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“Stay here tonight?” he asked.
Ella didn’t give it a second thought. “I’d love to, but I want to take it slow. I think we can get back to where we were as long as things don’t get too heavy.”
“Of course. What we had was good, and I don’t care if you have to fly across the country every week. As long I know you’re coming home eventually, I don’t care.”
“It’s a deal,” Ella said.
“Oh, thank God. And you’re okay with staying? Does that count as taking it slow?”
“Very much so,” she said. “I’ll stay, but…”
“But?”
“I can’t promise your lamp will last the night.”
EPILOGUE
On this wonderful spring morning, Ella had made good on a promise. She sat on the terrace of the Black Horse beside her new friend Dennis, a man who may or may not have known her father. Four days ago, she promised she’d return to his coffee shop with money since she’d forgotten to bring some the first time round. She’d done that, paid for one coffee, but then man had plied with enough caffeine to tranquilize a horse. Now they sat with fishing rods hanging into the Clinch River, neither of which had seen any action but Ella didn’t mind at all. She was here to talk to this man and makes his days a little less lonely, and she guessed he was doing the same for her.
“That’s real sucky about your old man,” Dennis said.
Ella had told the man everything. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt a kinship with him. Or maybe it was just another way of letting the darkness out and the light in. Bottling these things up hadn’t worked well for her in the past, so maybe it was time start talking about them.
“Those items you found in his storage place,” Dennis continued as he toyed with his line. “You’ve got no idea what they mean?”
Dennis was talking about the hidden items she’d accidentally found among her dad’s possessions. They consisted of a cigar, tobacco, lighter and a box of matches that apparently came from the place she was now sitting in. Dennis, however, never passed such an item to anyone named Ken, so how Ella’s dad ended up with them remained a mystery.
“Absolutely no clue. My dad didn’t even smoke as far as I know.” Ella’s line began to unreel.
“We got a live one.”
Ella gripped the line, attached what Dennis has informed her was abait runnerand began her battle with the sea creature down below. A few seconds of awkward tugging followed, then Ella pulled an empty line out of the river.
“Dammit. Nature wins again.”
Dennis plunged his hand into some brown slop and applied it to the end of Ella’s line. “Fishing is a numbers game,” he said. “Anyone who tells you it’s skill is talking out of their backside.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” Ella said.
“You say your old man wasn’t a smoker?” Dennis said, back to the subject. Ella wasn’t sure she’d ever told anyone other than Mia and Ben about her dad’s death, so it felt a little odd to reveal the details to someone who was essentially a stranger.
“Nope. Well, I never saw him smoke anyway. I guess he might have done it in private.”
“Well,” Dennis said, “you ever think that maybe they’re not about smoking?”
Ella hadn’t. “How do you mean?”
“Well, you keep talking about smoking, but those matches led you here and we’ve got nothing to do with smoking. Maybe it’s about where they come from rather than what they’re used for.”
Matches, cigar, tobacco, lighter. Ella plucked them one by one out of her pocket and placed them on the table between her and her new friend. Dennis put his reel down, picked up the cigar and mock-smoked it. He held it up to the light for a better view. “Darjeen brand. That takes me back.”
“You know it? I’ve never heard of them.”
“Young gunslinger like you wouldn’t have. Some short-lived company. Pretty cheap from what I remember.” He rolled the cigar over in his fingers then scrutinized the small print on the back of the label.
“How’s your eyesight?” Dennis asked.
“Bad,” said Ella. “Yours?”
