"Among other things."
"Among other things," June repeated. She picked up the coffee I'd set in front of her and pointed at me over the rim. "You never do anything your father would lose sleep over. This one could change that."
The door opened and Hale came back in, phone in his pocket, crossed to his stool, and picked up his coffee like he'd never left. He didn't look at me right away—just settled, patient, giving me the counter and the conversation without making anything of it.
That. That was the thing I couldn't account for, the thing that had been weighing on my mind since Monday. The way he gave me room. I'd spent twenty-three years in a town full of people who loved me and who filled every available space with that love, and Hale Nichols sat three feet away and left room. Somehow, that felt like more.
June looked at him, then back at me. Her expression said she'd clocked the whole thing in about two seconds.
She didn't say another word about it, which from June was its own kind of statement.
June left at 7:40 with her coffee and half her sandwich and a parting look that communicated several complete sentences without a single word. Mae went back to the kitchen and stayed there.
I refilled Hale's mug and he looked up. "Friends of yours?"
"June is. Mae is—Mae." I leaned on the counter.
He lifted the mug. "They care about you."
"They have opinions about me."
"Same thing, where they're standing." He looked at me steadily. "You've lived here your whole life."
"Born at the clinic in town. Never left for more than two weeks."
"You want to?"
I thought about that a moment before answering. "Sometimes I think I should want more than I do," I finally said. "But I know this place the way I know the river. I know where the depth is. I know where it shelves off." I paused. "Most people spend a long time looking for somewhere that feels like something. I already have it."
He was quiet for a moment. "That's not nothing."
"No," I said. "It isn't."
He left at eight, and I finished my shift. At 11:10, I was pulling off the mining road in my truck with my rod case in the back. Hewas already there, leaning against his tailgate, looking up at the ridge.
We walked the game trail without talking much, which was easy in the way that quiet with him had gotten easy faster than I'd expected. The willows gave way to open water, and the upper bend opened up ahead of us—wider than the lower stretch, shallower over the gravel, the cutthroats holding in the broken water behind the mid-channel rocks.
"There," I said, and pointed at the nearest seam.
He saw it immediately. That was something I'd started to notice—the way he read water. He didn't scan. He looked in the right place first, like he'd already calculated where the fish would be before he got there.
We spread out. He waded right, and I went left. For a while, there was just the river and the sound of line in the air and the comfort of fishing water you knew.
"How long has Rowan had PeakBound?" he called from across the channel.
"Twelve years, maybe. He left for a while and came back." I made a cast upstream and let it drift. "This whole valley is full of people who left and came back."
"And people who just came."
"Those too." I watched my fly. "You're the second new guide he's hired. The other one lasted a season."
"What happened to him?"
"He missed the city." I looked over at him. "Do you? Miss wherever you were?"
He considered it. "No," he said. "I don't miss the work. I miss thinking I knew what I was doing."
"You knew what you were doing," I said. "You just didn't know whattheywere doing."
