Page 2 of Mountain Man's Honeysuckle Darling
“Now you’re on the bank.”
She did smile then, real and quick, and I looked at the honeysuckle so I’d have somewhere else to put my eyes.
She asked about the river, and I told her. Not the customer version or the liability-conscious guided trip rundown, but the actual river. The way the current shifted in July when the water dropped. The bend upstream where the temperature ran four degrees colder even on the hottest days. The heron that had been working the far bank all summer, reliable as anything I’d ever known.
She tracked what I was saying without looking for a way in. No nod-and-redirect, no waiting for a gap to fill with her own thing. Just still and steady and actually hearing it.
She’d been coming here since she was a kid, she told me. Every summer, same cabin, same week. Her parents used to bring her and she’d kept coming on her own. She knew which floorboard on the porch had a soft spot and which window stuck in humid weather. She knew the deck faced the right directionto catch the morning light without the full heat of it. She talked about this place the way I talked about equipment I’d spent fifteen years learning—not showing off, just knowing.
I asked how long she was staying.
“Four more days,” she said. “We leave Sunday.”
I let that sit for exactly one beat. “Who’s we?”
“My friend Sunnie.” She tilted her head slightly, like she’d caught why I asked. “She’s inside. Reading.”
“Hm.” I kept my voice level. “Then back home?”
“Then back to Charlotte.” Her expression shifted, but I couldn’t quite make out what it meant. “Big summer coming up.”
I’d seen the blue sedan parked up at the cabin on my morning run-throughs. North Carolina plates, a film of road dust on it. I noted it the way I noted water levels and weather—information that might matter later.
I waited. She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t push. That was fine. People told you what they wanted to tell you. I’d learned that a long time ago, and I’d stopped being bothered by it.
What I noticed was the shift itself. The way her shoulders had changed, just slightly, when she said it. A weight she was carrying that she still carried, even out here. I didn’t comment on it.
The light had gone slanted and gold by the time I picked up my paddle again. That happened fast out here in the summer—the afternoon stretched and then it didn’t, and suddenly the shadows were long and the air had that coolness that came off the water when the sun lost its angle.
“I’ll probably be out here tomorrow,” she said. Not an invitation exactly. Just information.
“River’s always running,” I said.
I paddled back toward the outfitter with the steady stroke I used when I had nowhere to be. The honeysuckle scent followed me longer than it should have.
2
SURI
Itold myself I was just enjoying the morning.
The bank was right there. The honeysuckle smelled the way it always smelled down here in July—thick and sweet and just this side of too much.
I’d been coming to this cabin my whole life, and I’d never once thought much about the honeysuckle. Now, I had my hand in it again, and I was absolutely not thinking about the man who’d told me it had been here longer than the cabin had.
I was just enjoying the morning.
Sunnie had watched me lace up my shoes from her spot on the couch with her book open in her lap and said nothing. That was one of Sunnie’s best qualities. She had about a thousand observations about this situation, and she was keeping every single one of them to herself.
I’d seen him for two days before he stopped. That first morning, I’d been on the deck with my coffee when I heard the paddle stroke—efficient, controlled, someone who knew exactly what they were doing on the water. I’d watched him go by without really meaning to, then kept watching after he was already gone.
The second morning, I was out there earlier. I told myself that was because I liked the light before it shifted. It was a reasonable thing to tell myself. The fact that I’d also put on my better shorts and actually done something with my hair was completely unrelated.
He hadn’t looked up either time. I’d noticed that too, which meant I’d been watching closely enough to notice. That was information I didn’t particularly want to have about myself.
The river was quiet this early. A heron worked the shallows on the far bank, slow and deliberate, and the current made the sound it made when nothing was competing with it. I’d always loved that about this place—the way the noise just stopped.
My hometown of Charlotte didn’t stop. Charlotte had exactly two volumes, and neither of them was this. I’d spent twenty-three years there, and I still hadn’t gotten used to it. Eight more weeks, and I’d be trading it for a whole new kind of noise. A whole new city. A whole new version of my life I’d been planning for two years.
