Free Dead Renegade by Victoria Houston Page B

to backcast—but not today or we’ll hook your husband in the head. One step at a time, kiddo.”
    “Oh?” said C.J. with a tease in her voice. “Do you mean we might have to do this again pretty soon?” The prospect appeared to please her and Osborne suspected it had less to do with backcasting than spending more time with a certain fellow who did not have a cell phone permanently attached to his ear.
    She raised the Sage rod, bringing her arm back and sideways as if to throw a baseball. “No—no swinging,” said Osborne, straightening her arm. “Bring the rod straight up. Bring your thumbnail to your forehead with your hand close to your face … lead with your elbow, finish with your hand forward … good! Okay, again. Keep in mind that the rod is an extension of your arm.”
    Mason and C.J. cast again and again, eager to get it right. Osborne watched, then offered the tips he heard so often from Lew: “Use your thumb to target an area … okay, lead with your elbow and if the line coils try again … keep going ‘til you get a nice, straight cast. If it coils, you chopped too low and didn’t push out … think of punching your thumb forward.”
    “So if I do this right, I’ll catch a fish?” asked Mason, raising her elbow and nearly clocking herself in the forehead, she was so determined.
    “Well, that’s part of it,” said Osborne. “I still have to teach you how to pick the right trout fly—the one that looks just like the insects the fish are eating—how to ‘match the hatch’ as they say.”
    Mason looked at him in surprise: “They don’t eat worms?”
    “They do. Yes, they do. But that’s a political issue we’ll discuss another day. For now keep practicing—you’re getting it.”
    As Osborne settled back to watch, he let his mind drift to an evening of fly fishing weeks earlier. The kind of evening that always settled his soul …

    Lew had managed to escape her office early and they’d sped north to a place known only to a few lucky anglers as “secret lake.” And a secret it was: well hidden with no motorboats allowed, only a few cabins to mar the shoreline and a bounty of seldom-harvested rainbow trout.
    They had hiked in a mile and a half then sat on boulders to pull on their waders. Osborne had entered the water behind Lew, following her lead from a distance. By the time she reached the spot she wanted, the sun had dipped below the spires of the balsams lining the western shore.
    He took care to stay far enough behind that he wouldn’t disturb the fish Lew was targeting—but he wanted to be close enough to watch as she fished. A rank beginner still, he knew he could learn more from watching than struggling with his own floppy fly line.
    And so he watched as Lew waded in until she was waist deep in the darkening, silent water. Random lights glowed gold along the far shore, a fish slurped. She began to rock back and forth, her body supple as a dancer’s, moving with the grace of a doe. A whisper as the fly line unfurled behind her only to shoot forward with the momentum of a power snap that sent the line straight and true, dropping a #12 Adams dry fly with such stealth that the trout leaping for a fluttering insect was stunned.

    “Doc,” said C.J., interrupting his reverie, “my arm is tired. Do you mind if I sit for a while?”
    “Of course not. We’re here to have fun.” Osborne took the fly rod from her hands and set it nearby as C.J. sauntered across the deck to plunk herself down by Ray and Nick.
    “So, Ray,” said C.J., wrapping her arms around her knees as she spoke, “how come you do all this fishing instead of making a living like an honest man?”
    Osborne resisted a chuckle: now how many people had he heard ask that identical question of his subsistence level trailer home-living neighbor? Some asked it to his face, others behind his back.
    “Well,” said Ray, lifting his eyebrows as he looked at his questioner, “I figured out early in life that …