had told her how awful it must be to be married to an imprisoned killer. More sympathetic ones had told her they knew just how much she must miss him, gone for all those years. Sandy dug through her husband’s things, searching for some touch, some scent, some sensation that would indicate she did miss her husband’s presence. She found nothing to ignite longing in her except an old abandoned fly rod, one thing never used by her husband. So while she waited, in the clearing by Dismal Creek, a respectable trout stream, she fished. And in her long waiting, she became a fly fisher, wading gracefully through the current of the stream, taking the stocked rainbow trout easily, learning to stalk with increased precision and skill for the cagey, more elusive native brook trout. Over the months she came gradually to the realization that it was as if she had not been born, not felt lashed to the world around her in any way, until that first day she stepped into a trout stream. A first barb had at last managed to lodge itself in her heart. She loved something.
When Vernon finally did make his escape attempt, Sandy now had something to protect and preserve. The man who burst into the clearing where she was stalking a particularly large brook trout was no longer anyone she could recognize as a husband—he was now a dangerous man coming in between her and a good fish. She fled the stream to her car and escaped the approach of the desperate convict just as the pursuing guards emerged from the creek into the clearing and locked him in their gun sights.
She was Sandy Holston, who moved over the ridge to the Ripshin River Valley, at the far edge of the Rogers Ridge watershed, to wait out the impending release of her ex-husband from prison. She’d waited out half of that first summer along the Ripshin until old Calvin Linkous’s heartbroken, skunk-killing dog, Stink, finally accepted her presence in his home and hobbled up to her, nestled his snout in her lap, and allowed her to pick off the army of ticks attached to his mottled hide. By the end of that summer, she was more glad than she could ever let on that her only friend, irascible, salty-tongued Margie Callander, refused to allow Sandy to flee from her as she had most everything else in her old life. And yes, as they said, she had taken up with that eccentric widower, James Keefe, a man far older than she. She had been drawn to him because of the rhythm of the river in his voice, because of his little bungalow on the banks of the upper Ripshin, and because neither of them could ever care for the other as much as each cared for the river that ran through their lives and the fish in it. Never effusive in their affection, they had grown comfortable with one another, though it hadn’t come easily, and they shared a sense of obligation, in their own odd ways, to the river as they knew and loved it.
And as the public facts had stated, after his release from prison, the ex-husband had come for one Sandy Holston, bent on killing her for reasons unspecified. He had pursued her into the river, where he was subsequently overwhelmed and drowned by the discharge of water from the upstream hydroelectric dam. What the public facts did not contain, what was contained in the private facts Sandy held so close, was that as Vernon had pursued her, she had retreated downstream with intent and purpose, with precise design, leading him into position at the head of the deepest hole on that stretch of the river just as the wall of discharged water arrived downstream. She’d lured her ex-husband into position just as she would have played a fish. She was a killer, too.
She was Sandy Holston, a woman with a questionable past and a smelly old dog, whose life played out along a tight line between herself and a fish on the other end. She was, admittedly, a “cold fish,” living largely on her own terms, but in this place, this watershed, this river valley, she was also a woman who might, in her own way, love.
AFTERNOON sunlight poured through the glass doors at the end of the hallway. It was the first fully warm day of spring, and Edith had asked to spend as much of it as possible outside, in the courtyard. Sandy was on her way to retrieve Edith, but before she could reach the exit, she was stopped by the exasperated voice of one of the nurses’ aides issuing from the room to her left.
“Now be a good boy for mama,” the nurses’ aide said. Sandy walked to the open door of the room and saw the aide was bent forward, wagging her finger in an old man’s sunken face while her other hand tugged at the fingers of one of the man’s hands, which were clutched tightly to the hem of the blanket covering him. “We have to get you cleaned up and changed. We don’t want to lie there all icky with poo-poo diapers, now do we? Come on, now, let’s be a good boy.”
“Stop that.” Sandy set her purse on a straight-backed chair by the door and stepped to the aide’s side.
“What?” The nurses’ aide turned, startled only slightly, the look of exasperation clear on her face.
“I said stop that.” The aide straightened up, took a step back, and her face went flat as Sandy removed her hand from the old man’s. Sandy recognized the look shifting across the aide’s face. It was, in part, a response to Sandy’s nominal authority over her, but more so it was the face of one of those women, the ones who still regarded Sandy with awe and a bit of fear as the woman for whom men had died.
“But I was just—” Sandy held up her hand, stopping the aide in midsentence.
Sandy drew the curtain around his bed, then took two latex gloves from the aide’s cart, drew them on, and leaned toward the old man in the bed. His head tilted to the side and his mouth hung halfway open, his tongue protruding slightly as it worked hopelessly with the twitch of his lips to form words. His left hand still clung desperately to his blanket, the right lay limp at his side, the fingers curled and immobile. Sandy finished snapping on the gloves and turned to the man, her voice firm and even.
“We’re going to change you now, Mr. Rankin.” His eyes flitted back and forth while the left hand struggled to clutch the blanket tighter. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but it has to be done. Just look at Edie, and she’ll hold your hand. We’ll be done in just a moment.”
Sandy glanced at Edie and nodded toward Mr. Rankin’s hand. “Just hold it,” she said softly. The aide did as instructed, and the man turned his frantic eyes to her. While he was momentarily distracted, Sandy flipped the lower portion of his blanket aside, slid off the soiled incontinence pants, disposed of them, wiped his crotch clean, and slid on a fresh pair of pants. The old man was barely able to turn his eyes back to Sandy by the time she had finished.
“There now,” Sandy said as she pulled off the used gloves and dropped them in the waste container hanging from the aide’s cart. “You’ll rest better now, Mr. Rankin.” She held her hand briefly over his limp one, then slid the curtain aside, scooped her purse from the chair, and motioned for Edie to follow her out into the hallway.
The nurses’ aide rolled her cart out of the room to where Sandy waited.
“Don’t ever do that again.” Sandy slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder.
“Why? You saw what a mess he was. I was just—” Sandy cut her off again.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Edie’s brows pinched together in confusion. “Don’t ever talk down to a resident that way again. He lacks mobility and speech, but you can see he has some awareness of what’s going on. He’s frightened and embarrassed. He’s a grown man. Don’t talk to him like he’s a child.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And pull the curtain for privacy. He’s a person, and something like this can be humiliating.”
“I’m sorry,” Edie said, the look on her face a mixture of mild regret and genuine fear.
Sandy nodded and walked to the glass doors leading to the courtyard.
Early in her time at the nursing home, Sandy would have given little if any consideration to the emotional frailty at play in custodial care such as that just
