I remember deciding not to say anything.
He’s capable, I told myself.He’ll be fine.
My heart didn’t agree.
The engine coughs to life beneath my hand, pulling me back.
The Delta settles around us, channels reforming as if nothing happened overnight. This morning, we fan out again—Mihai, Radu, and I spreading across the water while Alex stays back with the kids.
“Same pattern,” Mihai says.
“Tighter,” I answer.
Radios crackle. Coordinates traded. Boats spaced farenough to cover ground, close enough to stay connected. I correct Radu when he drifts too far left, keep my voice level.
“This isn’t a race,” I tell him. “We want overlap.”
My thoughts circle. The way I waved him off without really looking up. The first burst of static where his voice should have been. The extra five minutes I waited before telling Mihai.
By midmorning, the Delta feels smaller—not because we’ve covered it all, but because everything we haven’t covered presses in at once. Heat turns thought into effort. The radios crackle more frequently now, updates tightening into clipped exchanges.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
My hands shake on the tiller. I can’t make them stop.
Every channel looks the same. Every bend could hide him—injured, stuck, worse. My mind won’t stop showing me scenarios: the skiff overturned, him in the water unable to reach the bank, him calling for help with no one close enough to hear.
The radio crackles. “Sector four clear,” Radu reports.
My throat closes. I force the response out. “Copy. Moving to five.”
Mihai turns back to me. “Wren,” he says quietly. “We pause.”
His face is drawn, sunburnt across the bridge of his nose.
“One more sector,” I say automatically. “Then we rest.”
He studies me for a beat, then turns forward.
I scan the next channel. See movement—my pulse spikes—but it’s just reeds bending in the wind. Not him.
Twenty minutes later, another false alarm. A pale shape near the bank that resolves into driftwood when I get closer.
My chest tightens with each disappointment.
Then—
I see it.
Not him.
The skiff.
Anchored. Not adrift. Not overturned. Anchored near a shallow shelf where the reeds thin and the water lightens to green-brown.
