Sam scrubbed at her eyes and tried to re-focus on the textbook lying open on the scarred wooden library table. The words kept sliding away from her and she yawned so wide her jaw cracked. The kid across the table from her—probably no more than nineteen—shot her a self-important glare and she suppressed a wave of irritation. He looked well-rested and like he hadn’t been on his feet slinging drinks until closing last night. Meanwhile, that brand-new laptop and smartphone in front of him would probably pay two or three months of her rent. She mentally recalculated her expected income against her expenses for the third time since she woke up. The totals didn’t change. One unexpected expense and she would be screwed.
She gave the bitter assumption that he had been gifted the expensive high-tech items a shove into a dark corner of her mind and slammed the door. We’re all given different paths, Sammie. Her late father’s voice seemed to rumble in her head. Make the best of what you have and keep your eyes on your own paper.
Literally returning her eyes to her own paper, she looked at her textbook and took a sip of tea that had grown cold and bitter while she was busy obsessing over finances and feeling sorry for herself. She grabbed her highlighter and slashed bright yellow across the words, “Anyone who solves the problem of water deserves not one Nobel Prize but two—one for science and the other for peace.”
The quote, attributed to John F. Kennedy, could also apply to her life just now.
Don and Mike were still giving her the cold shoulder, even though the bachelor party had gone unexpectedly well. Actually, their snit was because the party had gone well. The groom-to-be and his pals had apparently been impressed by Xander’s gruff mountain-man persona, behaving well and indulging in enough hero worship of the big guy to make him embarrassed. The thought of Xan, cheeks reddening above his thick, black beard, almost made Sam chuckle.
Don and Mike, predictably, had thought that the party would have gone even better had she taken them out. Because if they were intimidated and impressed by Xan they would be…what with her?
Idiots.
“Hey.” A murmur in her ear made her jump and the guy across the table shot her another irritated glare. She ignored him and turned, only to be engulfed in an expensively-scented hug.
“Gina,” she whispered in her friend’s ear. “Where have you been?”
Gina lifted one sculpted eyebrow, releasing Sam and dropping into the chair next to her as the Very Serious Guy across the table ostentatiously gathered up his stuff and moved to find another seat at the other end of the reading room. “What’s his problem?”
“Can’t function without total silence, I guess.” Sam jabbed her finger into her friend’s shoulder. “But I mean it. Where have you been?”
“Boston.”
“Boston? Honey, spring break was in March and I haven’t seen you in Statistics in a week.”
Gina grimaced. “Not a vacation. A family meeting. Dad insisted.”
“What was there to meet about?”
“Ugh. Same old shit. Never mind. I’m back. What’re you reading?” Gina flipped the cover of Sam’s textbook up and read the title aloud. “Principles and Theories of Water Management.” Her lip curled and she turned thickly lashed brown eyes at Sam. “Gripping shit, Samantha.”
Sam pulled the book back. “It’s gripping shit if you care about making sure there are enough habitats for fish to exist in fifty years.”
Gina waved a manicured hand. “Fish. I don’t even like eating the fuckers. And you put your hands on them. By choice.”
“Do you kiss your daddy with that mouth?” Sam smirked as Gina’s eyes widened in feigned shock.
“This princess?” Gina pointed at her own face. “She’s never heard a curse word, never kissed a boy, and has no idea what the inside of a bar even looks like. As far as Dad knows.”
Sam suppressed a shudder at the memory of having to restrain Gina from dancing on the tables at The Fishing Hole the evening they first met. Not for the first time, Sam wondered if Gina would have turned out wild at all if her family had given her more freedom. She had polished a perfect persona to display to her family, using it as cover to do exactly what she wanted when their eyes weren’t on her.
“Anyway, sorry I went AWOL. Can I have your Stats notes?” Gina’s bright red lips quirked sideways.
“Of course.” Samantha dug in her bag and pulled out her ancient laptop, waited for it to wake up, then pulled up her notes while it connected to the dodgy campus Wi-Fi.
Gina, watching her, said, “Ugh. I can’t believe you put up with that thing. Dad gave me a new laptop while I was home. You can have my old one if you want.”
Sam gritted her teeth as she waited for the e-mail containing her notes to send. Her friend was definitely spoiled, but also generous with what she had. And Sam couldn’t face the idea of their friendship becoming one-sided, with Gina doing the giving and Sam the taking. “Thanks. But you know I can’t.”
“I know you won’t. There’s a difference.”
“Whatever you want to call it.”
“Pride? Pigheadedness?”
“Is that any way to thank me for giving you my notes?” Sam closed the laptop and shoved it in her backpack.
“Nope. It’s not. Come on.” Gina stood, dragging Sam up with her. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee to thank you. You look like you need it.”
“That bad, huh?”
Gina pointed at Sam’s face. “You have American written under one eye and Tourister under the other. Your bags are packed, girl. The only question is where you’re going.”
“Nowhere fast,” Sam said, shouldering her pack with a resigned sigh.
Graham wrapped his hands around the paper cup, soaking up the heat it radiated. He couldn’t ever remember a May in Maryland that had been this chilly.
Pushing open the door to the reading room, he headed toward his office. Two women were getting up from a table, one of them shoving a textbook into a battered canvas backpack. He had seen the pair before, clearly friends despite their obvious differences. The shorter one with the dark brown hair was glossy and manicured. She looked as if she would fit in with Zoe and Amanda. Then there was the taller one, with her light brown hair pulled back in a serviceable ponytail, wearing loose jeans and a thick sweater. She had wide, high cheekbones and a thin, arched nose. There was something soothing about her calm gaze and air of self-possession.
Don’t ogle the students. That was rule number one. Not even graduate students, which he was pretty sure the tall woman was. She looked to be close to his age. Forcing his eyes away from the nape of the unknown woman’s neck, he looked out the windows as he made his way across the reading room. The buds of the trees outside were still tightly furled, the palest green, tender leaves waiting for warmer weather to open, branches bobbing in the brisk spring breeze.
Walking through the door to the technical services department, he held the coffee in one hand and dug in his pocket for his office keys with the other. The automatic light switch gave an audible click when he entered, and the overhead fluorescent lights went on. This piece of university austerity meant he occasionally had to stand and wave his arms like a demented windmill after being plunged into darkness by the over-enthusiastic and less-than-sensitive sensor. Setting his coffee on the desk, he let his nylon briefcase slide off his shoulder and thump to the worn industrial carpet. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, sighing when he saw his little brother’s name on the lock screen.
He swiped and held the device to his ear. “Ian. What’s up?”
“Hey, Gray—dude. You so should have come with us on the fishing trip.”
Graham pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “How drunk did you get?”
Ian laughed. “Not at all. Well, not while we were out, anyway. This guy who took us out? Total mountain man. Had the whole respect for the outdoors thing going. Would have broken us in two if we had even thought about beer.”
Graham glanced again at the screen to check the call information, wondering if his brother had been replaced with a pod person. “So, despite the lack of adult beverages, you actually had a good time?”
“Holy shit, yeah. This guy had all the knowledge. We had an amazing time. Even Wayne.”
Reflecting on the improbability of his brother’s Washington oil and gas lobbyist friend enjoying anything having to do with the outdoors, Graham suppressed a smile. “Oh really?”
“Trust me. I was shocked too. But this guy was the real deal. I didn’t even catch anything and I felt like I had won the lottery.”
“Oh-kay…” Graham turned on his computer and slumped into his office chair, wondering where his brother was going to go with this.
“Here’s the thing: you’ve got to book this guy.”
“Book him?”
“As a guide. Since you have the old man’s best rod. Do it justice.”
Ah. There it was. Of course. It wasn’t about Ian wanting Graham to enjoy anything, it was about the rod. Graham should have just given it to Ian and forgotten about it all. Except Lloyd would also have wanted it. Graham wondered if that was why he had been the one to get it. Maybe it wasn’t that the old man had wanted Graham to have it: he just couldn’t choose between his two sons who were keen on the sport, so he left it to the one who wasn’t. It was a demonically Solomon-like solution that sounded like something his father would do.
Except there was this tug…now that the old man wasn’t around to push him into it. Maybe he did want to try again.
“Sure, Ian. Give me the information.”
“Two humungous mochas with extra whipped cream,” Gina told the barista. “And two of those big blueberry muffins with the crunchy stuff on top.”
“Coffee was all you promised me,” Sam said over the blast of the steamer.
“A plain cup of java is hardly payment for several hours’ worth of your meticulous notes,” Gina said. “Besides, I’ll probably need you to tutor me in what the heck was actually going on. That stuff makes my brain dribble out of my ears.”
“Bull.” Sam shook her head as she accepted the steaming cup and the muffin from the barista. Gina’s head for numbers was astonishing, but her subterfuge with her family tended to leak into the rest of her life, causing her to hide her talents. “You’ll be tutoring me before the exam, for sure.”
“Not much time left,” Gina said. “And you’ve only got the summer sessions to go.”
Sam nodded, broke off a piece of muffin, and popped it into her mouth, surprised at how hungry she was. Had she forgotten to eat breakfast? She had. Again. Her mouth watered as a blueberry burst across her tongue and the sugar topping crunched between her teeth.
Gina sipped her mocha and Sam stifled a laugh when the heap of whipped cream deposited a dollop on her friend’s nose. Gina rolled her eyes and dabbed at the cream with a paper napkin.
“So…Boston must have been…interesting this time of year.” Sam nodded at the window where the tree branches danced in a brisk wind.
Gina picked at her muffin and pursed her lips. “Something like that.”
Sam gulped a hefty slug of her mocha, the caffeine and sugar hitting her empty stomach in a rush that almost made her head spin. She let the silence stretch out as Gina’s fingers fidgeted, her manicured nails sliding under the pads of her thumbs in a rapid, nervous undulation.
Sam took another sip, let the silence stretch out between them, knowing Gina wouldn’t be able to resist filling it. Weaponized silence, indeed.
Gina’s palms slapped the table. “You know I hate it when you do that to me. And don’t give me that ‘What do you mean?’ look. Okay, fine. My parents ambushed me.”
“Ambushed you? How?”
“Yeah. They pick me up at the airport, tell me we’re going to have a big family dinner, we get to their house, and…there’s the whole family and the ambush. In the form of Tony DeAngelis.” Gina’s cheeks were flushed.
“From the look of your face, the ambush wasn’t all that unpleasant.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “He’s okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Okay, fine. He’s gorgeous. And has a good job. And if I saw him under any other circumstances, I would totally be into him. But if he’s got Dad’s seal of approval, it means he’s probably in on Dad’s plans.”
Choking on her mocha, Sam coughed. “Plans to do what?”
“Get me married off. And back to Boston where I can be monitored by the rest of the family.”
Sam made a show of checking her phone’s screen. “Is this…1870? Has your father invented time travel?”
Gina puffed out a big breath and sagged back in her chair. “He might as well.”
“You can say no, Gina. It’s not actually 1870.”
“I am aware of that.” Gina’s eyes, brim-full of sarcasm, looked up at Sam and she felt like a heel. Sam had certain family pressures. Gina had different ones. But that didn’t mean they didn’t hit her friend just as hard. And yet. She still had family to pressure her and Sam didn’t.
“Sorry. What’s your plan?”
Gina turned the big ceramic mug on the table and stared at it, tracing the outline of the coffee shop’s logo with a fingertip. “For now? Not to take any summer classes and to cut my fall schedule to two classes.”
Sam frowned, thinking. “So…a delaying tactic?”
“Exactly. Dad’s promised to pay my way through my MBA, and he always keeps his word. If I could swing staying in school forever, I just might.”
“But?”
“But after I graduate, I’m cut off.”
Sam blinked. “But after you have your MBA you’ll be able to get a job. You won’t need him.”
Gina rolled her eyes. “Christ, Samantha, you don’t get it sometimes.”
Irritation swelled under Sam’s breastbone. She bit back I don’t get what it’s like to have everything paid for, to never have to worry about rent or groceries or anything. I don’t get having a big family who loves me and looks out for me. I have exactly one living relative that I am close to in the whole world. I have Kari. And that is it.
But judgment was only easy if you ignored what was under your own nose.
“Sorry, Gina. I know. Family expectations can be the worst.”
Eyes on your own paper, Sammie.
Graham looked at the note in his cramped handwriting.
Montgomery River trailhead
8am, Saturday
He was really going to do this. He was going to go back to the actual scene of the crime, the first river his father had ever taken him out on. He was going to try again.
The guy at the fly shop had told him he didn’t need anything—not even the old man’s Phillipson rod, but Graham knew he’d bring it anyway. After all, that was the real reason he was going to do this. He had to bring it. It was like one of those cursed objects in books and movies, taking over his free will and putting him on a collision course with…destiny?
Graham snorted at his own fanciful thought and tucked the note into his wallet.
No, he was just revisiting a family pastime, one he had avoided in his youth. Something he might enjoy if he gave it a chance again. He cast his mind back, trying to remember the things he did like about it.
He loved the quiet. That wasn’t a surprise. Look where he had landed vocationally. He loved being outside. Even as a sedentary kid, he had enjoyed the outdoors.
He’d just enjoyed it more with a book in his hand than a fishing rod.
He hadn’t enjoyed physical activity as a child, but he had outgrown that when he discovered hiking in college. He could spend hours tramping through the woods, alone with his thoughts. The sway of the cast and the persistent push against the water flowing past would present a similar constant, low level challenge that would leave him surprisingly fatigued by the end of the day.
Maybe this was going to be all right.
A tap at his office door brought him out of his reverie and he looked up. “Hey Nicole.”
“Hey yourself.” Nicole, head of reference, shut the door behind her with a gentle click.
“Um. This looks ominous.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” she said. She sat in his guest chair, her spine straight, the fluorescent light gleaming on her shiny black hair. “I’m getting rumors that your cataloger is up to her shenanigans again.”
Graham suppressed a groan. “What now?”
Nicole shrugged, “The usual. You know how she is.”
Graham did know how Dorinda was. Meddlesome. She had an irritating habit of getting in people’s business, thinking she knew how to do their job better than they did. “She interfering with your people?”
Nicole shook her head. “No. But I figured you should know so you could head it off.”
“Yeah. Thank you.” Someone had once joked that Nicole was his “work wife.” He wouldn’t go that far—work sister, maybe. They’d started working here at almost the same time, been promoted to management positions only a year apart. Nicole had his back and he had hers.
“No problem.” Nicole stood, smoothing her skirt. “I’m going for a coffee, want one?”
Graham hefted the nearly full paper cup on his desk. “Got some already, but thanks. For everything.”
Nicole moved to the door and opened it, turning back to him with eyebrows raised. “Speak of the devil, she’s incoming.” Graham rolled his eyes as she gave him an ironic little wave and left.
Dorinda was in the doorway before he could think of a way to head her off. “Boss? A few things.”
Dorinda went on to catalogue—Graham smiled to himself at his own internal pun—the various things that were going wrong in his department that morning. All low-level irritations, nothing that e-mails to him from the people involved couldn’t have cleared up much faster. The fluorescent light and the slight grievance behind Dorinda’s tone began to give Graham a headache.
Suddenly, a day out fishing looked awfully good.
“Think you can handle one measly dude, Sam?” Don smirked at Sam as he handed her the assignment sheet.
“Your sarcasm is breathtaking,” Sam said, perusing the paper. “It says he was referred by someone? Who?”
Don shrugged, craning his skinny neck to look at the sheet. “He said you took his brother out. Or maybe he said brother-in-law. Sang your praises something awful, too.”
Sam looked at the sheet, searching for enlightenment. “Last name Evans. Might as well be Smith. So very helpful.”
“Now look who can do sarcasm,” Don said.
Ignoring Don, Sam continued to read. “Says he has some experience. Recent?”
“No. Apparently, he fished some when he was a kid. His dad left him a Phillipson rod.”
Sam whistled, her eyebrows lifting. “Nice.”
“You said it.”
“So, we have a guy with a rich father who had a taste for the finer things and a brother who thought highly enough of me to do a referral.” Sam folded the paper and tucked it in her pocket. “You get that saddle hackle back in stock? I need to tie a few woolly buggers to get him started out on.”
Don shook his head “Damn shame to put a common woolly bugger on a line attached to a Phillipson.”
“There’s no shame in any well-tied fly, you snob. And woolly buggers catch fish on the Montgomery.” Just the thought of being out in the clean air, the water swirling around her legs and the concentration she gave to her line made her want to be out there now. Instead, she had to deal with Don.
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “The problem with you, Sam? You have no poetry in your soul.”
Sam chuckled. Don wasn’t half bad without Mike around. She almost enjoyed sparring with him. “The problem with you, Don, is you have no respect for pragmatism. But without it, your business would fail.”
Don pointed to the wall covered with hooks, each one containing plastic packets of fly-tying supplies. “There’s your damn saddle hackle. Tie your soulless woolly buggers.”
Sam leafed through the packets, selecting one. “If I or this Evans guy catch a trout or bass with a woolly bugger tomorrow, I’m going to make you eat those words. And if it’s bigger than two pounds, I’m going to make you wear a woolly bugger on your shirt for a week like a lady’s brooch.”
Don made a face. “You’re trying to make me hope a client has a lousy time and catches nothing, aren’t you?”
“Choke on it, Don. Put this on my tab.” Sam saluted him with a cheery wave and walked out, the bell over the door jangling.
“One, two, three.” Sam pushed down on the spade handle and her aunt hauled back on the azalea, roots popping out of the soil as the shrub gave way and Kari almost stumbled into the side of her little house.
“Gotcha,” Kari grunted, dragging the plant toward the back yard. “I swear I have no idea what the former owners of this place were thinking. This bush needs full or partial sun. Putting it on the North side of the house? Daft. I’ll bet it never bloomed the entire time.”
Sam’s heart swelled. “You’re loving this.”
“Loving what?” Kari stopped pulling and stripped off her canvas gardening gloves, swiping her hand across her sweaty forehead and leaving a streak of dirt.
“First Halvorsen to own property? First Halvorsen to be able to paint her walls any color she likes and rearrange the landscaping to her heart’s content?” Sam waved at the spot next to the house where the azalea had been planted. “First Halvorsen to dig holes without pissing off a landlord? You’re Farmer Kari.”
Kari’s light blue eyes rested on Sam for a moment too long. “Yeah.”
Sam frowned. “What’s with the awkward?”
“Nothing.” Kari squared her shoulders, looked around the little back yard, tugged the shrub to the far corner which was bright with sunshine and reached out for the spade. Sam handed it to her and Kari stabbed at the hard earth, pushing the blade into the ground with her foot. “Or maybe just guilt. I have this place now. You should have let me give you some money for school.”
“Why?” Sam fidgeted. She didn’t want to have this conversation again. Money and family were a bad mix. And she and her aunt were too close for money to come between them.
Kari squinted at Sam, throwing the spade aside and dragging the azalea to the shallow hole she had dug. “Because it wasn’t fair that I got everything. In a just world, your parents wouldn’t have died only months before Mor did. She should have had more time, she would have changed her will and you would have gotten half. Especially given how you had to dig out from under after…well, him.”
Discomfort and embarrassment prickling over her skin, Sam shrugged. “It’s not like there was much. You wouldn’t have been able to afford the down payment on this place if you’d only had half. Besides, a Halvorsen does things on her own. That’s what we were always taught.” And if money drove a wedge between her and Kari, she’d have no family at all. That thought was terrifying.
“It wasn’t fair to you, though.”
“Hey. Life isn’t fair. I’m almost done school, and I’ve managed to do it without going into debt. Again.”
Kari grunted again, getting to her knees and patting dirt around the plant’s roots. “Anyone ever tell you you’re stubborn?”
“Only everybody,” Sam said.
“Well, you come by it honestly,” Kari said, rising to her feet and slinging an arm around Sam’s shoulders. “You remind me so much of Bjorn sometimes…”
Sam swallowed, sudden tears pushing at the back of her eyes. It had been more than two years since the car accident that had taken both her parents, but grief could still blindside her with unexpected force. She leaned her head on her aunt’s shoulder. “Genetics are funny things. I got the stubborn from Dad, and you got the height from Bestefar.”
“Yeah.” Kari’s voice sounded strange and Sam swallowed an instinctive defensive response. If they went into that again, Kari would only say it wasn’t Sam’s fault that she hadn’t been there when Bestefar died. And Sam would know that for the lie it was.
Before Sam could figure out a way to change the subject, a cheery voice from the next yard over hailed them.
“Howdy neighbor.”
Sam looked toward the source of the voice and saw a genial, smiling man waving while a German Shepherd loped around the fence line, a half-deflated football in its mouth. Kari waved. “Hi Rob.”
“Got your sister helping out today, I see,” Rob said.
Sam shook her head, smiling slightly. “Not sister. Niece. I’m Sam.” She stepped to the fence and shook the man’s hand. His grip was firm, and his smile broadened as he looked from Sam to Kari and back again. Sam sent a silent thanks to the guy for breaking the awkward moment, even though she was sure he hadn’t done it on purpose.
“Niece?” His eyebrows went up. “That’s hard to believe.”
Kari moved to stand beside Sam, digging her in the ribs with a forefinger. “Yeah, this stinker was born when I was ten. My brother was a lot older than I was.”
“I’m a stinker? I got a ringside seat to your adolescent years. Listening to you whining, ‘Mor!’ at the top of your lungs all the time,” Sam said.
“More what?” Rob asked, his face puzzled.
Kari laughed. “It’s Norwegian for ‘Mom.’ But that was hardly unique. A teenage girl whining at her mom is universal.”
“Ah. True. When she was a teen, my daughter was like that with my ex-wife.”
Sam glanced down at his left hand. No ring, no untanned strip of skin where a ring used to be. She glanced at her aunt, keeping the speculation that was bubbling under her skin to herself.
“Anyway, you two certainly look more like sisters,” he said, stepping gamely into the awkward silence.
“We get that a lot,” Kari said, sending a sidelong glance Sam’s way.
“I gotta get going,” Sam said, giving Kari a quick hug. “Rob, it was nice to meet you. Kari, I’ll see you next week.”
Kari rubbed her forehead. “Next week?”
“I forgot to bring Dad’s suitcase for your cruise. I’ll have to bring it by at some point later in the week. I have a client to take out tomorrow.” She stuck her tongue out, teasing, feeling a ridiculous rush of happiness that things felt normal with Kari again.
“Cruise, huh?” Rob’s eyebrows went up.
“Yeah. I won it in a work contest.” Kari waved a hand and rolled her eyes. “Long story.”
“I’ll leave you to tell it, Auntie dearest.” Sam said. Kari stuck her tongue out at Sam and Rob laughed.
“You definitely seem like sisters,” he said.
“See you. I have studying to do.” She left the two chatting over the fence, Rob half-bent to hang on to the football while the dog whipped his head around, trying to yank it away. A small smile tugged at Sam’s lips at the cozy scene even as it sent a pang of longing through her.
Eyes on your own paper.