Read Online The Northwoods Chronicles by Elizabeth Engstrom - Free Book Online

are, but I can’t help my
feelings.”
    She looked over at him, and he was tending his
line, not looking at her. She knew the feeling. He was confessing
his soul to the water, something she had done daily for years,
only, in this instance, he made sure she was there to listen to
him. It was easier to talk to someone if you didn’t have to look at
them. She let him talk, and vowed not to interrupt.
    He continued. “I get home and look at my
calendar and it’s a whole blasted year before I can get back to see
you and it makes me want to blow out my brains. I have a photograph
of us on my desk, and every day I have to will my hand to not dial
your phone number. Every day of my life is torture, just going
through the motions until I can get back up here and be next to you
in your little boat, fishing. Talking. Laughing. You understand me,
Sadie Katherine, in a way that nobody ever has before.”
    There was a long pause, and Sadie Katherine
squirmed in the silence like a worm in her bait can. “I’m married,”
she said again.
    “The last thing I want to do is ruin your life.
I can see you’ve got a life here, fishing, guiding, making a living
with Doc in the shop. I don’t know why I have to tell you all of
this, but I just have to get it out in the open. It’s blowing me
apart.”
    “Once said, then, it doesn’t need to be brought
up again, is that right?” Sadie Katherine felt like he had
transferred his explosive feelings to her gut, and she resented
it.
    The boat dipped under his weight shift, and then
he touched her shoulder. Reflexively, she looked at him and there
were those eyes. Blue like the depths of the sky.
    “I look at you and I see you in silks and
pearls. Gold jewelry and diamonds on your fingers.” He picked up
her left hand and they both looked at it. Weathered and slightly
spotted, it was the hand of a rugged, sixty-year-old outdoorswoman,
not the pampered hand of a society lady. The nails were trimmed
close, but they were ridged and unpolished, and there were scars
and scabs from fish teeth, fishhooks, fish knives and recalcitrant
boat gear.
    She looked at that hand and envisioned it with
long, painted nails and diamonds instead of Doc’s plain gold band.
Instead of the threadbare denim at her wrist that partially covered
her steel Swiss Army watch, she thought of a sky-blue silk sleeve
that gently caressed a slim gold watch. She’d have her hair
professionally colored, instead of letting it grow gray and cropped
short at her ears. She’d wear earrings, and makeup, and slacks and
drive a Mercedes instead of Doc’s old truck. She’d have facials and
massages.
    But where? New York. Ugh. No fish, no trees, no
country. No friendly dogs running loose, no cats and raccoons
hanging around the fish-cleaning shed. No steady seasonal
customers, no Margie, no Uncle Bun, none of the community she had
enjoyed here for so many years. Sixty was too old to make another
new start—she didn’t even know what language they spoke in New
York.
    And what about Doc?
    “What about Doc?” She couldn’t believe those
words came out into the open.
    Kenneth took those words as a finger hold and
began to work them. “I don’t know about Doc,” he said. “It would be
a terrible thing to hurt him, but everybody has to follow their
bliss, Sadie Katherine. You are mine, and my world is a good one.
It lacks only one thing, and that’s you.”
    She turned from him and reeled in her line. “I
have a good life right here.”
    “I know you do, and that’s one of the most
attractive things about you. You’re not running from anything. You
have the ability to be satisfied wherever you are.”
    That’s a laugh, she thought. “Don’t
assume that. You don’t know my history.”
    “And I don’t care. You’re the woman for me. I
knew it the moment I laid eyes on you and there isn’t anything
anyone can do or say to make me change my mind.”
    He touched her again, and, despite her will, she
turned to look at him.