“And… your mom?” He looked as if he shouldn’t have asked.
I took another deep breath and held it in my lungs for a few seconds.
“My mom was hit by a car.” I winced at the memory. “She was pushing a grocery cart through a parking lot when an elderly lady backed out of a parking space too fast and hit her. The impact shattered my mom’s hip and severed her femoral artery. Doctors couldn’t save her.” I kept a careful hold on the memory so it wouldn’t overpower me. Talking about my parents made it all seem fresh again.
Ryan stepped over to where I sat in the boat and gently rubbed my back. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard that must be for you.”
“It’s hard but you have to just go on, you know? You don’t really know how much you miss something until it’s gone,” I said, looking in his eyes.
Ryan let his arm rest behind me. His presence was extremely comforting.
I felt the line on my fishing pole tug. “Hey, I think I got one!” I started to reel in my line. Ryan grabbed the net and leaned over the side to see what I caught.
“Nice!” he said enthusiastically, netting the big mouth bass that was on my hook. “He’s got to be about ten inches!” Ryan had to get the fish unhooked for me. “Good job!” He beamed.
I made a fish face at the poor fish before he released it back into the lake. “See ya Mr. Bass.”
“So tell me more about you,” Ryan started.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything!” he stated emphatically.
As we fished he asked me a barrage of questions, and I found myself telling him my life’s story. Some of his questions prompted questions of my own and he didn’t seem hesitant to tell me anything I wanted to know either.
“Actually, I was born in upstate New York,” I told him, sniffing in some of the mountain air. “I grew up near Watkins Glen. Have you ever heard of it?”
“Sure,” he replied. “I’ve even been there once. My dad took us there to see a race.”
I smiled. “Our house was only four miles from the track.”
“How long did you live there?”
“Until I was almost fourteen. We moved to Seaport when my grandfather got sick.” I pulled my hair back from my shoulders.
“I thought you grew up in Seaport. I got the impression that your dad always ran the pub.”
“No, actually my dad used to work for Corning. He was a VP there for a long time. But my grandfather had a stroke, so we moved here to take care of him. I think my dad loved his job, but when it all happened… I guess the timing was right for him to resign and slow down a little. Actually he seemed happier when he took over running the pub.”
“What about your mom? Did she work?”
I nodded and took a sip of my beer. “She worked in the admissions office at Ithaca University. I was planning on going to college there, but… things change, I guess. We moved here and Brown was closer. What about you? Did you go to college?”
Ryan smiled and looked slightly embarrassed. “I went to Pitt for two years.”
“Pitt?” I repeated.
He nodded. “I was going for a degree in Architecture,” he said remorsefully. I wanted to design houses and buildings,” he added. “I love to draw.”
“But you didn’t finish?”
Ryan appeared slightly embarrassed. “I was living at home, going to school, and doing some local theatre at the time. One of my acting coaches told me about this open audition in L.A., so I went, and soon after that I got my first major movie role. It’s pretty much been a big blur since!”
He chuckled. “I had to get an agent and a manager… and a lawyer!” He cast his line out into the water. “Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I stayed in college and didn’t get on that plane to L.A.”
“I’d like to believe that everything happens for a reason. If you hadn’t gotten on that plane, then you probably wouldn’t be sitting here in this boat on this lake right now.”
“You’re right.” He beamed. “This would have been a shame to miss. I want to have a place just like this one day. A house on a lake surrounded by woods, dock for the boat, a big stone fireplace...”
“I miss the house we used to have near the Glen,” I said. “That was near a lake too, kind of like this lake but smaller. It was a big, white farmhouse with a huge yard. We had a rope swing hanging from one of the big elm trees that would swing out over the lake; I remember we would start at the top of the embankment and run down this worn path and swing as hard as we could. It was a game to see who could swing out the farthest.”