Her mother did not ask why Mara had gone to the harbor. She asked whether anyone had followed her home.
They sat at the kitchen table with coffee neither of them drank. The house was full of half-packed boxes, each labeled in her mother’s precise block letters. Mara had spent her childhood watching those letters appear on school lunches, birthday gifts, and the envelope that once held the police report. She could tell when her mother had written in haste. The label on the nearest box—PHOTOGRAPHS—slanted down at the end.
“Why would someone follow me?” Mara said.
Her mother stirred the untouched coffee. “People here remember more than they say.”
“That’s what you’ve told me for fourteen years.”
“Because it’s true.”
Mara laid the postcard on the table. Her mother set down the spoon. For a moment she looked less like the woman who had managed every crisis in the house and more like someone hearing a door open in a room she thought was locked.
“Where did you get this?”
“It came to my apartment.”
“There was no return address?”
“There wasn’t even a stamp.” Mara turned it over. “Is that Daniel’s writing?”
Her mother looked at the five words. “It looks like it.”
Outside, the tide was withdrawing from the mudflats. At low water, the pilings of the old pier emerged in crooked rows, dark with weed. Daniel had gone missing on a night like this. He had told Mara he was meeting someone before the last crossing. She had not told the police, because she’d been angry with him and because, at twenty-two, she believed anger could be put away until morning.
Her mother rose and walked to the cupboard over the sink. She took down a tin of tea that nobody in the house had liked, shook out the leaves, and removed a key taped to the bottom. It was small and brass, its teeth worn bright.
“The guesthouse?” Mara asked.
“Room seven.” Her mother held the key so tightly it left an impression in her palm. “Your brother rented it the week before he vanished. I found this in his coat.”
“You never told me.”
“I wanted to know what was in there before you did.”
Mara waited. Her mother did not continue. The silence settled between them with the familiar weight of all the years they had spent speaking around Daniel’s name.
At last her mother pushed the key across the table. “The room was empty then,” she said. “It may not be empty now.”