That was never a good sign.
Chapter two
The Broken Ones
Thecleatwasrustedagain.
Evan knelt at the edge of Dock Three with a wire brush in one hand and a rag soaked in penetrating oil in the other. The metal was pitted and orange where the salt had eaten through the coating, same as it did every summer. He’d put in the request for stainless replacements twice. Both times the budget had gone somewhere more visible.
Christmas lights, probably.
He worked the brush in short, firm strokes. The harbor was calm, barely a ripple. Two pelicans sat on the far pilings like old men waiting for a bus. The air smelled like creosote and warm wood and the faint trace of frying oil from the boardwalk, where the food vendors were testing equipment for the expo.
Nine days out, and the resort was already humming with it. Extra trucks in the service lot. Strangers with lanyards. Music at odd hours. He’d been through enough of these to know the pattern. Excitement, then stress, then finger-pointing, then cleanup.
He preferred the cleanup. Quiet work. Nobody watching.
“Morning, Evan.”
Ray Guidry, captain of the charter boatMiss Behavin’, came down the dock with a tackle box in each hand. Sixty-three, sunburned to leather, and full of opinions about everything.
“Morning, Ray.”
“Missed you at church Sunday.” Ray set the tackle boxes down and leaned against a piling.
“I’ll catch the next one.”
“That’s what you said last month.” Ray tipped his cap back and squinted at him. “Anyway. You see they brought in that event planner from Raleigh? Lacey’s showing her the ropes, but this new one’s running the whole Christmas mess. Clipboard, pen, and everything. She was out here yesterday looking at the fireworks permit like she was reading a warrant.”
“I saw her.”
“Pretty thing. Wound tight, though.” Ray scratched his jaw and watched the water. “Remind you of anyone?”
Evan didn’t look up from the cleat. “Nope.”
“Liar.” Ray mumbled it. “Lauren was the same way. Running three things at once, keeping the universe in order. You used to call it her superpower.”
Evan’s hands went still on the wire brush. He didn’t answer.
Ray had the good sense not to push it further. He picked up his tackle boxes and headed for his slip.
“They’re doing a sound check at noon,” he called back over his shoulder. “Fair warning. Oh, and somebody came in through the south channel late yesterday. No flag. Might want to check the guest log.”
Evan raised a hand and went back to work. That was how most of his conversations went. People in Harbor’s Hope liked him. They waved from their boats, brought him coffee, stopped by the dock shed with sandwiches from the deli on Front Street. He returned the waves. Accepted the sandwiches. Kept the rest of himself tucked away where it belonged.
Five years was long enough to build a routine. Not long enough to stop needing one.
He finished the cleat, moved to the next one, and tried not to think about the date.
July twelfth. Lauren’s birthday.
She would have been thirty-two. She would have wanted dinner at Crabby’s, the little place on the sound side with the crooked porch and the string lights. Something small, the way she always did.
The image broke through. Lauren crouching on the wet sand at dusk, turning a broken shell over in her palm as if it were worth studying. She’d done that every time. Even the broken ones.
He pressed his knuckles into his thigh and shut it down. A pelican dove off the far piling and hit the water with a flat, heavy splash. He watched it surface with a fish and swallow it whole. Simple math. Hunger, then action, then results.
The compass sat heavy in his pocket. Brass Brunton, cracked crystal, her grandfather’s. She’d given it to him on their wedding day. “So you always find your way back to me,” she’d said and he’d laughed because it was sentimental and corny and completely her.
