There's a homeless man fishing by the river. As Kate approaches, she sees that there's no line in his rod. But the man is carefully, even skillfully, going through the motions. He had a life once where fishing was possible, and he hasn't wanted to give that up. He waves to Kate. She waves back. She thinks of her father, how he'd get home from a shift at the mill. How he'd scoop her up and take her to the river, and let her fish to her heart's content with a stick and a string and a bent pin. She liked the fish she caught in her imagination. Her father even helped her get a book out of the library so she could name the imaginary fish: pike, mackerel, trout. Kate could see, with more than 50 years' worth of hindsight, how much her father had needed to believe in those fish, too: that eventually, the river was going to give him something back. Well, he'd been wrong. And so was Kate.