Cal had once been her father’s closest friend, the man who helped carry wet ropes, mend engines, and sit through the awful quiet after storms, wondering if all boats and seamen would make it back alive. Back then, he had laughed easily. Nora remembered him. She also remembered how little he spoke in the weeks after Thomas vanished.
The next morning, she found him near the slipway, checking mooring lines with hands gone broad and knotted from years of salt and cold. He looked up when she called his name, and whatever welcome might have been there faded the instant she mentioned the new video doing the rounds.