Page 58 of Grown-Up Second Chance

“He must be a good dad if you want to be like him.”

“He is.” The boy frowned, trying to reconcile his feelings about his dad with the yelling man in front of him.”

I looked up at the hook. “It doesn’t look that difficult to remove. I bet if you put your son on your shoulders he could get it down.”

“I’m sure I could, Dad,” the boy said eagerly.

The man glanced at me, then at his son. “Okay. Let’s see. But be careful. It’s sharp.”

As I’d suspected, the hook wasn’t hard to move.

After he put the boy down, the man looked at me. “Thanks,” he said. “I was over the top. No excuse, but I’m a little stressed. My wife and I recently split. This is my first trip with my boy since. She didn’t want him to come. If he got hurt …” He pulled the boy close to him.

I nodded. “Have a good day, then.” I looked at the boy. “And you mind your dad, you hear?”

“Yes! Yes, I will!”

I stepped off the trail and watched them walk hand in hand down the path.

“That was a good thing you did,” said a voice behind me.

I whirled around.

A short, somewhat round man stood in front of me, a small-brimmed cloth hat adorned with hooks and flies on his head. His fisherman’s vest sported more flies and pockets heavy with accoutrements, some of which slipped out of thread-webbed holes. His jowly chin displayed the short bristles of a man who hadn’t shaved in a few days, but his smile was broad and his eyes kind.

“I hate hearing parents beat up on their kids,” I said.

“So do I.” He held out his hand. “Mason Bentley,” he said. “From California. I’ve seen you at the RV park with your friends.”

“Sisters,” I clarified. “I’m Diane O’Sullivan.” We shook.

“My wife and I take a trip to the Rocky Mountains every year,” he said. “Her sister lives in St. George. She gets to visit her sister while I pretend to like my brother-in-law. Ah … the things we do for love.”

I grinned. His wife was a lucky woman.

He gestured toward the river. “My pole’s over there. Mind if we go sit for a bit? Don’t want to lose my pole if some rascal takes off with it.”

“Or I can continue my walk,” I said. “Leave you to it.”

“Nah … I’d enjoy the company. My own thoughts tend to be a bit boring if I sit with them too long.”

I followed him back to the river. He insisted I take the small camp chair he’d brought while he stood.

“You did a good job getting him to realize what he was doing,” Mason said. “I was a bit worried you weren’t going to manage to talk him down, so I was coming to help you out. But you did just fine.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I have no idea why I did that. It’s very unlike me.”

“Non-confrontational?”

“As much as possible. Although I feel like I’ve done more of it since I’ve come back to Montana.”

“Oh? Where were you before?” Mason pulled in his line and cast again, the line arcing back, then forward, before drifting to the surface of the water like a dragonfly settling down.

“You’re very good,” I said. “You must have been doing this a long time.”

“Only since my wife died about ten years ago. That’s when I finally figured out life wasn’t as long as I’d always thought it was. I’d planned on having more time. Besides, I told myself, people were fighting for the job I had.”

“What was that?” He must have remarried after his wife died.

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