“How’s the old skunk-killer doing today?” Margie’s voice was high-pitched and cajoling as she opened the passenger side door and laid her hands to each side of the dog’s face and scratched and petted him vigorously. His tail whacked against the seat faster as he extended his head and licked his pink and purple tongue across Margie’s face. She indulged him a moment, then pulled her face out of his range and wiped her face on her sleeve.
“I’m touched, Stink. But believe it or not, I’ve already had a bath today.”
Sandy handed her the greasy paper napkin containing the bacon. “Here, give him this. Ought to keep him off you for a while.”
“Look what your mother brought you, you old thing,” Margie cooed as she fed him the strips of bacon, which he gulped down instantly, hardly chewing at all. She dug in her purse for a wet wipe and cleaned her hands and face. “I’ll ride with you, okay?” she said. “We can keep yakking.”
Sandy would have liked nothing more. While Stink’s eyes followed Margie, she stepped to her minivan, retrieved her waders from the back, and tossed them into the bed of Sandy’s truck. Margie Callander was no angler. Fishing was not a passion, but rather something to do, only on rare occasions and only with Sandy, as an excuse to get away from it all for the day. A sort of girls’ day out. About the only sort of girls’ day out she could have with a woman like Sandy Holston. Margie had her own waders because, as she said, she had to have “something to fit over this ass of mine.” Beyond that, she used Sandy’s gear and didn’t care one lick whether she caught a fish or not. When Vernon came for Sandy, it was Margie who was with her, Margie who had stuck by her, Margie who had actually taken a shot at Vernon with the little pistol she carried in her purse. It was into Margie’s arms that Sandy had collapsed when it was over and Vernon’s body was drifting downstream. Other than Keefe, Margie was the only other person Sandy would fish with.
Stink looked back and forth at Sandy and Margie, panting happily between them in the truck cab.
“Okay to leave my van here?” Margie asked.
“I’d think so,” Sandy said.
“Suppose we’ll have to trust to their Christian charity, eh?”
Both women grinned as Sandy pulled the truck out of the lot and headed south.
“So,” Margie said, “I’ve been blabbing away about my life all morning so far. What’s up with you and yours? How’s James these days?”
“Oh, he’s fine.” A rote response, but Sandy paused involuntarily before saying it, and now she could feel her jaw muscles tense, could feel her fingers clutch more tightly around the steering wheel. She knew, at least in part, that this was why she had invited Margie to go fishing today, that this was the question she hoped Margie would ask. A simple question with a difficult answer that she didn’t quite know how to begin to give. But she knew Margie would be the one to tease the first thread loose from the knot.
Margie turned toward Sandy and leaned her back against the cab door. Her hand rested on Stink’s back, scratching at his spine. A glint shone in her eye and an irrepressible grin spread over her face. “Uh-hunh. Hell, girl, the dog didn’t even believe that one. Now spill it. What gives?”
“Really, he’s fine, Margie.” Sandy stumbled over her tongue, trying to speak and not speak at the same time. “It’s just that, well . . .”
“I’m still sitting here waiting, and that chick is still pecking pretty hard at the shell. Come on, honey. Let it out.”
Sandy pursed her lips, inhaled, and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “It’s probably nothing, but, it’s just that . . .”
“Keep going.”
Sandy spoke in a halting, tentative voice, groping cautiously, slowly through her concerns as the truck followed its course along the old river road, up around Willard Lake, and down the county access road to the gate on the fire road that followed the headwaters up to Keefe’s bungalow. She tried to play it down, admitting she had precious little evidence on which to found her fears. One minor mental slip about her gate key and a couple of faulty trout flies hardly amounted to proof of developing dementia. And yet, it was out of keeping. Keefe was focused, thought carefully about what he was going to say before he said it, and his flies were always tied with such precision and expertise. Working in a nursing home, she’d obviously become quite familiar with the various signs and symptoms of dementia, but then again, she wasn’t a specialist, just an LPN, and residents in the home with serious forms of dementia were housed in another wing of the facility, one in which she’d never worked. Keefe was normally a withdrawn, introspective man, and even an expert would have found it difficult to catch signs of aberrant behavior. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that on that day she’d met up with Keefe in the clearing, he’d been lost, unable to remember the way back to the bungalow. That he’d been sitting there, waiting, confused, hoping she’d come along to guide him home.
When they turned into the entrance of the fire road, Sandy stopped the truck and got out to open the gate. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing. I’m probably just overthinking it all.” Sandy stood by the open door of the truck, lightly shaking the ring of keys in her hand.
“Maybe. This stuff is tricky, you know. So, what do you want from me? A second opinion?” Margie leaned forward in the seat and looked past Stink as she spoke.
“I guess so.” Sandy stepped around the open truck door and started toward the gate. “What I really want is for you to tell me I’m full of shit and to stop fretting about nothing.”
Margie leaned her face out the open window on her side of the truck cab. “I can do that for you right now, without further investigation.”
Sandy worked her key into the rusted padlock that fastened the link of heavy chain holding the gate closed. As was often the case, she struggled with the old lock, inching her key back and forth, seeking the right spot where the key would catch with the corroded tumblers.
“You sure you’ve got the right key for that lock?” Margie’s head leaned all the way out her window, a wicked grin on her face.
Sandy scowled good-naturedly over her shoulder at her friend. “There’s a trick to it. Gotta catch it just so. There,” she said, as the lock finally gave way and she walked the gate open. Sandy moved her truck through the open gate, got out to relock the gate, and returned to the truck cab.
“All right,” Margie said. “Let’s go see what your aging boyfriend is up to.” She lifted her hand from Stink’s back and reached to Sandy’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. “I’m sure it’s nothing, honey,” she said. “Really, now that I think of it, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you’d think too much about such things. Think about it. You spend almost all your time with the elderly, so to speak. James, not that he’s really elderly, bless his heart. Your residents at the nursing home. And let’s not forget about this old guy right here.” Margie patted the top of Stink’s head, causing his tail to slap back and forth between the two women beside him. “I think I may be the only person you know who’s actually your own age.”
As was his wont, when they arrived at the bungalow and let him out of the truck, Stink walked around to the front of the cottage, hiked his leg on the bottom step, then walked up the remaining steps to wait on the front porch. Keefe was fishing in the wide, gentle pool across the small clearing in front of the bungalow, but Stink didn’t appear to have seen him. Neither did Sandy and Margie, until they retrieved their gear from the bed of Sandy’s truck and followed Stink around to the front of the house. When she saw him, Margie froze in place, her arms limp at her side, and her mouth dropped open slightly. Sandy paused, ran her fingers over her forehead, and chuckled softly, before moving in beside Margie and dropping their gear to the ground.
Keefe stood in the middle of the pool, fly rod in his right hand, plying the seam of the current with his usual