I smiled, appreciating the response, even if we both knew it was an excuse. “How about you? You said that you’ve been in love? Are you more the romantic type, or the partner-and-friends type?”
“Both,” she said. “I wanted it all.”
“Did you get it?”
“Yes,” she said. She held up her bottle, still half-full. “What should I do with this?”
“I’ll take it,” I said, reaching for her bottle. I rose from my seat, emptied the remains into the creek, and put the empty beside my own in the wastebasket. On my way back, I gestured at the cooler. “Would you like another?”
“Do you have bottled water?”
“Of course. I came prepared.” I handed a water bottle to her before settling in my chair again. We continued to chat while we picked at the snacks, avoiding anything too personal. Our earlier discussion about love seemed to have butted up against some sort of internal personal limit of hers, so we talked about the town, the gun range where Natalie liked to shoot, and some of the more complicated surgeries I’d performed in the past. Eventually she was able to get photos of the eaglets and texted the images to me, something I realized only when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and checked the screen.
As we floated in place, a thin layer of clouds had begun to form, turning the sun from yellow to orange, and when the sky began shading toward violet, I knew it was time to start back.
I raised the anchor and started the motor, Natalie covering the snack tray before joining me in the cockpit. I drove faster on the return, making for a shorter trip, but was still amazed at how quickly time had passed. By the time I’d tied up the boat, dusk was settling in, the sky a brilliant palette, and crickets had begun to chirp. I helped Natalie to the dock, then handed the smaller cooler to her. Balancing the platter on the larger cooler, I walked beside her toward the back porch.
Once on the porch, I lifted the cooler lid. “Would you like another bottle of water?” I asked.
“Do you have any wine?”
“Would you like red or white?”
“White.”
Heading inside, I pulled the wine from the refrigerator and located a corkscrew. Pouring two glasses, I returned to the porch. She was standing near the railing, watching the sunset.
“Here you go,” I said, handing her a glass. “Sauvignon blanc.”
“Thank you.”
We took a sip in tandem, taking in the view.
“I called the hospital, as you suggested,” I said. “About my grandfather.”
“And?”
“You were right—it was a critical first step.” I went on, filling her in. She listened carefully, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Where do you think he was going? If it wasn’t Easley?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you don’t think he went to see Helen?”
“Unless he’d undergone a radical change, I just can’t imagine him being interested in another woman. Not at his age, not so far away, and definitely not with the way he still spoke about my grandmother.”
“He told me about her once,” Natalie mused. “He said she used to hum to herself in the kitchen when she was cooking and that sometimes, even now, he imagined he could still hear it.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“Last year, maybe? It was at the farmers’ market and I can’t remember how the subject even came up, but I recall thinking about that story when I got home. I could tell he still loved her.”
“That’s what I mean,” I agreed. “He was a one-woman man.”
She took another sip. “Do you believe in that? One woman for one man, for all time? The whole soul mate thing?”
“I guess it’s possible for some couples—like them or maybe even my parents—but it’s probably more the exception than the rule. I think most people fall in love more than once in their life.”
“And yet you’re unsure whether you’ve ever been in love.”
“It’s not fair to paraphrase my earlier statements back to me.”
She laughed. “So what are you going to do about your grandfather?”
“I’m thinking about driving down to Easley on Tuesday. I want to find out where he was picked up and try to locate his truck. Maybe it’ll help me figure things out.”
“That’s a long way to travel without much to go on,” she pointed out.
“It should only take a couple of days.”