Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
O nce they were back at the cabin, Ava filled a mason jar with water and arranged her bouquet.
She moved the flowers her boss had sent and set the new ones in the center of the kitchen table.
When she did, the memory of her mother gazing out the window this morning came to mind.
Ava could have sworn her mom had been crying, but maybe she hadn’t.
If she had been upset about something, it hadn’t shown during their outing. Perhaps Ava had been mistaken.
“Oh, those look so pretty, Ava,” her mom said, coming into the room.
Her cheerful response solidified the idea that maybe she hadn’t been upset at all.
“They look even better here, where the sunlight filters through the window.” Ava turned the vase until the flowers were at the perfect angle for admiring and then took the old bouquet over to the trash can.
There was a knock at the door.
Eagerness slithered through Ava. “I’ll get it. ”
She opened the door to find Lucas in a pair of jeans and a pullover.
“It’s good to see you,” she said. Seeing him was like coming home to a big slice of steaming apple pie.
“Good to see you too,” he replied with the usual hesitancy lurking behind his gaze.
“Come on in.”
She led Lucas down the hallway and into the kitchen.
“Hi, Lucas,” her mother said on her way through the room with her bag of sewing.
“Hello, Mrs. Barnes. It’s great to see you. Sorry I ran off last time.”
She brushed it off good-naturedly. “Y’all have fun fishing. And I’ve still got the s’mores bagged up and another bottle of wine if you want to stay longer this time.”
“Thank you.”
Ava turned to Lucas and pursed her lips.
He eyed her with a curious expression. “What?”
“I think it was you who caught the biggest fish last time, wasn’t it?”
Lucas laughed. “I have no idea. How do you even remember?”
“Because the competition eats me alive.” She winked at him, widening his smile.
When she linked arms with him, he flinched just slightly, but then he relaxed and let her.
“Come with me to get the canoe. I’ll probably need your fancy footwork to open the shed latch again.”
Her mother waved her sewing. “I’ll be between the office sewing machine and the sofa if y’all need me. Just shout.”
Ava and Lucas went outside and rounded the house to the shed. He pried open the latch and tugged on the old wooden door.
“The canoe’s under that sheet back there.” Ava pointed to it. “Want to help me clear a path so we can drag it onto the grass?”
“Sure.”
Lucas moved a few paint cans out of the way and repositioned the old lawn mower. Ava assisted, scooting some boxes of tools to the side. When they both got to the boat, Lucas pulled off the sheet; the musty plume of dust made Ava cough.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “Wait in the grass, and I’ll get it.”
She stepped out of the shed as Lucas shimmied the wooden canoe to shimmy it through the opening. His biceps shone through his pullover. She didn’t remember those muscles on the skinny boy who’d fished with her in her youth.
Lucas strained as he made it out of the shed with the heavy boat, through the brush, lifting it over the walk and setting it onto the grass beside her. He clapped his hands on the thighs of his jeans and peered down at the boat.
Ava ducked back inside and grabbed the oars and the small anchor, filling her arms with other supplies. She carried out everything and dropped them into the canoe.
“It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen this thing,” he said. “Your dad let me come on one of your fishing trips here—remember? We were probably fourteen or so. We ate enough Oreos to feed an army.”
“I’d forgotten about that! I had a stomach ache from eating so many.”
Ava dared not tell him that her dad had pulled her aside after that day and told her that any man who could fish like Lucas and hold a conversation with him all afternoon would be husband material for his daughter.
In fact, it had been her father who’d shared in her disappointment when Lucas had moved away.
While they organized the supplies, she slipped into the memory of that day .
Ava had buried her head in her dad’s chest when she’d gotten home after watching Lucas drive away.
“Damn,” her dad had said under his breath.
Ava looked up at her dad through her tears, confused by his comment. “What?” she mumbled through her blubbering lips.
He shook his head, not telling her.
She pushed herself off his chest and looked into his eyes. “What is it, Dad?”
“Nothin’.”
But later he’d admitted that he’d always thought, one day, he’d “give her away to that boy.”
Could her father see them now? Did he know they’d been brought back together?
Ava went around to one end of the canoe and raised it while Lucas grabbed the other side. They carried the boat to the back of the house and set it on the shore.
“We just need the fishing rods,” she said.
They climbed the single step onto the deck. The rods and tackle box were still there against the house. Ava removed the paper from the unused fishing pole and discarded the wrapping inside. They each took a rod, and Lucas picked up the tackle box, then they headed down to the water’s edge.
“Want to take the front of the boat?” he asked as he shifted the canoe until the front half bobbed in the lake. The water lapped quietly around it. “That way, I can do the pushing to get us into the water.”
Ava placed her pole inside the vessel and made her way to the front, sitting on the small slat of lacquered wood.
She held onto the sides as the canoe rocked gently while Lucas put his force behind it.
He got in, and the boat wobbled with his movement, but the two of them knew just how to lean to straighten it out, their years of doing so evidently still muscle memory.
He picked up the oars and began paddling them into the center of the lake .
The air was cooler out on the water, under a canopy of brightly colored foliage. Birds sang in the trees, and the breeze blew just enough to let them know it was there. The calm water was so clear the mosquitofish and darters were visible, shooting around under the surface.
Lucas maneuvered the canoe to a shady spot under a tree and dropped the anchor. He reached for the tackle box and opened it, threading a spinnerbait onto her line.
“You cast first,” he said.
Ava put her thumb on top of the reel like her dad had taught her and gripped the end of the rod with her other hand. Then, she cast the line while Lucas rooted around in the box for another bait, eventually finding one and baiting his line.
“When was the last time you went fishing?” she asked.
He closed the box. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“I was the same until I got here. I got wrapped up in New York and city culture, and for a while I felt like I had some kind of insider secret for success that people out here didn’t know. But now I wonder if it’s the other way around.”
“We both did well for ourselves, though. We became successful people. Pretty good for two farm kids from rural Tennessee.”
“True. But at what cost?”
That shroud of contemplation fell upon him once more. Ava wanted to ask, but she’d promised not to.
“Would you change your life if you could do it over, knowing what you know now?” he asked.
She reeled in her line a little. “I don’t know. I’d say I wouldn’t have gotten onto the highway that day, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here right now, fishing.”
He looked at her, heaviness in his stare. “I’d change it all.”
His answer surprised her. “Really?”
“Yeah. ”
“What would you have changed first?”
“I’d have gone into farming and lived on the land and let hard work outweigh the course of success. I’d be somewhere else—away from everything.” He put air quotes around the word “success.”
That would mean that he wouldn’t be there fishing with her, so he’d gladly give that up to change his life.
Lucas had to know that. The reality of that set in.
She was chasing him, and he’d made it pretty clear by avoiding her that he’d never really wanted to be chased. He was just too kind to say so.
Her directive was to find him, but nothing more. Would that be because the directive was open-ended or because Lucas wouldn’t be receptive to her advances? She hadn’t set out to chase him, only to find him. But now, Ava couldn’t imagine not seeing him.
She was floundering. Her well-ordered world had been shaken by the accident, and—God’s voice or no voice—she was struggling to figure out what she was doing.
Sure, she felt at ease on the lake with Lucas, but was that because of some inner need to return to the familiarity of her childhood?
To protect her from the fact that her life was a mess after the accident?
While Lucas was dealing with something, at least he knew what he wanted instead of this. He’d prefer to be a farmer. What did she prefer to be? She didn’t know. And now she was pursuing him like some sort of schoolgirl, resting on old memories to keep their conversation afloat.
But she couldn’t deny the way he made her feel. Right or wrong, regressing to her childhood or not, Ava was enjoying getting to know this version of Lucas. She’d known everything about his childhood, and now, he was such a mystery to her.
“What are you thinking about?” He cut into the silence.
Holding her thoughts in wouldn’t do her any favors. It would be best to know where he stood. “How if you changed everything, you most likely wouldn’t be here with me right now.” She reeled in her line and recast it, her pulse thumping.
“Don’t you wonder, though, if somehow, we’d still be here—if it were meant to be? Even if our choices had been different?”
Her heart sang with his answer and relief flooded her. She wanted to throw her arms around him right then, but she knew better.
“That’s very unscientific of you, Dr. Phillips.”
He allowed a smile. “Yeah, well, I’m not the doctor you think I am.”
“Want to elaborate on that?”
He shook his head. “I’d rather not.”
“Fate is a nice thought, isn’t it?” Should she tell him about her near-death experience? Would she scare him off? Maybe she shouldn’t just yet …
A tug on her line distracted her. She pulled back and reeled, the line bending, and she hoped again that it was the bass her father had promised. When the fish came out of the water, she grabbed hold of it.
“You caught yourself a trout. It’s a nice size,” Lucas said.
She swallowed her disappointment. “The quality of the first catch determines our luck for the day—remember Dad used to tell us that?” She unhooked the fish and held it up to admire the bluish silver gills.
“He’s a great size. Looks like we’ll have a good day.
” Maybe a largemouth bass would be too many blessings to ask for in one day.
She tossed the trout back into the water and set her rod down so Lucas could take a turn to fish.
Lucas cast his line with ease, the bait dipping below the water. He reeled in the line until it was tight.
“Fishing always came naturally to you,” she said.
“When I’m out here, I feel like I belong. It’s difficult to explain.”
“I know what you mean. I always felt like that when we were together and when I was with my dad. I feel closer to him here. I think my mom does too.”
“How did your mom handle everything? Has she been okay?”
“You know, she quietly manages.”
“And you?”
Ava followed his line as it pulled with the movement of the water. “Whenever I had to face the loss of my dad head-on, I just plowed my way through work.”
Lucas slowly reeled in his line. Not catching anything, he pulled it up and cast it again.
“You’ve always been driven by work. I remember when we were kids you had big dreams of owning your own business. You talked about being the boss.”
She laughed. “I wanted to own my own business, but I had no idea what I planned to own. I just wanted to be independent and in charge, follow my drive.”
“There might be something to following your instincts.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dad was a second-generation farmer. He never loved that choice of career, which is why he sold the farm and took a job in North Carolina. When I got to the suburban schools in Charlotte, I began to follow all the paths that people thought I should. I got good grades, and people told me how smart I was, how I had the chops to go to an incredible university, how I was one of the elite few …”
“That’s good, right?”
“Except the love of the land must have skipped a generation, and I just wanted to be a farmer.”
The water rippled under the boat, rocking them gently.
“It felt as if all the teachers around me were saying, ‘Thank goodness we got him to reach his potential.’ But what about what I wanted? I lost that, trying to do the right thing. Yeah, I can navigate the academic rigors of medical school, but what good is it when my heart’s not in it?
” He pulled the line up and cast once more.
“I think their hearts were in the right place. My teachers wanted to do what was best. But listening to them was catastrophic for me.”
“ Catastrophic ? How so?”
He shook his head. “We said we weren’t talking about it, right?”
“We’re skating dangerously close.”
What had happened to him?
Ava leaned toward him, putting herself right in his view. “If you ever want to tell me what happened, I won’t judge you. Believe me, I’ve got things going on I haven’t told you either.”
He didn’t answer.
Maybe she’d never know what had happened to Lucas. But what Ava did know was that she felt whole in his presence—as if she’d found a piece of herself she’d almost lost. In time, maybe he’d trust her enough to confide in her. She could only hope.