Brennon pointed out something on the far shore to Phillips while Allen and Kowalsky talked. Ronny and Randy waved, then disappeared up the trail to their truck.

“I don’t know why those guys are helping Kowalsky,” Luke said, “especially after last night.”

“Because they’re decent men trying to do some good. They have children. It’s called empathy, another basic human emotion.”

“Is that it?” Luke said. “I thought they were so thick-headed they didn’t know when they’d been insulted.” He smiled. “See you at supper, Maggie.”

Luke dove into the river and swam back across. He and Carolyn got into the canoe and drifted beneath Wolf Cliff into the slow water that ended a half mile downstream at Five Falls.

YOU’RE GOING TO HURT YOUR FATHER BAD, LUKE HAD SAID. AND that was what I had wanted. Because being connected to Daddy was like having an infected limb no antibiotic could cure. What I wanted was not only to sever the limb but also to cauterize it.

I learned a lot from Luke that summer. He taught me to sight on the surface what lay beneath water—the snags and undercuts. He showed me the Tamassee was not one river but many, depending on the time of year, the amount of rain, the amount of visibility.

He taught me how to use a camera as well, how to manipulate shutter speed and light, how balance and perspective were as important in photography as painting. He never used color film, despite frequent complaints from the rafting company’s clients. Luke believed you saw the essentials in black and white, that color was nothing more than decoration and distraction.

He was a good teacher. The following spring when I graduated with my English degree, I’d taken a job with the Clemson town newspaper. I wrote articles, but photography was what I did best, winning some state awards for weeklies. When the Laurens paper called, they were looking for a photographer, not a writer.

Now I watched as Luke and Carolyn grew smaller, the downstream angle such that they appeared cut in half, their heads, arms, and torsos bobbing in the current.

I wondered if Carolyn possessed the cool cynicism so many women her age displayed toward relationships. The way she’d reached for Luke’s hand at the meeting seemed to argue otherwise. That was something I would have done, had done.

I remembered the early August night Luke spent not with me but at the Tamassee Motel with Janice, the woman he’d stayed with in Florida.

“I thought it was just you and me,” I told Luke the next morning after she left. I’d spent a tearful, sleepless night on the cabin’s couch, listening for Luke’s pickup to turn into the makeshift driveway.

“Have I ever told you that?” Luke said. He touched my chin with his finger and raised my eyes to his. “Have I ever asked you not to be with anyone else?”

“No,” I said. “I just believed we were together and for a long time.”