I fix the grip. I step back. I keep my face arranged into nothing. I can't let her know how she affects me.
Koda comes back and sits between us on the bank, which she has never done with a client before. I don't look at Peyton. I watch the line.
By noon she's losing fewer flies. She still puts too much force into the cast but she's reading the water better now. I showed her where the current breaks along the far bank and she's been placing the line there for an hour, consistently, making the adjustment without being reminded.
People who can take one piece of information and actually use it are the ones who eventually get it.
We eat lunch on the bank. I brought sandwiches and she looks at hers for a moment like she might ask about it, then takes a bite without asking.
"These are good," she says.
I nod.
Koda positions herself exactly between us, and puts her chin on Peyton's knee. It isn't a request. It's just a fact. Peyton looks down at her for a moment and then sets her hand on Koda's back without making anything of it.
She sits eating and looking at the river. The first quiet I've seen from her that isn't the quiet of someone actively not saying something. Just quiet.
Koda doesn't move from her knee as she falls asleep.
The river does this. Not to everyone, of course, and not fast. But sometimes you can watch it happen.
three
Peyton
Finally,Icatchafish.
It's not a big fish. But when the line goes taut I feel it before I understand what it is, and I make a sound that is not entirely dignified.
"Rod up," he says, already moving toward me through the current.
I hold the rod up. I reel. I do the specific sequence of things he has explained to me on three consecutive mornings and the fish comes in and he nets it. I stand there, feeling like I have won something enormous. The feeling is completely out of proportion to the event and I don't care.
I look over at him.
The gruff fisherman is actually smiling. A little, which is huge for him.
"Release?" I ask.
"Up to you."
I don’t want to stop this fish from living its best life after the joy it just gave me. So, I release it. Watch it catch the current and disappear. Then I laugh.
“I did it,” I say more to myself than to him.
“You did,” he agrees.
We take a breath on a big, flat rock overlooking the river that has just the right mix of shade and sun. Before I can decide to keep my mouth shut, I tell him about Craig.
Not the clean version I've been giving people — the righteous one where I was wronged and he was awful and I am holding up fine,thank you. The real version.
"Three years together. Engaged for one. I planned every detail of the wedding — venue, catering, florals, the day-of timeline. I'm genuinely good at that kind of thing. Planning, logistics, execution." I look at my hands. "And I missed things. I missed two years of things. And I can't figure out if I missed them because I loved him, or because I'd already invested so much in the plan that I didn't want to audit the foundation."
He's quiet for a moment. Looking at the water.
"Which one bothers you more?”
"The second one," I say. "Because it means I saw things and chose not to see them. Which means my read on my own situation was wrong for two years. Which means—" I stop and take a breath before I start to cry. "I thought I was good at knowing what was real. I built my whole professional life on it. And I was wrong about him for two years, which means I don't know what to trust anymore. Including myself."
