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    Over the years that Osborne had practiced dentistry that fact had not changed: pathologists and medical examiners still rely on teeth and dental records to identify the dead. When the seminars turned to covering enhanced uses of dental DNA, Osborne was fascinated, taking notes as avidly as a student and buying all the study materials.
    As entranced as he was by this new avocation, it was of little help when Mary Lee died unexpectedly from bronchitis that turned deadly in the midst of a winter blizzard. She left behind a dangerous void. While she had never hesitated to remind him of all the ways in which he had not quite measured up as a husband, her fussing had given his life structure. When he lost her, he lost a world made safe by how she defined their days.
    That was not a good year: No longer restrained by the pressures of a fulltime dental practice, no longer kept in line by his wife. No longer places to go or things to do.
    Too much loss in too short a time led to too many shots of Bushmills.
    Studying for the seminars forced some sobriety. That, plus a determination not to miss six thirty Mass each weekday, meant his mornings were sober if heavy-headed. But by noon he would be lost. Six months into killing himself, his daughters took over with an intervention that shook him hard: “Dad, do you want to see your grandchildren grow up? Do you?”
    Rehab followed.
    When he had returned from Hazelden, chastened and shaky, it was Ray who watched and waited for the right time to make a move. It was after a good day together in Osborne’s Alumacraft (three walleyes over twenty inches each!) that he persuaded the recovering retired dentist to attend his group (“just this once, Doc”) in the room behind the door with the coffee pot.
    It was an evening as redemptive as the fishing. And so it was that Osborne and Ray made it a weekly habit: an afternoon of fishing in Doc’s boat followed by an early dinner of sautéed catch at Ray’s trailer and a drive to town for an evening session behind that door with the coffee pot.
    Nearing the intersection where he would turn left towards the Merriman Trail, Osborne smiled. Life had its twists and turns, all right, but how could he have anticipated that an uncharacteristic urge to clean his garage would have led to a new career—and the chance to work with the woman with the dark, honest eyes and easy grin. He was a lucky guy.
    It had been a Saturday mid-April two years ago, a morning so warm that in spite of the lake breeze he was able to keep the garage doors open while he swept up dead leaves and mounds of dirt left over from winter parking. That accomplished, he opted to organize his fishing gear.
    After working through four tackle boxes, he checked each of his seventeen spinning rods to see which ones needed new line. Then a short break to fortify himself with an egg salad sandwich before returning to the garage and a jumble of cross-country ski equipment. That done, he saw other stuff that needed sorting.
    He was restacking the eight plastic tubs holding Mary Lee’s holiday ornaments when he discovered a rusty old gym locker hidden behind the tubs. Inside were three empty canvas gun cases and a bamboo fly rod that he vaguely remembered purchasing. It had never been used. On an upper shelf was a small box holding a reel loaded with fly line and two tiny plastic containers of trout flies on which someone had scrawled in black marker: “Woolly Buggers, Size 12.”
    Ah, thought Osborne, the trout flies must have been tied and given to him by a patient. Sitting down on a nearby bench, he examined the trout flies. He couldn’t imagine how else these boxes had come his way. Had he bargained for them? Often over the years, when patients were down on their luck, he would barter for venison chops or fresh-caught fish. Had he done that with these?
    Osborne sat there, tipping the boxes of trout flies this way and that. The trout flies were colorful, exquisite. Like the fly