“I’ve been honest with you,” Luke said. “More honest than you’ve been with me.” He removed his finger from my chin. “I think a lot of what I am to you is a way to get back at your father.”

“That’s a lie. I couldn’t have done the things we’ve done,” I said. “I love you.” Those three syllables felt strange on my tongue, because I couldn’t remember saying them even as a child. Not even to my mother as she lay in my bed dying.

Luke said nothing.

“But you don’t love me. Do you love her?”

“No,” Luke said.

I turned to start packing, but Luke pulled me back and kissed me on the mouth. When I didn’t respond, he touched my cheek with his fingers.

“She’s gone back to Florida, Maggie,” he said. “You and I have had a good summer together, and we still have some time before you go back to Clemson.”

“And you’ll go back to Florida this fall to be with her again?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said. “You’re acting like this is some lifelong commitment I’m making to you or her. Janice doesn’t think that way, why should you? Why can’t we simply enjoy the here-and-now?”

“I’m not willing to settle for that,” I said.

I had left that evening and never gone back, to Luke’s cabin or to his bed. I’d lived with Aunt Margaret until school began.

As I watched the canoe disappear around the bend in the river, I wondered if a day would soon come when Carolyn learned a similar lesson in honesty from Luke.

BECAUSE IT WAS STILL EARLY IN THE RAFTING SEASON, THE first cluster of Tamassee River Tour rafts did not appear till past noon. All four were filled with teenage boys, probably a church youth group. Earl Wilkinson sat in the rear of the lead raft.

“Maggie May, good to see you back home,” Earl shouted, then turned his attention back to the river as he plunged over Wolf Creek Falls. I wondered if Earl told his clients what they’d be passing over when they entered this sluice.

In a few minutes Allen made his way to where I waited. If his conversation with Kowalsky had brought to mind his own loss, Allen’s face did not show it. He looked impassive but focused.

“Get your camera out,” he said, in a no-nonsense tone. “You’re about to get a chance at a really good photograph.”

I took the Nikon from its case as Herb Kowalsky stepped through shallows and onto the slab of stone his daughter lay beneath. He stared into the water—alone now, no rescue workers or environmentalists or gawkers.