I tell her everything. The river, the way he moves and talks and doesn't talk, the private bend, his hand on mine on the rod, the porch last night and what happened after. She doesn't interrupt once, which is not like her. When I finish there's a long pause.
"Okay," she says. "Can I say something that's going to be annoying?"
"Don’t you always?"
I hear her chuckle on the other end of the line before her voice goes serious. "You're describing a man who has shownyou exactly who he is. No mixed signals. No contradictions. No version of him that doesn't line up with another version." A pause. "How is that like Craig?"
"The timeline," I say. "The speed of it. I told a man I barely know that I wanted to stay and then I slept with him. That's not— I don't do things like that."
"Okay but you did do that. And the question I'm asking is: were you wrong to? Notwas the timeline fast,but were you wrong abouthim?"
I open my mouth. Close it. I don’t know what to say.
"Did you miss signs?" she says, more quietly. "With him?"
I think about Silas on the porch with two cups of coffee, not assuming, just offering. The way he fixed my grip and stepped back. The way he said “okay”this morning without argument even though I saw something tighten in his face when I said “mistake”.
"No," I say. "I didn't miss anything."
"Then your system isn't broken," Dani says. "You're just terrified of what it looks like when it's working."
I stare at the river out the window.
"That doesn't make it less fast," I say. But I hear my own voice and it sounds like someone arguing a case they've already stopped believing in.
"Nobody's asking you to get married," she says. "But you drove six hundred kilometres to get away from your life and you found something that feels real and your response was to panic and leave." A pause. "That's not wisdom. That's just running. Again."
After I hang up I sit there for a long time.
I think about what Silas said on my second day, the most personal thing he'd said to that point:the river's patient.At the time I thought it was about fishing. I'm starting to think it was about something else entirely.
six
Silas
Ifishalone.
After pacing for a while, Koda sits on the bank and watches the water like she's helping. The private bend is unchanged with current splitting at the boulder, sun on the flat rock. All the same. Feels like a different place.
On the first day I tell myself this is fine. I have been alone on this river for years and I was fine. The river was enough. The silence was enough. I am a man who is well suited to solitude and that is not a flaw, it is just a fact.
On the second day, I stop telling myself that.
Here's what's true: she said that our sex was a mistake, a rebound. I let her leave and I told myself that was the right thing to do. I was respecting her decision, not pushing, giving her room. That's what I do. I am steady. I am patient. I don't chase.
I stay on the river and I let people make their choices. Life is easier that way.
I stand in the current until the water is around my thighs and I let myself ask the question I've been refusing to ask: was that peace? Or was it just easier than being the one who goes after something?
Because here's what I know about Peyton Archer. She is not confused. She is scared. There is a difference and she knows the difference and she made the safe call instead of the right one and she is sitting in that hotel room right now and she knows it.
And I am standing in this river doing the thing I always do.
The river keeps flowing. I watch it. I think about twenty years of staying put, of being the steady thing, of being patient past the point where patience serves anyone.
I get out of the water before I can talk myself out of it.
I stand on the bank and let the river run off my waders and I look at the bend where she caught her first fish four days ago. Screamed like she'd been stung. I nearly smiled. The nearest I'd come to it in a long time, and I hadn't let it land on my face because she was already watching me too carefully.
