The ferry came in eleven minutes after the harbor lights went out.
Mara saw it from the kitchen window of her mother’s house, a low white shape moving through the fog where the channel should have been. The timetable taped beside the refrigerator said the final crossing was at nine. It was nearly midnight. The boat’s red light blinked once, disappeared, then blinked again farther to the left, as if it had crossed the shoal instead of the marked passage.
She had returned to Hollow Bay that morning with two bags and a promise to stay no longer than a week. Her mother needed help sorting the house. That was the official reason. The less official reason was folded in Mara’s coat pocket: a postcard with no stamp, delivered to her apartment in the city three days earlier. On the front was a picture of the old pier. On the back, in handwriting she had spent fourteen years trying to forget, were five words: Ask who took the ferry.
She watched the vessel edge toward the landing. No deck lights were on. From this distance, the windows looked black. The town beyond the harbor was dark too, save for one amber square high in the guesthouse above the pier. Someone was awake there. Someone was watching.
Mara pulled on her coat and went outside. The road down to the water smelled of salt and wet cedar. Rain had passed an hour ago, leaving the pavement slick enough to hold the faint reflection of her phone’s torch. At the corner by the shuttered bakery, she passed the noticeboard where a new photograph of the missing had been pinned every year until the family stopped asking. The glass was empty now.
By the time she reached the harbor, the ferry was tied to the dock. Its engine idled with a dull vibration she could feel through the boards. No cars waited to drive off. The gangway was lowered, but nobody stood at its foot. Mara counted three dark windows along the passenger cabin, then noticed the fourth: a pale hand rested against the glass.
She stepped closer. The hand lifted away.
“Last crossing’s canceled,” said a voice behind her.
She turned. Eli Voss stood beneath the broken lamp at the harbor office, rain on the shoulders of his uniform. He had been a boy with scraped knuckles when she left. The uniform made him look older, but his expression was the same careful one she remembered from the days after Daniel disappeared.
“Then why is it here?” Mara asked.
Eli glanced at the boat. “Weather brought it in.” He didn’t look at the dark window. “Go home, Mara.”
The cabin door opened behind him. A figure descended the gangway slowly, one hand on the rail. Mara could not make out the face through the fog. She did not need to. The figure wore Daniel’s green coat.