He’s sitting on his foot like a goddamn yogi again, and when he tries to stand and finds it numb, I lose patience and fetch his rod myself. Jonah is staring at me like I’m the one who killed Nick’s parents. I busy myself tying ball bearings to monofilament.

“Well, that must have been something,” I say. “Good for you.” Having threaded the hook and tied a clinch knot, I dig in the cooler and crack a beer. “Your military school did that? Sent you there?”

Nick nods. “Mm-hm.”

I return to my knots. When the lines are all prepped, we cast and wait. The water is calm and clear. Once or twice I think I feel a bite, but it’s only the current. Only wishful thinking. Simply sitting here, though, watching my line pierce the water’s surface and fade to black, I’m calmed. Connected. This is in my blood. I didn’t come from a family of fishermen or oyster farmers like a lot of my friends did growing up. My father worked the assembly line at Grumman building bomber planes, and then he got lucky with a freak promotion when his manager was crushed by heavy machinery. My father became a supervisor overnight. He became somebody, and he demanded I do the same. He’d take me out on his boat every Sunday and talk to me about work ethic and the value of a dollar. He made me tie my own lines. He made me a man. For this, I’m forever indebted to him.

Before he died, I did my best to return the favor. I flew him up to Alaska to go salmon fishing on the Kenai River. Vanessa was about halfway through her pregnancy with Jonah at the time. Bonding with my own father seemed appropriate. Everyone warned me that life would turn upside down once the baby arrived, so yes, it was a vacation, but it was also a way to honor my old man for all the fish that came before.

We caught nothing, not a single salmon—and not for lack of trying. Not for lack of salmon, either. They were running, all right, directly by our boat: hundreds, probably thousands of them. Most had turned from silver to red. Some pink, some burgundy, their bodies covered in white patches. We could have reached down and picked them up with our bare hands. Instead, we dangled our lines in turquoise water and watched the shoals swim past our impotent, sparkling lures, oblivious or disinterested or both. As it turned out, they weren’t biting because they weren’t hungry. They were too close to their spawning grounds and too close to death.