The coach ground to a halt on a strip of gravel so old the weeds had stitched it back into the hillside. Ava Castellan pressed her palm against the smudged window and counted the seconds until the driver climbed down, his boots crunching on salt-rimed stone. Three. Four. He did not open her door.
She opened it herself.
The wind off the cove hit her like a slap, cold and tasting of brine and something older underneath, kelp and rot and the faint mineral tang of exposed rock. She pulled her coat tighter and stepped down onto ground that pitched slightly toward the water. The driver had not looked at her once since she'd boarded in the village; he had taken her fare in a gloved hand, asked no questions, and now he stood at the horse's head, his shoulders hunched as though waiting out a storm that had not yet broken.
"Miss Castellan." He said it to the horse.
"Yes."
"House is up the lane. Quarter mile. The caretaker's there, or should be." He tugged the reins. "I won't wait."
"I didn't ask you to."
He climbed up without responding, the boards of the coach creaking under his weight, and a moment later the wheels began to turn, slow at first, then gathering speed down the rutted drive. Ava watched until the coach disappeared around a stand of wind-stunted spruce. Then she turned and looked at what her great-aunt had left her.
The salt-house at Marrow Cove crouched on the headland like something waiting to be fed. Two stories of grey granite, its roof missing slates in patches that showed the black wood beneath like rot through skin. A chimney at the western end leaned slightly, held up by a strap of rusted iron bolted to the wall. The windows were shuttered, the paint so weathered she could not tell what color it had once been, only that it had been a long time since anyone had cared. A porch ran the full width of the front, its boards warped into a series of shallow cups where rain gathered and sat for days.
She shouldered her bag and started up the lane.
The path climbed through a meadow gone to wild fennel and Queen Anne's lace, their heads nodding in the wind. To her left the ground fell away sharply, and through gaps in the scrub she caught glimpses of the cove itself, a sliver of black water between grey rocks, the kind of place where the tide went out and left nothing but stones and the smell of dead weed. A heron stood on a boulder, motionless, watching her with one pale eye until she passed.
Her great-aunt had not invited her here. Her great-aunt had not spoken to her in eleven years, not since the hearing, not since the Castellan family had decided that what Ava had done was worse than what had been done to her, and that the correct response to injustice was to erase the person who had noticed it. The letter had come from a lawyer in the county seat, four pages of legal language wrapped around a single blunt fact: Marrow Cove, all of it, the house and the land and the outbuildings and whatever rights ran with them, now belonged to Ava Castellan, sole heir, contingent upon her physical presence at the property within thirty days of the date of probate.
She had read the letter three times. She had not called her mother. She had packed a bag.
At the top of the lane, where the fennel gave way to a patch of trampled grass and an old rain barrel, the front gate hung off one hinge. A man sat on the porch steps with a mug in his hands and a dog at his feet, a brindled mutt that lifted its head when Ava's boot scuffed a stone. The man did not stand. He was somewhere past sixty, weathered down to the color and texture of the boards he sat on, with a white beard trimmed close and eyes the pale blue of shallow water.
"You must be the niece," he said.
"Hallam Crewe?" She had read the name in the letter's margin, scrawled there in a hand that was not the lawyer's.
"Caretaker. Such as it is." He gestured at the house with his mug. "Welcome to Marrow Cove. It's less than it looks."
"That's a low bar."
"It's the only one I've got." He took a sip, watching her over the rim. "You got a key, or did they send you out without one?"
She set her bag down and reached into her coat. The key was heavy, old iron, the bow shaped like a coiled rope. It had come in a manila envelope with no note. "It was in the paperwork."
"That's Esther's. She kept the other two on her person." He set the mug down on the step beside him. "I'll warn you now, since nobody else will. This place has rules. The locals will tell you it's a covenant, a kind of old agreement between the house and the people who live around the cove. I say it's a nuisance and a half, and that Esther knew more about it than she ever told me."
"What kind of rules?"
"The kind you don't break." He scratched the dog's ear. "The doors face the water. They have to. The chimneys are swept in autumn, not spring, and only by a March. The garden out back, if you can call it a garden, gets planted in a certain order, in a certain week, and if the tide is wrong you wait. You don't plant against the tide. You don't sweep the porch after dark. You don't open the cellar on a new moon." He paused. "You don't go down to the cove at low water alone."
Ava stood with the key in her palm. The wind tugged at her hair, and somewhere out past the headland a foghorn sounded, low and mournful, two notes spaced too far apart.
"That last one," she said. "Why not?"
"Because the cove takes things at low water. Esther said it didn't, the way a thing is when it's already happened. She said the cove had already taken what it was going to take." He looked at her then, directly, and there was something in his eyes she didn't like, not fear exactly, but the look of a man who had decided to stop arguing with his own observations. "She said the coven folk had an old word for it. The slow pull. She said you could feel it if you stood in the wrong place at the wrong time, a kind of drag in your chest, like the ground remembering you were standing on it."
The dog whined and pressed closer to his leg.
"I didn't come here for folklore," Ava said.
"Nobody does. They come for one reason, and the reason changes, and the folklore is what's here when they arrive." He stood, finally, and the movement was slow, the joints protesting. "I'll show you the front room. There's a fire laid. Esther liked a fire, even in summer. The chimney draws well, which is the only thing about this place that draws well."
He took a ring of keys from his belt, selected one, and fitted it into the lock beside the heavy iron one she already held. The door swung inward on hinges that did not creak, which she noted, because every other surface on the property had announced its neglect.
The front room was larger than it had any right to be, running the full depth of the house, with windows at either end that let in a grey, even light. A stone fireplace dominated the far wall, the kind built for heating a room, not for show, and the logs set in the grate were dry and well-seasoned. A table stood in the center, heavy oak, scarred with rings and knife marks. Two chairs. A sideboard with a jug and two glasses. A clock on the mantel, stopped at a quarter past three, the hands rusted in place.
Someone had been keeping this room ready. Not Crewe, she thought, watching him move to the fireplace and strike a match. Someone who knew she was coming.
"There's food in the cold box," he said, not looking at her. "Bread, butter, a joint of salt fish. The well is good, but boil it for the first few days, until your stomach remembers. The privy is out back, past the woodpile. There's a tin bath behind the kitchen door, and a pump in the scullery that works if you prime it." He lit the kindling, and the flame caught, and the room began to warm. "I'll be in the cottage down the lane. If you need me, bang on the door. If you need me in the night, wait until morning. I don't answer after dark, and neither does anyone else on this stretch of coast."
"Why not?"
"Because the dark belongs to the cove, and what lives in it, and we made our arrangements a long time ago." He straightened up, and the dog pushed past his legs and into the room, circled once, and lay down on a rug in front of the fire. "The dog stays. He was Esther's, and he'll pine if I take him back."
She looked at the dog. The dog looked at her.
"Does he have a name?"
"Brine." Crewe buttoned his coat. "Don't let him out after dark. Don't let him down to the cove. Don't let him into the cellar." He ticked them off on his fingers, as though reading from a list. "Three rules for the dog. There's three rules for you, too, but those are different. Esther wrote them down somewhere in the house. You'll find them when you find them."
"And if I break them?"
He paused at the door, his hand on the frame. The firelight caught the side of his face, and for a moment he looked older than he had on the steps, and tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
"Then you'll wish you hadn't," he said. "That's all I know. That's all Esther told me, and she was a woman who knew a great deal more than she told."
He left, and the door closed behind him, and the room was quiet except for the fire and the dog and the slow tick of the stopped clock, which Ava could have sworn was not moving when she had first looked at it, and was now.
She crossed to the mantel and put her hand on the clock's face. The metal was warm. The minute hand had moved a single notch, from three to four, and it sat there, mocking her, while the second hand did not move at all.
She took her hand away.
Brine lifted his head and whined, a soft, apologetic sound, and she realized the wind had shifted. The smell of the cove was stronger now, coming through the gaps in the shutters, and underneath it, faint but unmistakable, a smell she had not encountered in years, not since the last time she had walked a beach at low tide and found a body in the rocks.
Salt. Copper. The cold iron smell of a kill.
She went to the window and pushed the shutter open an inch. The cove was down there, the water black and flat, the rocks slick with weed. Nothing moved on the beach. Nothing moved on the water. The foghorn sounded again, two notes, and a heron, the same heron or another, lifted from a boulder and flew inland, its wings beating slow and heavy against the grey.
Ava let the shutter fall closed and stood in the dim room with her back to the wall, listening to the fire pop and the clock tick its single, stubborn tick, and she thought, for the first time since the lawyer's letter, that her great-aunt had not left her an inheritance.
She had left her a warning.
She found the journal in the back of a wardrobe in the bedroom, under a stack of linens that smelled of lavender and cedar and the slow rot of decades. It was wrapped in oilskin, the kind her father had used to keep charts dry on the trawlers, and tied with a length of tarred cord that had gone stiff as wire. The cord cut her thumb when she broke it, and a bead of blood welled up and fell onto the oilskin, dark against the dark.
The journal itself was small, no bigger than her spread hand, bound in calfskin that had gone the color of weak tea. The clasp was brass, and locked.
She sat on the edge of the unmade bed, turning the journal over in her hands. There was no name on the cover, no date, nothing to indicate whose it had been or what they had thought worth recording. The lock was small and tight and old, the kind of mechanism that Hettie associated with sea chests and dowry boxes and the sorts of things that were meant to be opened only once, by the right hands, on the right day.
She worked at the lock with the small pick she kept on her keyring, a habit from years of creaking doors and rusted hasps, and after a minute the little brass tongue gave way with a click that sounded, in the stillness of the room, like a small bone snapping.
The first page was blank. The second was blank. She flipped through, and the first dozen pages were all blank, the paper gone brown at the edges and soft as cloth, and then, halfway through, the writing began.
It was a woman's hand, neat and slanted, in ink that had faded from black to sepia. No name. No date. Just the writing, and a single line at the top of the first filled page.
She came back with the tide.
Hettie read the line three times. She looked up at the shuttered glass, the slats of light that fell across the bed like bars, and then she looked down again and turned the page.
I knew her at once. I have known her all my life, though I have not seen her since I was a girl. She wore the same face. She wore the same coat. She had the same way of standing at the edge of the water, with her shoulders set, as if she were waiting for something to come in or go out. I went down to the beach. I did not call out. I did not wave. I knew, in the way one knows certain things, that if I called out or waved, she would come, and I did not want her to come.
Hettie turned the page. The writing continued, smaller now, the letters pressed close together as if the writer had been hurrying, or afraid.
She stood on the sand for a long time. The tide came in around her ankles and she did not move. I watched from the porch. I did not go down. I told myself I would go down in the morning. I told myself I would bring a lantern, or a coat, or something to offer her. In the morning, when I looked, the sand where she had stood was smooth, and there were no footprints, and there was nothing on the beach but a coil of rope, and the rope was knotted in a knot I did not know.
Hettie stopped reading. She sat with the journal open on her knee and looked out at the shuttered window, and she could feel the pulse in her thumb where the cord had cut her, and she could feel, too, something else, a kind of recognition that lived in the chest rather than the head, a slow, sour weight, like the feeling one has upon waking from a dream that one cannot quite recall but that one knows, with a certainty that outruns reason, was not a dream at all.
She turned more pages. Some were blank. Some had writing. Some had sketches, small and precise, of knots she did not recognize, and of a woman standing on a beach, drawn from behind, the coat dark against the sand, the hair loose. In one sketch, the woman had no face. In another, the woman had Ava's face.
Hettie closed the journal and set it on the bed beside her, and she sat for a long time, listening to the clock tick its slow tick in the parlor, and to the wind, and to the foghorn, and to her own breathing, which sounded louder than it should have, as if the room were amplifying it, or as if the room were listening.
She got up and went back down the narrow stairs, and Brine was waiting at the bottom, his tail going, his ears back, and she rested her hand on his head and felt the warmth of him and the steady pulse under the soft fur.
"Good lad," she said, and her voice sounded strange to her, too loud, too flat, as if she were speaking into a well.
She went into the parlor. She looked at the clock. The minute hand had not moved from the four. The second hand had not moved at all. The fire had burned down to a bed of coals, and the room was darker than it had been, and colder, and the smell of the cove was in the room now, under the lavender and the dust, salt and weed and that other smell, the iron smell, the smell that had no name.
She crossed to the mantel. Beside the clock, half-hidden by a vase of dried hydrangea that had gone the color of bone, there was a small case, hinged, covered in tooled leather that had peeled at the corners. She had not seen it when she had first looked. She had not been looking for it. She had been looking at the clock.
She picked it up. It was lighter than she expected, and warmer than it should have been, as if it had been sitting in a patch of sun, though the parlor had no sun. She opened it.
Inside, propped against a pad of faded velvet, was a daguerreotype.
The plate was small, no more than three inches by two, and the image was sharp in the way that only daguerreotypes are sharp, every detail etched with a precision that made the modern world look soft. A woman stood on a beach, the water behind her, the rocks behind that, and a low fog lying on the water like a blanket. The woman wore a dark coat. Her hair was loose. Her face was turned, three-quarters, toward the camera, and her expression was the expression of someone who has just heard her own name called from a great distance and is not sure whether to answer.
Hettie looked at the face.
She looked at it for a long time.
The woman in the plate was Ava. Not was Ava. Was not Ava. Was a woman who wore Ava's face the way one wears a coat that has been lent, or borrowed, or stolen. The bones were the same. The eyes were the same. The mouth was the same. But the woman in the plate was older, or tired, or ill, or all three, and there was something in the set of her shoulders, in the angle of her jaw, that Ava did not have, a kind of resignation, a kind of waiting, that Hettie had not seen in Ava's face and hoped she never would.
She turned the plate over. On the back, in a hand that matched the hand in the journal, was a single line.
1823. E.C.
E.C. She did not know who E.C. was. She did not want to guess. She set the daguerreotype face-down on the mantel and stepped back, and Brine pressed against her leg, and she rested her hand on his head again and stood there, in the dim parlor, with the smell of the cove in her nostrils and the taste of salt on the back of her throat, and she thought of the journal, and the line at the top of the first filled page, and the knot that the woman in the journal had not known, and the woman on the beach who had worn Ava's face a hundred and two years before Ava had been born.
She thought of the lawyer's letter. She thought of the way Ava had stood at the window, the way Ava had not eaten, the way Ava had looked at the cove as if she had been looking at it for years rather than minutes. She thought of the sound of the clock, ticking its single, stubborn tick, and of the fact that the clock had not been ticking when she had first come into the room.
She thought of the smell of the cove, salt and copper and cold iron, the smell of a kill, the smell of something that had come in with the tide and not gone out.
She crossed to the window and opened the shutter a second time. The cove was down there, the water black and flat, the rocks slick with weed. The fog was thicker now, lying on the water like a lid, and the foghorn sounded, two notes, low and long, and the sound rolled across the cove and broke against the cliff and came back to her, and in the interval between the two notes, she heard, or thought she heard, another sound, a small sound, the sound of a door closing somewhere down on the beach, or the sound of a latch lifting, or the sound of nothing at all, just the sea, just the air, just the house settling on its bones.
She let the shutter fall closed.
She went back to the mantel and picked up the daguerreotype and held it at arm's length and looked at the woman's face, and the woman's face looked back at her, and Hettie thought, for the second time since she had come into the house, that there were things in this cove that the chart did not show and the compass did not point to and the lead line did not find, and that the woman who had lived in this house had known them, and had written them down, and had locked the journal and wrapped it in oilskin and hidden it under the linens because she had not wanted anyone to know, and had left the daguerreotype on the mantel because she had wanted, despite everything, for someone to see.
She set the daguerreotype down.
She went to the door and opened it, and the dog pressed past her, out onto the porch, and she stood there, with the wind on her face and the fog in her hair, and looked down at the cove, and the cove looked back, and she thought of the knot she did not know, and the face she did know, and the smell she could not name, and she thought that whatever had come in with the tide was not yet finished, and that the woman in the daguerreotype had known it, and that the woman in the journal had feared it, and that Ava, somewhere up the coast, in a rented cottage that smelled of damp and linoleum, was sleeping, or trying to sleep, or lying awake in the dark, listening to the same foghorn, hearing the same two notes, dreaming, perhaps, of a beach she had never seen, or of a face she had never worn, or of a door opening, somewhere, at the edge of the water.
She went back inside. She closed the door. She locked it, and the bolt went home with a sound like a small bone setting, and she stood in the dim parlor, with her hand on the bolt and her back to the room, and the clock ticked its single tick, and the coals settled in the grate, and the smell of the cove pressed against the shutters like a hand against a window, and she waited, without knowing for what, for the sound of footsteps on the path, or for the sound of the tide turning, or for the sound, softer than either, of someone, somewhere, beginning to write.
Hettie did not sleep. She sat in the chair by the cold grate, the dog curled against her ankles, and she listened to the house settle, and to the fog press against the windows, and to the low, distant moan of the cove, and she waited, without knowing for what, and the hours passed, and the dark did not lift, and the smell of the sea grew sharper as the tide crept back toward the house.
She dozed, and woke, and dozed again. In one of those thin, uneasy sleeps she dreamed of the daguerreotype, and in the dream the woman's eyes were open, and they were not her eyes but her father's, and they were not her father's but the dog's, and they were the color of the water in the cove at the turn of the tide, that thin, unnatural green, and the woman in the dream spoke, and her voice was the voice of the foghorn, two notes, low and then lower, and Hettie woke with the sound still in her ears, and the room was gray, and the dog was watching her, and she could not remember what the woman had said.
She rose and made tea and drank it standing at the window, looking down at the cove. The fog had thinned but not lifted. The water was the color of pewter, and the rocks along the shore were slick and dark, and the gulls were silent, and the air tasted of salt and something else, something faintly metallic, something she could not place. She set the cup down and went to the door and opened it, and the dog pressed past her, out onto the porch, and she stood there, with the wind on her face and the fog in her hair, and looked down at the cove, and the cove looked back, and she thought of the knot she did not know, and the face she did know, and the smell she could not name, and she thought that whatever had come in with the tide was not yet finished, and that the woman in the daguerreotype had known it, and that the woman in the journal had feared it, and that Ava, somewhere up the coast, in a rented cottage that smelled of damp and linoleum, was sleeping, or trying to sleep, or lying awake in the dark, listening to the same foghorn, hearing the same two notes, dreaming, perhaps, of a beach she had never seen, or of a face she had never worn, or of a door opening, somewhere, at the edge of the water.
She went back inside. She closed the door. She locked it, and the bolt went home with a sound like a small bone setting, and she stood in the dim parlor, with her hand on the bolt and her back to the room, and the clock ticked its single tick, and the coals settled in the grate, and the smell of the cove pressed against the shutters like a hand against a window, and she waited, without knowing for what, for the sound of footsteps on the path, or for the sound of the tide turning, or for the sound, softer than either, of someone, somewhere, beginning to write.
Then the dog growled.
It was a low sound, not the yap of a terrier but something deeper, something that came from the chest and not the throat, and Hettie turned, and the hair on the dog's back was raised, and it was facing the door, and the door was closed, and the bolt was home, and yet the dog was growling, and Hettie felt the fine hairs on her own arms rise, and she did not move, and the dog did not move, and the growl went on and on, a thin, continuous sound, and then it stopped, and the silence was worse.
A knock came at the door. Three knocks, even and unhurried, and a voice, male, low, smooth, said, "Miss March? I am Lucien Brier. I believe you are expecting me. Or rather, I believe you have been expecting something like me, for rather longer than you know. Might I trouble you for a moment of your time? It is rather raw out here, and I have come a very long way to discuss a small matter of property."
Hettie did not answer. She stood very still, and the dog pressed against her leg, and she could feel its heart beating through the thin fur, fast and hard, and she thought of her father's rule: do not open the door until you have counted to ten, and thought of the other rule, the one she had never been told but had always known: do not open the door for a man whose voice sounds like polished wood, because polished wood is what they make coffins from.
"I can hear you breathing, Miss March," the voice said, and there was amusement in it, and patience, and something else, something that sounded like the cove at low tide, something that smelled faintly of brine and faintly of money. "I have no wish to alarm you. I am merely a solicitor. I have papers. I have letters. I have a key to the lighthouse, which I am told you also possess, though I do not imagine you have used it. We have a great deal to discuss, you and I, and the morning is wasting, and the fog will not lift until it chooses to, and I would rather we did not conduct our business on the doorstep."
Hettie unbolted the door. She did not know why. Her hand moved before her mind gave it leave, and the bolt slid back, and she turned the knob, and the door swung inward, and the fog came in with him, cold and salt and faintly sweet, and he stood on the threshold, and he was taller than she expected, and thinner, and his coat was dark and well cut, and his shoes were polished, and his face was the color of old ivory, and his eyes were the color of the water in the cove at the turn of the tide, and he smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes.
"Miss March," he said, and he removed his hat, and his hair was silver at the temples, and his voice was the voice of polished wood. "How good of you. I had feared I might have to wait until the tide went out."
Hettie stepped back. The dog did not growl, and that was worse. It sat on its haunches and watched him, and its eyes were wide and dark, and it did not make a sound.
"Come in," Hettie said. "Before the whole cove knows."
He came in, and the smell of him came in with him, brine and cologne and something else, something faintly chemical, something that reminded her of the inside of a new boat, of varnish and fresh paint and the sharp, sweet smell of treated wood. He stood in the parlor and looked around, and his gaze lingered on the daguerreotype, and on the journal, and on the locked drawer, and on the clock, and on the cold grate, and on the dog, and on Hettie, and he smiled again, and the smile was a thing with teeth.
"A charming room," he said. "So atmospheric. I can see why the previous occupant was so attached to it. Though I am told she was attached to rather more than the room. She was attached to the cove, and to the light, and to certain documents which ought, by rights, to have come to me long ago. I am a patient man, Miss March. I have waited seven years for those documents. I can wait a little longer. But I should like to know where they are, and I should like to know what you have done with them, and I should like to know who else has been in this house, and who else has touched what does not belong to them."
"I have not touched anything that does not belong to me," Hettie said.
"And yet," he said, and he moved closer, and his shoes were very quiet on the floor, quieter than they ought to have been, and he stopped in front of the daguerreotype, and he looked at it, and his face did not change, and his eyes did not change, and only his mouth moved, a small, thin movement, like a fish surfacing and sinking again. "And yet the room smells of you, Miss March. And of someone else. And of the sea. And of something I cannot quite place. Something old. Something that ought to have stayed buried."
Hettie said nothing.
"You have a visitor," he said. "Or you have had one. A young woman, I think. Fair hair. Coast Guard bearing, though she would not thank me for saying so. She was here two days ago. She left a hair on the doorframe, and a fingerprint on the glass, and a smell of her own, diesel and salt and something faintly bitter. She is looking for something, Miss March. She thinks she is looking for salvage. She is looking for something else. She does not know what it is yet. But I do. And I should like to find it before she does."
Hettie's mouth was dry. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" he said, and he laughed, and the laugh was soft and brief and did not echo. "I want what I have always wanted. I want what is mine. I want the papers that were hidden in this house by a woman who had no right to hide them. I want the key that she kept, and the map that she drew, and the name that she wrote in that journal, the name she did not finish. I want the cove. I have always wanted the cove. It is the finest natural harbor on this stretch of coast, and it has been wasted on a lighthouse and a few crumbling cottages for far too long. I have plans for it. I have always had plans. And I do not intend to be thwarted by a woman who talks to dogs, or by a girl who thinks she is searching for a wreck."
He stepped closer. The dog stood and put itself between them, and it did not growl, and it did not bark, and it simply stood there, and its eyes were fixed on Brier, and Brier looked down at it, and his smile faded, and something else came into his face, something that was not a smile and not a frown, something that Hettie could not read.
"A clever animal," he said. "Your father trained it well. He trained it to bark at strangers. He did not train it to bark at me. I wonder why."
"Because you are not a stranger," Hettie said, and she did not know why she said it, and the words came out before she could stop them, and Brier's eyes changed, and for a moment, just a moment, the polished surface cracked, and something old and cold looked out from behind it, and then the smile was back, and the surface was whole.
"Clever," he said. "Cleverer than I gave you credit for. Your father was clever too. Too clever. That is why he had to go."
Hettie's hands were fists at her sides. "Do not speak about my father."
"I speak about him with the greatest respect," Brier said. "He was a remarkable man. He kept this coast for thirty years. He kept it from people like me. He thought he could keep it forever. He was wrong. Everyone who stands in my way is wrong. Your father was wrong. The woman in the daguerreotype was wrong. You are wrong, Miss March. And the girl who is searching the seabed for a wreck that is not there, she is wrong too. I am sorry for it. I am not without feeling. But I am not without resources either, and I have come for what is mine, and I will have it, and you may as well save us both the trouble of pretense."
He reached into his coat and took out an envelope, and he set it on the table, and the envelope was thick and cream-colored, and the seal was red, and the wax was pressed with a device Hettie did not recognize, a thing that looked like a coil of rope, or a knot, or a hand.
"Read it," he said. "There is no hurry. The fog will not lift. The girl will not come today. The dog will not bite. Read it, and think about it, and when I call again, which I will, you will have an answer for me. That is all I ask. An answer. A simple yes, or a simple no. Though I warn you, Miss March, I have never yet accepted no. And I do not intend to begin now."
He turned and walked to the door, and the fog came in again, cold and salt and faintly sweet, and he stepped out onto the porch, and he did not look back, and his footsteps faded down the path, and the fog swallowed him, and the cove was silent, and the dog sat down and pressed against Hettie's leg, and Hettie stood in the parlor, with her hands at her sides and her heart in her throat, and she looked at the envelope on the table, and the red seal, and the cream-colored paper, and she did not touch it, not yet, and the clock ticked its single tick, and the coals settled in the grate, and the smell of Brier lingered in the room, brine and cologne and something faintly chemical, something that reminded her of the inside of a new boat, of varnish and fresh paint, and the smell of the cove pressed against the shutters like a hand against a window, and somewhere, far out over the water, the foghorn sounded, two notes, low and then lower, and the tide began to turn.