She awoke before dawn, earlier than she usually did in those days, and as people tend to do, years later she would look back on that morning and realize it was a bell-weather for change. Struggling to wipe away the sleep from her foggy mind, she sat up and looked toward the window. It was still dark, the thick blackness impenetrable.

Splash! She heard the faint sound coming off the lake, and she realized that this was the second splash. The first one was what had awakened her.

It was not a loud noise – nothing was falling into the water, there were no cries for help or anything like that – but rather it was more of a ripple that a paddle or oar might cause. It was also a distant sound – not close to the cabin but perhaps somewhere out on the middle of the lake.

Though mid-summer, the air was cool that morning. She slipped off her nightgown, letting it fall to the floor, and she enjoyed the caress of the fleece against her silky, soft skin as she donned pants and a sweater.

A few minutes later, she was sitting in the enclosed sun room, cup of tea in hand, reading an anthology of P.G. Wodehouse and waiting for dawn to break.

She was in the middle of a story about Bertie and Jeeves when she looked up and saw that dawn had come – and she saw him. Well, she saw him but wouldn’t have been able to identify him – he was too far out on the lake.

There, sitting in a small, ordinary fishing boat – no motor, just oars – was a non-descript man of a non-descript age, fishing in the glassy stillness of the cool summer morn.

The mist was reaching its feathery tendrils upward, bringing a magical quality to the scene. In the background, on the opposite shore of the lake, the firs and pines rose darkly but confidently, lending a beauty to the morning.

It was a leisurely day for her. There was no place she had to be, no appointments to fulfill. She was free to do her own thing. As she reflected on that, she found it almost staggering. It had only been a month since he had left, since he had abandoned her for that young pretty thing in the office.

She was enjoying the solitude, but she was lonely – not the loneliness of not having someone to talk to, but rather of not knowing if someone cares.

She decided she wouldn’t let it get her down, though.

Deeply engrossed in her reading, she sat on the couch and read for three hours before getting up again. She stretched and decided to step onto the back deck and enjoy the fresh air.

She had quite forgotten about the fisherman, but when she stepped onto the deck she saw him again, not more than fifty feet from her, fishing in the cove behind the cabin.

The man was apparently as surprised as she was.

“G-good morning, ma’am,” the man said softly, trying to find the balance between respect, courtesy, and politeness, and keeping the conversation short so the fish were not spooked.

“Good morning,” she replied. “Catching anything?”

“Not much, just a couple so far.”

She perused him carefully. She liked what she saw. He was trim, muscular, good-looking, and perhaps five to ten years older than she was at the time.

She also knew that he liked what he saw. His eyes betrayed him.

“Well, good luck,” she said. She wanted so much to say more, to start a real conversation about life, love, anything. She decided to wait. No sense rushing these things. Rushing, she had decided, was what had caused problems for her in the past.

“Thanks, ma’am,” he nodded.

Whether he was done fishing in that cove by her cabin didn’t matter; he rowed back out onto the body of the lake and sought another cove. He seemed to be rowing thoughtfully, pensively.

She watched him a long time; at one point, he turned and looked back at her. She bashfully waved, admitting in a sense that she was looking at him. He waved in return.

He continued rowing across the still lake, disappearing into the distant shadows. Several times that afternoon she walked onto the back deck by the cove, hoping he would be there.

The night was restless for her; she tossed and turned, aching for a touch, a kiss, the warmth of a man pressed against her. She wanted a companion.

Early the next morning, she awoke before dawn, not because she heard a splash but because she wanted to hear a splash.

She waited in silence, hoping to hear something, anything. Finally she resigned herself to the solitude around her; she hugged her pillow as she slowly drifted back to sleep.

Then she heard the ripple of an oar in the water, much closer than it had been when she first heard it the previous day. The sound was coming from the cove.