He's watching the river. He does this when I talk, and it’s like he and the river are both listening.
"Fish don't lie," he says. A pause. "River doesn't lie." Another. "You'll figure out what else doesn't."
It's the most words he's said in one go since I arrived. I sit with them while the water goes past and a kingfisher hits the surface twenty feet downstream and comes up with something.
On the drive back to town I keep thinking about the fish on the line. That immediate, unambiguous pull. Real or not real isn't a question the river asks. The weight is there or it isn't.
I think about Silas Fisher and the corner of his mouth and his hand covering mine on the cork of the rod, and the way he stepped back after like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I'm not confused about what that is.
I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do with something real when my whole system for recognizing real things just failed me so completely.
four
Silas
It’sslowseason,andfor the first time in my life, I’m glad I don’t have any other clients.
She's not a client the way clients are. Clients are strangers you spend a morning with, who tip and send a review and that's the last of them. She shows up at six every morning and she knows where the waders are and she's started tying her own flies, badly but with total focus. We've moved entirely to my private water without me deciding to do it. I brought her one morning, walked upstream instead of down, and she followed, and we've been there since.
I tell myself it's because the private water is better water. She's advancing fast and the current is more interesting upstream.
I know it's not only that.
Today we're working the tricky section just past the bend where the current splits around a submerged boulder. You have to wade out further than feels comfortable to get the right casting angle and she keeps hugging the near bank.
"Wade out," I tell her.
She wades out, picking her way carefully along the bottom, reading it the way I've shown her. The current is stronger in the split. She gets to depth and tries the cast and the line drifts wide.
"Too much slack on the drift. Come up a step." I’m getting better at talking to her, but not better at noticing how beautiful she is. How her eyes glimmer in the sun, how her full lips purse when she’s concentrating, how her curves make me want to rip those ugly waders off and do things that I have not thought about in a long time.
Peyton moves, and the current pushes harder and she loses her footing. In a flash, I get my hands on her waist before she's even fully off balance. She steadies in a second. We're standing mid-river and my hands are on her hips and the current is pushing around us both.
Neither of us moves.
I know what this is. I've known for several days what this is and I've been keeping a careful distance from it because I know the shape of this story: she drove up from Vancouver three weeks out of a broken engagement and she's booked through the end of the month and she is going back to her life.
I know I should step back.
I don't step back.
The river goes around us. She has both hands on my forearms, steadying herself, and she's not looking at the water anymore.
I step back.
We finish the section. Walk to the truck. Neither of us mentions it.
That evening she's on my porch.
I’m not sure why I invited her back for coffee. Well, no, I know exactly why, but I’m trying not to think about it. I just wanted to be with her. Peyton. As she is… not a client. Just the woman who’s trying to heal from what seems to be the worst breakup I’ve heard of in a long time.
The light is going off the river, gold first and then grey, and the spruce on the far bank has gone dark. We stand there and the silence is easy in a way it hasn't been since she arrived. She's stopped filling the silence with chatter.
"I like it here," she says.
I don't say anything.
