ALLIE WOKE early the next morning. She’d slept in the shirt he’d given her, and she smelt¹ him once again while thinking about the evening they’d spent together. The easy laughter and conversation came hack² to her, and she especially remembered the way he’d talked about her painting. It was so unexpected, yet uplifting, and she realized how sorry she would have been had she decided³ not to see him again.
She looked out of the window and watched the chattering⁴ birds search for food in the early light. Noah, she knew, had always been a morning person. She knew he liked to kayak or canoe, and she remembered one morning she’d spent with him in his canoe, watching the sun come up. She’d had to sneak⁵ out of her window to do it because her parents wouldn’t allow it, but she hadn’t been caught and she remembered how Noah had slipped his arm around her and pulled her close as dawn began to unfold. “Look there,” he’d whispered, and she’d watched her first sunrise with her head on his shoulder, wondering if anything could he better than that moment.
As she got out of bed to take her bath, feeling the cold floor beneath her feet, she wondered if he’d been on the water this morning watching another day begin, thinking somehow he probably had.
 
SHE WAS RIGHT. Noah was up before the sun and dressed quickly, same jeans as last night, undershirt, clean flannel⁶ shirt, blue jacket and boots. He drank a quick glass of milk and grabbed two biscuits on the way out of the door. After Clem greeted him with a couple of sloppy⁷ licks, he walked to the dock where his kayak was stored. He liked to let the river work its magic, loosening up his muscles, warming his body, clearing his mind.
The old kayak, well used and river-stained, hung on two rusty⁸ hooks attached to his dock, just above the water line. He lifted it free, inspected it quickly, then took it to the hank. In a couple of seasoned moves, long since mastered by habit, he had it in the water and was working his way upstream, paddling hard, working off the tension, preparing for the day.

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