Chapter 18 of 18Anything On or Near

The storm had taken the north seawall, the sand beneath it, and the footing stones Nora Vance was counting on to hold her foundation. High water was set for 4:12. Between now and then, the sea would decide whether the Salt-Spray Cottage stayed on Tern Island.

She called Grace before she called anyone else.

"Grace. It's Nora."

"You're up early."

"The north bank went last night."

"How much of it?"

"All of it. The seawall's on the bottom and the footing stones are hanging in the air."

Silence on the line, the kind a scientist makes while she rearranges her morning.

"I told you it was moving," Grace said.

"You did."

On Grace's end, something metal knocked against something else. A cooler lid, maybe.

"I've got survey stakes sunk in that bank."

"The tide's got them now."

"Then I'll be out at nine to see what's left. Don't put a machine on that bank until I've looked at it."

"I don't own a machine."

"Good."

Nora pocketed the phone. Fog sat on the Port Blossom shore in one long gray loaf, and the wind came off the water smelling of kelp and diesel. She walked the bank again, counting footing stones the way she'd count joists before a bid.

Ben came down the path from the dock with a length of rebar over one shoulder and a paper bag in his other hand.

"Step back off that."

She stepped back. Dead beach grass hung over empty air where the bank had been, and below it the stones of her north wall stood in nothing at all.

"How bad?" she said.

He drove the rebar into the top of the bank. It sank to his fist and stopped.

"That bad," he said. "Two more tides like last night, and you'll have a cottage on a shelf." He handed her the bag. "Two red snappers. Marge sent them. Said you'd be up before the diner opened."

"They're cold."

"They're better cold."

Nora ate one standing up, the dye coming off on her fingers.

"Then I have until four o'clock."

"You have until four o'clock to get the tools uphill." He worked the bar loose and knocked the sand off it. "New seawall runs eighteen thousand. That's with my labor at cost."

"I don't have eighteen thousand."

"Didn't figure you did."

They walked it together, north along the tide line, past the tumbled stones and a coil of copper flashing the wind had torn off the roof. Where the beach had scoured away, black peat showed, and under the peat, blue clay that had not seen daylight since the cottage was framed.

"Your daughter was right about this bank," Nora said.

"Grace is right about most things." Ben picked a length of bull kelp off the sand and threw it back in the water. "She'll be glad to hear it from you and not from me."

"I'll tell her at nine."

Nora stopped walking.

"Ben."

He came up beside her and looked where she was looking.

The ribs stood out of the wet sand at the low tide line, black and dripping, five of them, then a gap, then two more, curving up and over like the frame of a thing asleep. Weed hung off the tallest one.

"That isn't driftwood," she said.

"No."

She crouched and put both hands on the nearest rib. White oak under the black, split into gray slivers, cold as a cellar floor. Where the rib had met plank, iron pins showed, eaten down to lace. She worked a thumbnail into a seam and came out with a curl of oakum, still tarred.

"Steam-bent frames," she said. "Treenails. Iron-fastened. She was built to work."

"You can tell all that from the outside."

"I can tell the shape of her." Nora stood and wiped her hands on her jeans. "I can't tell you why she's here. Nobody beaches a sound boat above the tide line."

"Nobody beached this one. She got buried." Ben nodded at the bank. "Sand moves twice a year on this shore. A hull goes under and the sand keeps coming, and then a night like last night takes it back off."

"How long under?"

"Fifty, maybe ninety years. Depends how deep she sat."

Nora took out her phone and photographed the ribs from the north, from the south, and down the keel line where the sand was still packed hard as a road.

"What are you doing?" Ben said.

"Documenting it."

"Why."

"Because the last thing that turned up on this beach, somebody came after with a pry bar." She slid the phone into her pocket. "And the docket from the roof is still in my kitchen drawer."

"It'll go the way the diary went."

"Probably."

Ben looked north past the point, where the water was flat and pale and the fog was lifting off the mainland in pieces. Then he looked at her.

"He's already coming," he said.

The dory came around the point with its bow up and its outboard coughing, Silas Blackwood in the stern the way he sat in everything, straight-backed and unhurried, wool cardigan buttoned to the throat in June. He ran the boat onto the sand, stepped off into the shallows in knee boots, and did not look at Nora once. He looked at the ribs.

"Silas. Good morning," Nora said.

He walked past her. He put a hand flat on the tallest rib, the way a man puts a hand on the neck of a horse he owns, and stood there with his white beard lifting in the wind.

"That's her," he said.

"Whose?" Ben said.

"The Blackwood trawler. My grandfather's boat." Silas turned around. "The fact of the matter is, she's been off the charts since 1921, and now she's on Blackwood ground."

"Your ground," Nora said.

"Tern Island belonged to Blackwood before it belonged to Finch. You can look it up, though it won't do you much good, the way records keep catching fire around here."

"Silas," Ben said. "You can't put your hand on nine ribs and a keel and tell me whose boat that is."

"I don't need a name board. I know the shape of her."

"You know the shape of a story."

Silas reached into his cardigan pocket and brought out a brass tag on a length of tarred twine. He crouched at the tallest rib, wrapped the twine around it twice, and knotted it. The tag turned in the wind.

"Salvage," he said. "Anything on or near this vessel is mine, and I'll be at the harbormaster's office in the morning to file it properly."

"You can't file salvage on a wreck sitting in my shoreline."

"I can file on a derelict. The law's older than you are." He straightened and dusted his knees. "Anything that came ashore with her comes with her. Crates. Coin. Whatever's left."

"You don't know there's anything in her but sand," Ben said.

"Don't I."

Ben stepped forward. Nora put a hand flat on his arm, because she had seen Ben's shoulders square before and knew what came after, and a fight on this beach would bring the sheriff, and the sheriff would bring the town, and the town would bring Marcus Thorne.

Silas watched her hand on Ben's arm. The corner of his mouth moved.

"Nothing in her but sand," he said. "That'll be the line, then."

He turned away from the wreck and looked past the bank, past the footing stones standing in air, up the path to the cottage on its ledge: tarped roof, new shutters, one chimney Nora had not yet touched.

"All the old secrets are coming to the surface," he said, low, not looking away from the house. "And they belong to the Blackwoods."