Chapter 18 - The Fog on the Sound
The phone line went dead with a sharp click.
Nathan was already through the door before the screen went black, his boots pounding against the gravel road toward Goat Island. Luke drew his service revolver, and the federal agents sprinted behind them.
I ran faster than I had ever run in my life, the cold morning air searing my lungs, the memory of Christmas Eve flashing behind my eyes: the marble floor, the pain, the terror of losing my child.
I kicked open the front door of our family home.
"Claire!" I screamed.
Mrs. Higgins, our lifelong housekeeper, was sitting in the parlor, pale and trembling, rocking Claire in her arms. Claire was crying softly, startled by the shouting, but she was untouched, safe, and warm in her yellow wool blanket.
"Grace!" Mrs. Higgins cried, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. "A courier came to the gate five minutes ago. He said it was an urgent legal dispatch from the district court. He left this on the dining table and ran."
On the long mahogany dining table—the table where my father had eaten breakfast every morning of his working life—sat a small, antique wooden box wrapped in tarnished brass wire.
Beside the box was an envelope addressed to Claire in Preston’s distinctive, sharp handwriting.
Luke raised a hand, signaling everyone to stop. "Nobody touch it. Agent Miller, get the bomb squad in here."
"It’s not an explosive," I said, my voice barely a whisper. I walked past Luke, ignoring his outstretched arm, and approached the table.
I recognized the brass wire. It was the rigging wire from our father’s personal fishing boat—the boat that had vanished at sea five years ago.
With trembling fingers, I unwound the wire and lifted the lid of the box.
Inside, resting on a bed of damp, salt-encrusted seaweed, was my father’s gold Omega pocket watch. Its crystal was cracked, its hands frozen forever at 8:17.
Beneath the watch lay a handwritten note on water-damaged paper:
May you like
*Your father didn't drown, Grace. He’s waiting for you at the Dumplings light. Come alone on the tender, or the rest of his crew never comes up from the bottom.*
Outside across the sound, through the impenetrable wall of white fog, the deep, vibrating horn of an unmarked vessel groaned through the mist—slowly circling the mouth of the bay, waiting for the tide to turn.
