"No. Current's tricky getting up there—there's a Class II chute about a quarter mile below it that's not worth running with customers who don't know what they're doing. I go up thereon my own sometimes. Evening runs, checking conditions." He paused. "The fireflies come up thick at that bend. I've never timed it against sunset, but it tracks with what you're describing."
Something was happening that I did not have time for. A loosening. A crack in the wall I'd built out of every conversation like this one I'd ever had. Three outfitters on this trip alone, but eleven more over the years, stretching back to undergrad. And none of them had gone like this.
He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't categorize. Not the face. Not the flicker and shift. Something steady and unhurried and completely without agenda—or with an agenda I didn't recognize because no one had ever had it before.
"I can take you up there," he said. "Tomorrow evening. I know the line through the chute, and I know the bend. You'd be in position by seven, which gives you thirty minutes before sunset this time of year."
There it was. The offer. The intrusion. The man deciding to put himself into my space.
Except he hadn't said it the way they usually said it. He hadn't leaned in, hadn't smiled, hadn't wrapped it in something personal. He'd said it like a logistics problem with a solution he happened to be.
"I can manage a Class II chute," I said, even though I wasn't sure I could.
"I know you probably can." He held my eyes. "But I know this stretch of river. You'd spend an hour finding the line on your own that I can put you on in fifteen minutes. That's an hour of daylight you'd want for setup."
He was right. I hated that he was right.
"What's your rate for a private guided trip?" I asked because I was a grad student and my field budget was a joke. This was the part where the number would make the decision for me.
"I'll figure something out."
"That's not a number."
"It's not." Something moved at the corner of his mouth—not a smile, but the architecture of one. "I'm Bishop. I own the place. I can set my own rates."
Bishop. The owner. Not a counter guy, not a seasonal guide—the man who built this operation, who knew the river well enough to correct my site selection from memory and describe substrate composition at a bend that wasn't even on his commercial maps.
I should have felt reassured. Instead, I felt the ground shifting under me in a way that had nothing to do with fieldwork.
"Tomorrow," I said. "Seven o'clock. I'll bring my own gear."
"I'd expect you to."
I turned toward the door. My face was warm, and it wasn't from the drive.
"Breanna," I said without turning around. "Breanna Ingalls."
"See you tomorrow, Breanna."
The way he said it—like he was already sure there'd be a tomorrow, and one after that, and one after that—made my hands tighten on the door frame.
I stood there a beat too long, waiting for an explanation he clearly wasn't going to give. Then I walked out into the late afternoon heat, screen door slapping behind me, and sat in my car for a full minute before I started the engine.
My hands were shaking. Not from nerves, but from the ground-tilting realization that for the first time in fourteen conversations, somebody had actually heard me.
And he was a problem. I could already tell.
