Mia swung open the door, then hurried to the porch railing to lean far over and call out, “Hey, I’m not running off with the silver!”
Belle laughed as she walked along the stone path and up the steps, her hands tucked into her jean jacket. “Better not be. I’m planning on keeping that silver.” She reached the top of the stairs and added, “And the china and the books and anything else that belonged to my grandmother.”
“Really? I’m glad. Good for you. It’s irreplaceable, no matter what the monetary value.”
“I know it. And thanks to you I had a second chance to think it over. Though,” she said, rubbing her arm, “last night I promised to hand over Kate’s diary to the historical society. There are some important comments in there about the times and topography.”
Mia smiled to herself. So many times over the summer she’d been tempted to at least show Nada the diaries. It was Belle’s place to make the grand gesture.
“Nada must be over the moon!”
Belle chortled. “She is. She also caught me after one too many beers.”
“What about the fishing diaries? Are you donating those, too?”
Belle walked to the edge of the porch and looked out across the cove. A shaft of light revealed every line on her weathered face as she squinted. Her red hair shone like a sunset and her dark eyes, the Watkins eyes, were as dark a brown as the pool’s bottom. Mia thought she never saw her more beautiful.
“I don’t know what I’ll do with them,” Belle confided. “I only know I can’t let them go.” She turned to look at Mia, her eyes questioning.
Mia tilted her head. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“Figured you might. We have that in common. Our love for Kate Watkins. Genes have no claim on love.”
Mia closed her eyes and said nothing for a moment. She just wanted to absorb the compliment, to feel this bond, like sisters.
Belle leaned back to rest against the porch railing. Her long arms held on to the wood at her sides.
“Hey, I came for another reason entirely. Sheriff Rhodes came to call on me the other day. Now that the investigation is over and the bones interred, he was free to give me the few items they found with DeLancey’s remains. There was his signet ring,” she said, and she held out her hand.
Mia took the hand and brought it closer to her eyes. On Belle’s middle finger was a large gold ring with the family crest engraved into the circular plate. Mia recognized the handsome dragon with its foreclaws raised and the four stars, one on each corner of a shield. It was the same crest she saw embossed on DeLancey’s letterhead. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is, isn’t it? I don’t wear much jewelry, but I’ll wear this. There’s one more thing,” Belle said, and she dug into her bag. She pulled out a small box wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a bright red ribbon. “There’s no way I can ever thank you for what you’ve done for me and for my grandmother. I know I gave you a hard time about digging in the mud, but as it turned out, that’s exactly what you needed to do. Literally!”
They laughed quietly, thinking how life could sometimes be filled with irony.
Belle sighed. “You know, I only wish my mother were alive to witness all this. She’d be basking in her glory, that’s for damn sure. I can just see her strolling through town with her head held high.” Belle looked up and Mia was surprised to see Belle’s eyes moist with tears. “If she were here, she’d thank you, too.”
“I didn’t do it for thanks. It’s I who should thank you.”
“Let’s not get into that or we’ll be thanking each other till the spring thaw. Here,” she said, and without ceremony handed the box to Mia.
“What’s this?”
“Open it and find out.”
Mia tugged at the red ribbon and it slipped loose. She tore the tape from the tissue, then pulled the wrapping back and opened the box. A gold locket lay nestled in a wad of jeweler’s cotton. Her heart leaped to her throat because she knew instantly what it was. With shaky fingers she removed the locket from the box and let it slide into her palm. The locket was the size of a half dollar and made of burnished, antique gold. It hung from a chunky chain of the same rosy hue. The metal was dented in spots but it only added to the locket’s charm.
“They found it clutched in his hand.”
“Oh, that’s so sad. Can’t you just see it? DeLancey fighting through the storm, clutching this locket, desperately trying to make it back to Kate. And she sitting here, alone, feeling such guilt. My God, Belle, she died thinking she should have saved his life. That thought haunted her. If only he could have made it. If only she could have found out the truth before she died.”
Belle shrugged. “If only…” Then she looked at Mia. “In the end the only life we can save is our own.”
Mia pressed her lips together. “Belle, are you sure you want me to have this? It doesn’t seem right.”
Belle nodded her head, then cleared her throat. “I thought you should have something that was hers. But if you’re going to get all weepy about it I’m taking it back.”
Mia’s laugh ended in a hiccup. She closed her hands around the locket and tried to think of something that could even touch the depth of what she was feeling at that moment. She’d heard so many platitudes over the past year when she was battling cancer that she’d thought simply masked people’s aversion to sickness and death. She knew now she was wrong. There was a reason cultures created pat phrases for moments of intense emotion. With deepest sympathy. Congratulations. I’m sorry. Thousands of years of universal emotions were encapsulated into a few select words of meaning because no string of creative, clever, brilliant language could ever express the depth of feeling.
“Thank you,” Mia said softly.
“You’re welcome,” Belle replied.
Belle took the locket, then stood behind Mia and fastened the chain around her neck. Mia turned to face her, settling the locket on her chest between her breast and scar. They hugged as women do when emotions are so high that no words, not even pat phrases, are enough. When Mia released Belle, she turned toward the cabin and delivered a grandiose wave.
“She’s all yours now. I hope she’s as good to you as she was to me.”
“It’ll always be here for you. I’m not going to rent it. I thought I’d stay here for a while. See how I like it. I may be more like my grandmother than you know!”
Mia smiled and looked to where water cascaded from white rocks into a deep pool. The mist rose from the waters, curling like smoke, and from somewhere they could hear the rat-a-tat-tat of a woodpecker seeking a meal. It was a sight Mia had seen and painted every day of the summer. She would, she realized, have to seek out a new source of inspiration now.
Belle looked at her, as though reading her thoughts. “That river has flowed through this cove for thousands of years. It’s not going anywhere. When you’re done doing whatever it is you have to do down in Charleston, you just follow the river home.”
Mia nodded her head. “I just may do that.”
“Do you have everything you need for the trip? A full tank of gas? Directions? I’ve got bottles of water in my car you can have.”
“Hey, thanks, but I can take care of myself now.”
“I expect you can.” Belle looked at her in her brown fishing shirt and pants. “You look real natural in those clothes now. They fit you well.”
“They do, don’t they?” she replied with a smug smile. That compliment had been hard won from a tough teacher.
“How’s the rod and reel treating you?”
“Real good,” she replied. Belle had sold her the Temple Fork Casting for Recovery rod she’d been using all summer. They both knew a fly fisher grew attached to her rods, and Mia had a world of experience attached to that one. “In fact,” she said, turning toward the stairs, “I thought I’d take it out one last time before I go.”
Belle twisted her lips in a smirk and, putting her hands on the railing, she leaned over and called out to Mia’s back, �
�I reckon you’re going to meet Stuart?”
Mia hauled her fly rod and reel out from the sedan, careful of the delicate tip. She looked up with a sly smile. “Yep.”
“He’s a good man,” Belle replied. “Even if he is the competition.”
Mia closed the car door and faced Belle with an ear-to-ear grin on her face. “Honey, you’re the granddaughter of Kate Watkins in Watkins Mill. You don’t have any competition!”
She waved, then turned and began walking the path that led past the deep pool. As was her habit, she took a quick scan of the depths. She thought she saw a sliver of movement but she wasn’t sure. That wily trout. Of all the fish she caught, she knew she’d remember the one she didn’t catch the most.
“Hey,” Belle called out from the porch. “You ever catch that big trout?”
Mia shook her head, chuckling softly to herself, then turned once more toward the cabin. Her smile wavered. Belle was standing on the porch, tall and lean, her long braid falling over her shoulder. She stood with a proprietary air and, for a flash, Mia thought she could be Kate Watkins.
Mia walked the well-worn path along the river, deeper into the backcountry. The forest swallowed her as she hiked steadily through a medley of trees to where the air cooled and the dew was wet on the vegetation. She was surrounded by surreal color and she kept her head tilted toward the trees, mesmerized by the foliage. Underfoot she heard the crunch of fallen leaves that created a new layer of compost on the forest floor. The air smelled of ripeness and rot, sweet and pungent, that made her think of apples and pumpkins. Resident birds flitted in a thicket of mountain laurel and plump, chatty squirrels were in a frenzy of gathering for the long winter ahead.
She came to where the rhododendron clustered, feeling as she always did at this point that something wonderful was just around the bend. She walked a little farther and the vista opened up to reveal a grassy knoll, golden now, overlooking a wide curve in the water. Standing on the banks, like the first time she saw him, was Stuart MacDougal.
His tall form stood relaxed on the river’s bank, dressed in his tans and browns. He wore his fishing hat and Mia could just make out bits of vivid yellow, dark brown, and bright orange of the dry flies looking like fallen leaves hooked along the band. He cast smooth and tight loops over the water, the line stretching farther with each stroke, then presented his fly gently to the trout holding in the pocket.
Her mind drifted back to the night before when he’d held her in his arms. They didn’t talk. They had already said their goodbyes. When he rose above her and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders she thought of the mountains that he loved and called home and the rivers that laced their sloping sides like tears. She drew him closer, feeling lost and eager to bury herself in the granite and stone and firs, drowning in the streams.
From the ridge, Stuart had spotted her and was waving her over. Mia lifted her arm in a high arc, then came out from the woods and felt the warm afternoon sun on her cheeks. She stood by Stuart’s side at the river’s bank and spotted some big browns cruising the shallows. Their bright red spots stood out against the pebbly bottom.
“What are you fishing?” she asked, opening up her packet of flies. “A Booby Nymph,” he replied, straight-faced.
Mia chuckled at their private joke and pulled out a tiny, brightly colored fly and held it up.
“Or a number twelve Adams,” he amended.
“Me, too.”
He chortled at her answer, then held out his hand. “Want me to tie it?”
“I can do it.”
“Yeah, sure. But I don’t think the trout will wait that long.”
“You go on, then,” she replied with a stubborn jutting of her chin.
“Yes ma’am,” he replied, backing off and heading downstream.
Her fingers moved with dexterity as she tied the minuscule fly to the thin tippet at the end of her line. One of her goals this summer was to become an independent angler. The least of it was being able to tie her own knots. She brought the line to her mouth, feeling the slender plastic thread slide between her lips as she moistened it, then slowly tightened the knot. Done. She looked up to see Stuart watching her. He touched the rim of his hat in homage. Their eyes met, then he turned his head away.
Mia felt a surge of emotion as she looked out over the water, assessing the river and her mood. She felt a calm wash over her, determining her course. Slowly she moved upstream, her felt-soled boots sliding over the slippery pebbles as she made her way to the middle of the stream. When she reached the center she stopped and felt the gravel shift and settle in the silt beneath her feet. Lifting her chin, she took a good look around.
On one side the current ran quick and strong in brilliant, shallow water. On the other side dense shrubs that hung over the edge of the bank provided cover where fish could hide and feel safe. She remembered back to when she was sick and thought she might die. It was like standing in the middle of a river, wondering which bank she needed to prepare for. On one side life moved on. On the other, all was stillness. She had felt so alone and afraid, not knowing to which bank she would drift.
Now she was standing knee deep but steady in the river, facing the current head-on, her rod at the ready.
Mia cast her line far out to the fast, moving water. The line unfurled slowly, moving like liquid on wind to present her fly. Her breath held as she watched a trout rise then sip her fly down. Instantly she felt the electric current of life travel up the filament to the rod directly to her heart.
It was not a large fish; there wasn’t a great struggle. Mia played her gently to the net. She bent to meet the fish at the river’s surface and held the trout with hands as cold as the water, crooning assurances as she removed the tiny hook. Dark eyes stared back as the brookie went still in her hands.
Mia’s head filled with the voice of the river, pulsing loud in her ears as she felt the timeless connection with the fish, the water, and all living things. Opening her hands the fish remained still in the water, her spots shiny against the gravel. Then in a flash, she was gone.
Mia rose slowly and looked out at the river that rolled on through time. She was going to make it, she knew that now. She was a real fly fisher. She was a survivor.
She turned and headed back toward Stuart in the deeper water of the pocket. He was aware of her beside him but he didn’t speak. The wind gusted, rippling the water and showering them with colored leaves like confetti. They set their casts out over the water and together slipped into a four-count rhythm. Side by side they moved in tandem. Their lines whispered through the air and their flies danced on the rushing stream. With each cast she felt her worry of leaving flow from her heart down the thin line to disappear into the river.
It was time. Quietly, in the silence Mia had come to cherish between them, she drew in her line and unhurriedly walked away over the striated rocks and through the current, leaving Stuart alone in their private space. He paused, eyes on the river. Then, with an upswing, he cast forward again.
Before leaving the river, she bent to dip her hand into the cool waters.
“Remember me,” she murmured, sending her spirit to join the infinite flow of death and rebirth, of beginnings and endings, into the current. Mia lifted her face to the final moments of this perfect day, welcoming the last rays of light.
*www.MarkNepo.com
Time Is a River Page 35