Epilogue
Josie
ONE YEAR LATER
There is a bite in the air this morning, the first cool breath of fall, and Lake Mercury is flat as glass while Trent noses the Lucky Penny out of Half-Moon Cove in the gray light before the derby.
Our derby. The one we're defending, thank you very much.
The Golden Gill has spent the year on the cottage mantel, next to a framed photo of Grandpa holding up a bass and grinning his terrible-joke grin.
My drafting desk sits under the front window with the lake view, because it turns out clients don't care where you live, and it also turns out a town this size can keep one graphic designer very busy.
The fishing camp logo came out great. So did the new Mercury Slice menus.
Dani's rebrand is next; she has opinions.
I'm double-checking the tackle box when the diamond on my left hand catches the first gold light coming over the tree line.
It throws a small bright arc across the water.
I stop to look at it.
I can't help it. I've been doing this about forty times a day since June, when Trent took me out to Grandpa's dock at sunset, handed me a rod, and told me he'd snagged something earlier and needed me to reel it in.
I cranked in a little red-and-white bobber with a velvet box tied beneath it, dripping lake water, and by the time I got it open he was down on one knee on the worn boards where Gus and my grandmother used to dance.
He'd clearly prepared a whole speech. He got two words into it.
"Josie-girl," he said, and his voice broke, and the man who narrates everything couldn't say anything at all.
So, I helped. "Are you fishing for keeps, Trent?"
"For keeps," he managed. "Forever. Marry me."
And really? How can a girl say no to an offer like that?
The wedding will be in a couple of months.
Mikki's catering. Rayna's a bridesmaid, Dani's a bridesmaid, Aileen is running the seating chart with scientific rigor, and Chrissy is threatening a bachelorette kayak race.
Liam and Tommy Brandt have petitioned to cater the fish fry, "pending derby results. "
"You're looking at it again," Trent says from the wheel.
"I can't stop."
"Good." He cuts the motor and lets us drift off the point, in Gus's spot, and comes to sit beside me on the bench.
His arm settles around me, and my cheek finds his heart, beating steady and sure now.
Out past the cove, boats are gathering at the marina, and the bullhorn crackles, and the whole loud, bright town is waking up for the best day of the end of summer.
"Big field this year," he says. "Liam's been training the kid all year. Joel and Ace formed some kind of alliance. Forrest is fishing with Aileen, which is basically cheating, because she’s a fish expert."
"Are you nervous, Trent?"
"With you by my side?" he says, pressing a kiss to my hair. "No way. We've got Gus's boat, Gus's lure, and Gus's granddaughter. We're the luckiest team on this lake."
I tip my face up and kiss him in the golden morning light, with no one watching but the loons, and the Lucky Penny rocks us gently beneath the rising sun.
He's right, of course.
But it's got nothing to do with the fish.
Thank you for reading Fishing for Keeps!