“Your shoulder,” I said.
“Fine,” he said immediately.
“Finn—”
“It’s fine, Libby.”
I looked at him for a moment longer.
The silence that followed was almost normal. It was the ordinary quiet of four people on a road trip. If you ignored the abandoned vehicles and burnt-out houses along the way, it almost looked like a normal day.
Then Lily’s voice materialized from the back seat, small and earnest.
“Doc Fluffbutt did not appreciate that at all.”
I turned my head.
The cat sat rigid in his carrier, back straight, orange face pressed to the mesh window, eyes fixed on some point ahead as though the world had simply stopped making sense mid-sentence.
I laughed.
It came out unsteady and real.
Fiona snorted.
Finn’s mouth moved at the corner. Just barely.
“Yeah,” I said, facing forward again. “Tell him to get in line.”
Forty Two
I Didn’t Look Back -Finn
The sign appeared on the right side of the road, maybe ten minutes later, and I took the exit.
I knew exactly where I was now.
This stretch of Maine coastline had been familiar to me long before any of this. I’d driven this road in better circumstances, in a different version of the world, coming up to see Fiona when life still included weekend trips and reasons to visit friends. The marina owner—Cal, sixty-something, the kind of man who communicated primarily in single syllables and considered that more than sufficient—had never minded me leaving the car in his lot for weeks at a time, never charged extra, never asked many questions. He just waved from whatever he happened to be doing and went back to doing it.
I wondered briefly what had happened to Cal.
I turned left onto the dirt road past the bank, feeling the tires leave the asphalt. The treeline opened up on both sides. Before the water came into view, its scent did—salt and cold and, somehow, a sense of relief.
Then the ocean appeared.
My whole body went slack.
Thank God. Thank fucking God.
Still exactly where it should be.
I stopped at the fence; the familiar squeal of the marina gate’s hinges loud in the quiet air. After I swung it shut, the latch dropped home with a solid thunk. A quick scan of the lot showed nothing out of place—just the wind tugging at loose tarps and the creak of the docks. I pulled up to the office trailer and killed the engine, letting the silence settle. For a moment, just looking out at the water, I let myself believe we were safe.
Then I saw her.
I very nearly laughed out loud.
Sitting right there in the third slip from the left, exactly where I’d left her—the Dredge. Dark navy hull, white trim weathered but intact, her name painted on the stern in the slightly uneven letters I’d always meant to fix.
