The Keeper's Logbook

The logbook was where it had always been, on the shelf above the stove, swollen with nine years of damp. Mara had never been able to open it. That morning she did.

Wind, weather, ships sighted — her father's neat entries marched through the years without a single complaint. Then, on the last page, a different kind of line: Light sighted to the north-north-west. It is answering. I am going to—

The sentence stopped there. Three days later, they had found his boat.