on. “But to answer your original question, most people don’t take you seriously when you talk like you have your mouth full of rocks.”
Ellie uttered a hushed laugh.
“When I got out of the service, they told me I’d earned a free education, so I took advantage of it and enrolled at the University of Tennessee, where I studied literature and linguistics. It was a slow process, learning how to speak correctly, but by the time I graduated, my accent was almost entirely gone.”
“It’s amazing how much you’ve changed.”
Jack smiled and they drifted with the current, neither saying anything for a long time.
“I read your book,” Ellie said, breaking the silence.
“All of it?”
“Every word.”
