After River Read Online Free PDF Page A

can sleep on the bus,’ I tell him, but even as I say it I know it’s not true.
    Vern squeezes the tube too hard and white toothpaste spurts into the sink. ‘I want to be there for you, Natalie,’ he says. ‘I’d like to meet your mother before she—’ he bites off the word before it escapes from his mouth. ‘While I still have the chance.’
    I stiffen. ‘There’s lots of time, I’m sure. I’ll call you when I get there. When I know more.’
    Vern raises his eyebrows. ‘Promise?’
    â€˜Promise.’
    â€˜Stubborn,’ he mutters with a mouthful of toothpaste. But his eyes smile back at me.
    I stand at my sink and study him in the mirror while I brush my teeth.
    We’ve been together for almost ten years now, married for seven of those years. He was the one who pushed for marriage. I resisted.Given my track record, I warned him, I wasn’t a very good bet. ‘If you don’t get married, you don’t get divorced,’ I told him.
    After two failed marriages I wasn’t anxious to try a third.
    â€˜You just hadn’t met the right one until now,’ Vern insisted. Eventually he wore me down.
    We met while I was living in Vancouver. Early one rainy morning we ran into each other on the Stanley Park seawall. Literally. We were both about to pass slower joggers from opposite directions when Vern’s elbow clipped mine and sent me sprawling onto the wet blacktop. After that we began greeting each other on our morning runs. Before long we fell into an easy routine of running together. That led to after-run coffees at Starbuck’s on Denman Street and then to dating.
    Besides running, we found we shared a passion for reading, sushi, and oldies music. Before long he infected me with his passion for fly-fishing.
    Vern was a widower. He had sold his logging company on Vancouver Island to move closer to the clinic where his wife eventually lost her battle with breast cancer. Afterwards he remained in Vancouver to re-assess his life.
    When we first met he was in the throes of starting his tree-planting contracting and consulting company.
    â€˜It’s karma,’ he joked, ‘from forest-destroyer to forest-restorer.’
    Now as I watch him brush his teeth, I am still taken by how handsome he is. Vern is five-foot ten, not much taller than I am, perhaps three inches at the most. At fifty-five he still wears jeans without embarrassment, although lately I have begun to notice a thickening around the waist. He blames it on his too-successful business, which requires him to spend more time in the office and less in the field.
    His olive skin, thick dark hair, and black-brown eyes hint of First Nations ancestry somewhere back down the line.
    â€˜When I retire, I’ll take up genealogy and trace my roots,’ he once said with his lop-sided grin.
    Vern’s mouth is asymmetrical. The thinner left side of his lip rises higher than the right and twitches when he is smiling. It can be difficult to tell if his smile is genuine, or if he is trying not to smirk. And it can be rather unnerving; it would be easy to doubt his sincerity–if it weren’t Vern.
    I think this little tic adds to, rather than takes away from, his rugged good looks. I can see that I’m not the only one who finds him attractive. Sometimes, when we meet women, or even men, for the first time, I catch that flicker, that what’s-he-doing-with-her look in their eyes. Sometimes I wonder myself.
    Vern says it was my independence he was attracted to. Now he calls it stubbornness.
    He leans over the sink to spit. As he straightens up he catches me studying him in the mirror. ‘What?’
    I open my mouth, a word or two away from giving into the temptation to accept his offer. How easy it would be to have him come with me, take care of me. But I have never burdened him with my past. It’s too late to start now.
    I reach up and stroke his cheek.