Seven Winters

The ferry's engine dies at Grey Harbor, and six hundred tons of rusted hull groan against the pilings in the rain. For Maren Voss, that stalled engine is the last thread between the life she fled and the one she swore she'd never reclaim. She came back one week to settle her mother's estate and vanish before the town remembers her face. But a clause buried deep in the will, a clause Alderman Rourke has circled for years, threatens to unravel everything: the Voss name, the harbor, the fragile truce that kept Grey Harbor from drowning in debt and secrets. Standing at the end of that pier, hood up, hands in his pockets, is Theo Voss. Her brother. The one who stayed and held the family through seven bitter winters while she was gone. Then there's Callen Dray, the man with the scar he won't show and the silence he's carried for seven years. He's been on this dock every evening since the night Maren left. Now Rourke is pushing to close the harbor, Lila Chen is the only one who believes the clause can be untangled, and Sadie Whitlock knows what happened the night the Voss family broke apart. Every winter Maren spent away made the gap wider. Every storm made it harder to turn back. The rain is falling in sheets. The engine won't turn over. Maren Voss, at the edge of the pier with the whole town watching, must decide: board the next ferry out for good, or step off the ramp into the seven winters still waiting for her. Because the clause in that will belongs to everyone in Grey Harbor, and once it's opened, no one gets to be safe.