TEN

I don’t know if it was a product of our chaotic upbringing—never knowing when our next meal might appear, constantly bombarded with strange faces—but Cal and I had both grown into creature-of-habit adults. Neither one of us liked surprises, not even the good ones. We weren’t fans of new places or changes in routine, constantly trying to restore order in our lives. If Cal wasn’t at work or visiting me at the diner, he could reliably be found in a handful of places: his apartment or mine, the bar next to the sub shop having a beer, the laundromat reading the paper and watching his clothes spin around in circles. I’d tried all of those places and seen no trace of his truck. That left our Mama’s trailer, and I wasn’t going there again anytime soon, and Cal’s secret fishing spot.

He’d been going to the edge of Jackson Creek to fish for as long as I could remember. When we were growing up, his hands smelled like fish guts more often than not. A scent that still made my mouth water and my stomach cramp with excitement because as vile as the smell was, at least it meant I was going to be fed. Cal didn’t need to fish to feed his belly anymore, but I knew the ritual relaxed him; the isolation soothed something inside him, some jagged edge that would never quite be rubbed smooth. I understood it because I had the same rough spot inside myself. Junie had helped smother it, but it was emerging in her absence, a sharp, hard weapon in my gut.

Jackson Creek was actually a river and it ran for miles, tucked away in the woods in some spots, out in the wide open in others. It ran deep and fast at one end, slowed to almost a trickle, then opened up into a flat, calm pool good for skinny-dipping before it surged into the woods again. Everyone around these parts had a relationship with the creek, but hardly anyone knew of Cal’s spot, or if they did, they lacked the dedication to reach it. You had to hike in, risk ticks and brambles, thorns scratching your arms and catching in your hair. But Cal swore his spot had the best fish around, fat and shimmering in the sun, so close to the surface you could practically pluck them out with your hands.

And sure enough, his truck was parked in the woods where the trail to his fishing spot began. I sighed, pulling my hair back into a ponytail and yanking down the sleeves of my shirt before I followed him in. By the time I arrived—a twenty-minute trek that felt more like an hour—the sun was high in the sky and sweat was making a slow descent down my back. At least it was still only spring, the summer’s relentless heat only a whisper on the warming wind.

“Hey,” I said, stepping out onto the flat rock where Cal sat perched over the water, fishing rod extended into the creek. I could see three fish already resting in his ice-filled cooler.