“How is he?”
Fiske shrugged. “Sleeping, or at least trying to.”
“Does he want to come back with us?” Fiske shook his head. “He’s going to come over to my place tomorrow night.” He glanced at his watch and realized that dawn was not very far away. “I mean tonight. I need to stop by my apartment on the way back so I can pick up some clean clothes.”
Sara looked down at her dress. “Tell me about it. Where’d you get those?”
“I left them down here from the last fishing trip.”
She wiped her forehead. “God, it’s so humid.”
Fiske looked toward the woods. “Well, there’s a cooler breeze down by the water.” He led her over to the golf cart. As they drove along the quiet dirt roads, Fiske handed her a beer. “This one is cold.”
She popped it open. It felt good going down, and managed to lift her spirits a little. She held the can next to her cheek.
The narrow road took them through a mass of scrub pine, holly, oak and river birch with its bark unraveling like pencil shavings. Then the land opened up and Sara could see a wooden dock with several boats tied to it. She watched as the wooden structure moved up and down with the lap of the water.
“It’s a floating dock; rests on fifty-gallon drums,” Fiske explained.
“I gathered. Is that a boat ramp?” she asked, pointing to a place where the road angled sharply into the water.
Fiske nodded. “The people bring their cars up another road to get here. Pop has a little motorboat. That one over there.” He pointed to a white boat with red stripes that bobbed in the water. “They usually pull them out at night. He must have forgotten. He got it cheap; we spent a year fixing it up. It’s no yacht, but it’ll get you where you want to go.”
“What river is this?”
“Do you remember on the drive down 95 seeing signs for the Matta, the Po and the Ni Rivers?” Sara nodded. “Well, up near Fort A. P. Hill, southeast of Fredericksburg, they converge and it’s called the Mattaponi River.” He looked out at the water. There were few things more relaxing than skimming along the water, and he could think out there. “There’s a full moon, the boat has running lights and a guide beacon and I know this part of the river real well. And it’s a lot cooler on the water.” He looked at her questioningly.
Sara didn’t hesitate. “Sounds good.”
They walked out to the boat and Fiske helped her in.
“Do you know how to cast off?” he asked.
“I actually did some competitive racing when I was an undergrad at Stanford.”
Fiske watched her expertly undo the knots and cast off the line. “The old Mattaponi must seem pretty dull, then.”
“It’s all in who you’re doing it with.”
She sat next to Fiske, who stuck his hand into a storage compartment next to the captain’s chair and pulled out a set of keys. He started the engine and they slowly pulled away from the dock. They got out into the middle of the river and he eased the throttle forward until they were moving at a fairly decent clip. The temperature was about twenty degrees cooler on the water. Fiske kept one hand on the wheel, his beer in the other. Sara folded her legs up under her and then raised herself up so that her upper torso was above the low-slung windshield. She held her arms out from her sides and let the wind grip her.
“God, this feels wonderful.”
Fiske looked out over the water. “Mike and I would race each other across the river. It gets pretty wide at some points. Couple of times I thought one or the other of us was surely going to drown. But one thing kept us going.”
“What was that?”
“We couldn’t bear the thought of the other winning.”
Sara sat back down and swung her chair around until she was facing him, smoothing out her hair as she did so.
“Do you mind a really personal question?”
Fiske stiffened slightly. “Probably.”