She clicked PLAY, reached for her steaming mug of cocoa, and settled back to watch the unedited footage.
The first scene came to life on her monitor as an image of a younger Rachel Hart filled the screen. Rachel had turned the camera on herself somehow. In her late forties, she was striking, her gray eyes sharp, strands of loose blonde hair blowing across her face in a breeze. She stood in front of a wood-sided building, cheeks and the tip of her nose pinked from cold.
The sign above the door readHOOK ANDGAFFE. She pointed up at the sign.
“Looks like Eden and I are the first to arrive. The nine of us are gathering here at this pub and restaurant in downtown Port Ferris just across from Ferris Bay. Eden’s handling the camera for me.” She smiled and gave two thumbs-up. “Great job, kiddo.”
The image jiggled as the camera girl laughed. It made Angie smile, this concept of a mother and daughter team, this adventure they’d embarked on, those happy hours they were enjoying before tragedy would strike. Angie’s thoughts darted to her own adoptive mother. It had been a while since she’d visited Miriam Pallorino in the home. She should go with her dad. She should catch up on a few family things. Filing the thoughts away, Angie refocused on the footage.
Rachel held a contour map up to the camera and pointed to a twisting blue line that ran through the mountains. “The Nahamish is here, this blue line. A static feature on this map, a constant, yet the very definition of a river is change. If you step into the waters of the Nahamish today, it’s not the same water as yesterday, and the water flowing through the river will be different tomorrow. The water changes by the second, yet it remains the same river. Like a woman. She bears a constant identity throughout her life, yet her very nature, her function, is one of change. She’s a toddler before she becomes a young girl, then a teen, like my Eden here. She’s sister, aunt, and friend. She matures into a siren to attract a mate. She becomes mother, menopausal broad, divorcée, widow, a senior, the crone. But always, inside, she’s the same girl carried along the river of life. In the name of that metaphor, we nine women, all at different points in our own river, will gather here today at the Hook and Gaffe.” She grinned and pointed at the sign again.
“Over the next seven days as we drift the Nahamish, we may clash or bond, but one thing we all bring to this trip is a common love and understanding for fly-fishing and the outdoors.”
Angie sipped her hot drink, thinking the idea was cool but way too New Agey for her. She reminded herself it was raw footage, unedited. But in spite of herself, it made her think about her own place in that life stream. And Maddocks. And the choices she now faced.
The camera panned across the parking lot to the attached motel, then across the street to show a row of small stores snugged along a stretch of what Angie presumed was Ferris Bay. The footage ended on an image of the Mariner’s Diner directly across from the hotel.
Angie hit PLAY on the next file.
The interior of the Hook and Gaffe came alive on her screen. The footage was grainy, the color off, and the images were scratched with shapes that flickered across her monitor like floaters in her vision. It was reminiscent of an old film reel.
The restaurant interior was done in deep paneling, low lighting. A burnished metal-topped bar counter jutted out, dividing the restaurant from a more informal pub section that housed a pool table and several TV screens. The pub side was packed, mostly with men in outdoor work gear and logging-style jackets. An odd assortment of hunting, fishing, and sports memorabilia adorned the walls, including hockey sticks, a lacrosse net, fishing rods, crab pots, faded buoys, and glass fishing floats. An ice hockey game played across the television screens.
The camera panned back to the restaurant section and zeroed in on two women seated at a wooden table, bottles of ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, and beer in front of them. Angie leaned forward as she recognized the faces of Trish Shattuck and Willow McDonnell. Trish’s hair had not yet turned gray. Willow was even more attractive around the age of forty than she was now.
“So, ladies”—Rachel’s voice—“in your opinion, what’s the most significant difference between male and female anglers?”
Trish raised her beer bottle to the camera. “For one thing, women don’t lie about size!” She laughed and took a long, deep swallow of her beer.
“No way,” countered Willow. “It’s the reaction you get from sales clerks in angling stores.” She faced the camera. “When a woman peruses the tackle section, the clerks are nowhere to be found. It’s like you’re invisible. But as soon as you leave the rod and reel section and cross some unseen line into the clothing department, bam, you materialize, and the clerk rushes over to you.”
“Yeah, you’re suddenly a viable customer,” said Trish. “That never happens to guys.” She lowered her voice and drew out her words theatrically. “Clerks handle a male in the tackle section with gravitas.” She lifted her bottle and took another swallow.
Willow laughed, showing bright-white teeth.
“So it’s still a man’s sport, a man’s world out on the river?” Rachel said.
“Funny thing that,” Trish said, pointing the neck of her beer bottle toward the camera like a wagging finger. “Since it was a female, a nun, who supposedly wrote the first ‘Treatise of Fishing with an Angle’ in the fourteen hundreds.”
“Who was this nun?” Rachel said.
“Dame Juliana Berners. A prioress,” Trish said. “That woman could show the men a thing or two with her angle.”
Willow leaned forward, eyes alight with drink and mirth. She lowered her voice in mock conspiracy with the camera. “Truth is, I’d be worried if I was a man on the river with all of us women around.”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
“Because we’re of a certain age,” she whispered. “Nothing quite like hot flashes, lack of sleep, food cravings, bloat, and mood swings to turn a woman murderous.” Her face turned serious, and she crossed her arms, sitting back as their server arrived and set more bottles of beer on the table.
When the server left, Willow said to the camera, “In honesty, it’s why I still fish. Nothing calms me like the river. Nothing takes my mind off things like being silent, still, watching the insects, trying to read the fish, the sky, the water, listening to wind in trees.”
“Trish,” Rachel said from behind her camera. “Why do you fish?”
“I used to drink,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I swallowed all manner of drugs. I figured my guy friends thought I was cool, that they admired my stamina, my ability to put them all under the table.” She paused. Her face changed. “It almost cost me my life one day.” She glanced at Willow. “But I got a second chance. I met someone who reminded me of my fly-fishing roots, my love of nature, and what was real. And how to be true to myself—true to my sexual orientation especially. I’ve never looked back since, only upriver.”
Eden came suddenly into camera view. She wore a light down jacket and a woolen hat with a small Kinabulu logo on the side. Her long hair hung in two thick braids over her shoulders. She took a seat at the table across from Trish and Willow. The server set a cola and a plate of nachos in front of her.
“Why do you fish, Eden?” Willow said.
