Chapter 3
three
Peyton
Finally, I catch a fish.
It's not a big fish. But when the line goes taut I feel it before I understand what it is, and I make a sound that is not entirely dignified.
"Rod up," he says, already moving toward me through the current.
I hold the rod up. I reel. I do the specific sequence of things he has explained to me on three consecutive mornings and the fish comes in and he nets it. I stand there, feeling like I have won something enormous. The feeling is completely out of proportion to the event and I don't care.
I look over at him.
The gruff fisherman is actually smiling. A little, which is huge for him.
"Release?" I ask.
"Up to you."
I don’t want to stop this fish from living its best life after the joy it just gave me. So, I release it. Watch it catch the current and disappear. Then I laugh.
“I did it,” I say more to myself than to him.
“You did,” he agrees.
We take a breath on a big, flat rock overlooking the river that has just the right mix of shade and sun. Before I can decide to keep my mouth shut, I tell him about Craig.
Not the clean version I've been giving people — the righteous one where I was wronged and he was awful and I am holding up fine, thank you. The real version.
"Three years together. Engaged for one. I planned every detail of the wedding — venue, catering, florals, the day-of timeline.
I'm genuinely good at that kind of thing.
Planning, logistics, execution." I look at my hands.
"And I missed things. I missed two years of things.
And I can't figure out if I missed them because I loved him, or because I'd already invested so much in the plan that I didn't want to audit the foundation. "
He's quiet for a moment. Looking at the water.
"Which one bothers you more?”
"The second one," I say. "Because it means I saw things and chose not to see them.
Which means my read on my own situation was wrong for two years.
Which means—" I stop and take a breath before I start to cry.
"I thought I was good at knowing what was real.
I built my whole professional life on it.
And I was wrong about him for two years, which means I don't know what to trust anymore. Including myself."
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.