Around the mountain pool, hundreds of blue butterflies flattened themselves against long, polished stones, drinking the water held in their dimpled surfaces. Emma took off her shoes and walked across the slippery rocks. Water sprayed her face and arms as she dodged the drinking butterflies and stood at the pool's edge, watching the giant trout swim around the pool. Dark blue and mottled, they skulled just below the surface, gulping up butterflies and water, their stomachs filling like empty buckets. She saw now why her husband had released them. She, too, was satisfied just to know that they were here.
        When Emma looked back at Caleb, he had built a fire on a dry rock and placed the cast iron pan on the flames. He pulled the slab of bacon from his pack, sliced a piece into the cast iron pan. As it sizzled, he pared the two potatoes into the pan and wrapped the trout in the remaining bacon. He fried the trout until their eyes turned blue and smoky, took the pan from the fire and placed it between them. He taught her how to pull the spine out of the fish by its head, all in one piece, and they ate the sweet meat with their fingers, from the cooling pan. After they finished eating, he pulled the slip of rope from the water, and in the dim light she imagined he was pulling a magnificent, shimmering trout out of the spring, one of the big and wild ones she'd been satisfied to admire just a little while ago. Another beautiful thing gone. Her heart ached with confusion and disappointment. Then he set a green, glass bottle between his knees. He smiled at her, working the cork out of the bottle with his hunting knife.
        “It's champagne.” He poured some into a water glass. “I brought it back with me from Italy. I wanted it to be a surprise. Do you want to try some?”
        The champagne flowed like liquid gold into the glass, so beautiful that even a child would be tempted to drink it.
        “Oh, why not,” she laughed, drinking. The champagne spread like sweet fire down her throat, around her breasts, under her arms and down through her ribs. When it reached her stomach, she felt sunshine, even though the sun had set and they were sitting beneath a dark canopy of trees.
        “It's beautiful,” she said, dipping her finger at the bottom of the glass.
        “You're beautiful,” he said, pouring more champagne for her.
         She squirmed. My hair is my one beauty, she thought. I am built like a farm hand. She set the glass down between them.
        “Was she pretty?” she asked.
        “Who?”
        “Your first wife.”
        Caleb paused.
        “Men liked her. She was the kind of girl who could make you feel good about yourself. She made you want to tell her all your secrets.”

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