5. Kyron
KYRON
I was at the bank before I admitted to myself that was where I was going.
I’d told myself I was checking the tie-off on the canoe.
The canoe was fine. I’d checked it last night and it had been fine then too, but I walked down to the bank in the gray early light with my coffee and checked it again.
Then I stood there looking at the river.
That was apparently what I was doing now.
She came down the path about twenty minutes later.
Barefoot, mug in both hands, hair loose.
The same way she’d come every morning this week—like she had nowhere else to be.
Like the river was the only appointment that mattered.
She picked her way down the slope without hurrying, settling beside me on the bank close enough that her shoulder pressed against my arm.
I knew she was leaving today. I’d known it all week.
I’d treated it the way I treated every other fixed point on the river—the put-in, the takeout, the hazard you logged before you ever got in the boat so you weren’t surprised by it.
You ran the section accordingly. You didn’t argue with the takeout.
The takeout was Sunday. It had always been Sunday.
The denial wasn’t working as well this morning as it had been.
The heron was out early, working the shallows downstream, and the river was running clear after two days without rain. Good conditions. The outfitter would be busy by nine.
She said, “This was the best week I’ve had in longer than I can remember.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
She looked at me. I could feel it without turning—that sharp-eyed look she had, the one that felt like being seen all the way through. Like she was checking something against what she already knew.
I looked at the river.
She was waiting for something. I knew that too.
I was good at reading people, and now I was especially good at reading her.
She was waiting for me to say something that would change things, and I had things I could have said.
I was aware of them the way you were aware of a current running under still water—present, moving, doing something underneath the surface.
I didn’t say them.
I’d stopped asking people to stay a long time ago. Not because I’d decided to. Not after any single thing that happened. But because I’d learned the way you learned most true things—slowly, through repetition.
People had their lives and their plans and their big summers coming up. They moved toward those things the way the river moved toward the sea. It wasn’t a judgment. It was just how it went.
I wasn’t going to ask her to stay.
We sat there until the light was fully up and her mug was empty. At one point, Sunnie appeared on the cabin deck above us, looked down, and went back inside without saying anything. Good instincts, that one.
Suri stood up and brushed the bank from the backs of her legs. She looked at the river one more time—the long, memorizing look of someone storing something away—and then she looked at me.
"Sunnie's not coming back with me. She met someone." Her mouth did a small thing that wasn't quite a smile. "I'll be driving home alone."
I'd wondered. The blue sedan had been the only car at the cabin yesterday evening when I'd run the south section, and the deck had been quiet for two days running.
"Kyron."
"Drive safe," I said.
Her expression shifted slightly—a slight wince that was barely detectable. Then she nodded once and went back up the path to the cabin. I watched her go and didn't say anything else. There wasn't anything else to say that would have made it better.
I was at the outfitter by seven. Equipment check, schedule board, the first customer trip loaded and ready to go by 8:45.
A blue sedan passed on the road above the river at 9:15, heading out from the direction of the Alderman cabin.
I didn’t need to confirm who was driving.
I went and checked the dry bag fittings because the dry bag fittings always needed checking.
A week and a half passed the same way. Solo paddles after the last trip cleared, the same section, the same evening light. I ran it with the same steady stroke I always used. I told myself there was no reason to stop at the quiet bend.
I stopped there twice.
On the south bank, the honeysuckle was still climbing everything, scenting the whole channel with that heavy sweetness that got into the back of your throat. I sat in the canoe both times and looked at the bank and then paddled back to the outfitter.
Ross noticed. He had the sense not to say anything. Cade noticed too—I could tell by the way he found somewhere else to look. He’d been in approximately this situation himself not long ago. I didn’t bring it up. Neither did he.
I started going by the Alderman cabin every evening. I was running the south section and the cabin was on the south section. It was just part of the route. That was what I told myself, anyway.
The back deck was empty. The chairs were turned in the way they turned them when the cabin was closed between guests. The mug hooks were bare. The whole thing was quiet, waiting for the next vacationers.
I paddled past without stopping.
The deck was empty the next evening too. And the one after that.