Free Where the River Ends by Charles Martin Page B

never would have amounted to anything had it not been for Abbie.”
    “I agree with you, sir, but—”
    “But, what!”
    I stared at Abbie. “Please understand…” He started to say something else, but I flipped the phone closed and tossed it in the river, where the water swallowed it. Tiny bubbles rose up around its edges as the light on the faceplate dimmed to dark.
    I climbed back to my seat, my hands remembering the feel of the paddle, and fought to find that one description that just nailed my wife. You’d think after fourteen years, I’d come up with something, anything but “Honey.” I admit, it’s rather weak.
    I tapped the article in the map case. “You would have to pick the most difficult one.”
    “I’m not here to check off just
one.
”
    “I figured. Guess we better get busy.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “You rest. I’ll paddle.”
    She cracked a smile. “Just the way it ought to be.”
    I sunk the paddle in the water, pulled hard, reminding my muscles, and slipped beneath the moss-draped arms over the river. The ocean lay 130-plus miles beyond—an hour in a car or a week on the river.
    On the outside, everything had been taken. Abbie’s professional life, her beauty, the welcoming softness of her bosom, the rounded curves, the confident smile. But that was just the external stuff. We could live without that. What about the stuff you couldn’t see? Her unbridled passion for life, her intimate desire for me, her childlike hope in pretty much anything, her incomparable dreams. Abbie was a shell of her former self. A feeble skeleton dressed in a ghost’s clothing. The only thing left was time.
    I’m no sage. I don’t pretend to have this all figured out, but I know this: some live well, some die well, but few love well. Why? I don’t know if I can answer that. We all live, we all die—there is no get-out-of-jail-free card, but it’s the part in between that matters. To love well…that’s something else. It’s a choosing—something done again and again and again. No matter what. And in my experience, if you so choose, you better be willing to suffer hell.
    I didn’t look back and wouldn’t look ahead. So I stared at Abbie, sunk the paddle in the water and pulled.

7

    I woke up hungry, face tender and one eye swollen completely shut. My lip was busted and looked out of proportion to the rest of my face. Somewhere along my right rib cage, a knifing pain told me that I’d either broken a rib or bruised it rather severely.
    I put on some water to make some Raman noodles, when I heard a tap at the door. I pulled some jeans over my boxer shorts and opened the door.
    It was her.
    I stood there like a deer in the headlights.
    She looked up and down the street, then without invitation, stepped past me and into my studio. She was wearing a baseball cap, sweatshirt and jeans and looked sort of like one of those Hollywood A-listers who’s shopping in the mall and trying not to be noticed. I stuck my head out the door, looked up and down the street and then back at her. She motioned to the door, which I shut, and then moved toward the back, near the boiling water, and out of the streetlight.
    Hands in pockets, she looked around, taking in what little there was to take in. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “I didn’t get to thank you. I just ran and…” She wiped her face on her shirtsleeve.
    “Would you like some tea?”
    She smiled. “Yes.”
    I might not have had much, but tea I had. I reached into a drawer stuffed with tea bags and she started laughing. “You like tea?”
    I shrugged. “I umm…I steal it from work. A bag or two a night. Sometimes three. It’s easier than stealing coffee.”
    She laughed again. I poured two mugs of tea and pointed to a chair in the corner. Since I didn’t have a table, I often ate in that chair with my dinner on my lap. She sat and I leaned against the wall, the tea bag string draped across one finger. She sipped and eyed the hundreds of