The Salt Ledger
A waterlogged ledger washes against the pilings of Ashworth pier one gray morning, and Father Aldric Wynn, who keeps his small study at the end of that same pier, is the only one who sees it before the tide takes it back. Inside, written in a hand gone faint with salt, are accounts of debts no living person should owe, balanced against names that have no headstones in the churchyard. When one of those names turns up dead, the priest's quiet tenure on the coast becomes the longest inquiry of his life. Maren Calloway, the harbor master's daughter, insists her brother was not the man in the ledger. Tomas Reyes, a drifter with the wrong accent and the right questions, knows more about salt and shipping than a man of his habits ought to. The Voss family, Cillian, Mirren, and their reclusive patriarch Dorian, hold mineral rights the town forgot they were owed. Priya Nandakumar, a marine biologist cataloging the breakwater's erosion, is mapping something other than currents. Greta Solmund runs the ferry café and remembers everything; Marcus Webb, the town's new editor, is determined to print what she won't say; and Jonah Thatch, the locksmith, keeps opening doors that ought to stay locked. Father Wynn has until the next storm to learn what the ledger is balancing, and whether the price of settling the account will be paid in lives.