"Fog's lifting by ten," the waitress said, setting the mug down. "Radio says so, anyhow."
"I'll believe it when I can see the far shore," Nora Vance said, and wrapped both hands around it.
"Cream's on the counter if you want it."
"Black's fine."
The Chart & Compass was the only diner on Port Blossom's Main Street. Four customers in work boots ate without talking. Wild blueberry jam sat by the register, price inked on masking tape.
"Everybody at this counter takes it black." She wiped a ring out from under the ketchup. "Chowder's haddock today. Eight dollars with the roll."
"Hold a bowl for me if I'm back by noon."
"You'll be back by noon."
"Is the jam local?"
"Made it myself, out of the bushes behind the church."
The bell over the door rang. Ben Carter came in smelling of diesel and took the stool beside her.
"You're early," he said.
"So are you."
"Tide, not choice." He ordered coffee; she didn't ask how he took it.
Nora flattened the almanac page on the counter.
"That page is ready to fall apart."
"It's held this long." She squared it against the sugar bowl. "I found the match. The carving under the hearthstone is on this map."
"Show me."
"North side. Right on the seawall line."
He leaned in over the counter. "That seawall's half in the water."
"Which is why nobody's dug around it in years."
"You're going to dig a hole?"
"One hole."
She drew a circle on the map, dead on the line.
"On an island I can't get a permit to touch," he said.
"Your permit's for the cottage. My map came out of the cottage."
"That's a lawyer's answer."
"It's an architect's answer." She folded the map along its old creases. "You in?"
Ben drank his coffee. "It'll burn off by nine. Fog always does."
"Ben." She waited until he looked at her. "If it's nothing, we fill the hole back in and I pay you for the morning."
"And if it's something?"
"Then I'll want your opinion."
The fog came apart in strips on the crossing. Tern Island rose out of the white, a long gray scar across the cottage roof.
Nora set a bucket between her boots: trowel, mattock, whisk broom, the survey map from Town Hall.
Ben eyed the bucket. "You're bringing a broom to dig a hole."
"I'm bringing a broom to clean what comes out of it."
"Reckon so."
They walked the shore path north, past the rotted boathouse where the brass lock still held. Gulls argued on the breakwater. The old seawall began where the pines stopped, granite blocks tumbled like a bad mouth of teeth. The tide was out.
A woman stood in the shallows with a net.
"Morning," Nora said.
Grace Carter looked at the bucket. "What's the shovel for?"
"Trowel. And it's for digging."
"This shoreline is a juvenile lobster nursery. Every rock you turn over belongs to somebody."
"Not in the water. One hole above the tide line, and the sand goes back where it came from."
"With that mattock."
"To cut roots."
Grace shifted the net and studied her. "What are you looking for?"
"A property marker. My map shows a mark on this line."
"Property markers don't get buried."
"No," Nora said. "They don't."
"You'll be out here all morning?"
"Long as it takes."
Ben had walked ahead a few paces.
"Dad thinks you're all right," Grace said.
"And you?"
"The last three people who bought shoreline in this county put up a dock, a deck, and a septic system. The eelgrass hasn't come back since." She stepped out of the water. "If you find something, you tell Cora Jean. That's how it works here."
"Good to know."
"Grant review's in October." She went up the path.
Nora paced the cord along the wall, past a block that had tipped forward.
"Right here," she said.
Ben crouched. "Looks like beach rose on top."
"It'll come out with the mattock."
"You've walked that line twice."
"And I'll walk it a third time when the hole's open."
"You sure this is the mark?"
"Compass points and knot. Same hand as the hearthstone."
She cut the roots and switched to the trowel. Sand, then dark soil that smelled of old leaves. The tide worked the rocks below.
"Your arm will quit before that trowel does," Ben said.
"It's got another hour in it."
"You want me to take a turn?"
"Not yet."
"Ground's soft under that rose."
"All the better."
The trowel struck metal and rang.
"Whoa," Ben said.
"Hand me the broom."
She scraped with her fingers. Rust flaked. She lifted out something with an embossed edge.
A tin box that had held tobacco once, the hinge rusted through.
"It's a tin," Ben said.
"It's a tin with a lock hasp." She turned it over. The hasp was empty.
"Open it."
The lid gave with a crack.
Nora rubbed the tarnish off a silver dollar on her sleeve. Liberty on one side, an eagle on the other. She tilted it to the light: 1921.
"That's not money," Ben said.
"It's money."
"It's money somebody buried. There's a difference."
She set the coin in her palm and picked out the photograph, the emulsion lifting at the crease. She carried it to the flat top of the seawall and used the whisk broom.
Two men in canvas trousers, suspenders, flat caps pushed back. Behind them, no porch, no shingles, no glass. Bare studs and a stone foundation. The cottage, unfinished.
"Which one's which?" Ben said.
"I can't tell yet." The man on the left stood with his arms crossed. The man on the right had a hand on the other's shoulder.
Water had crept in at the bottom edge. Where it had climbed, the faces were gone, the paper blistered and gray. She could see the shape of a jaw.
"I can't make out either of them," she said.
Ben came and stood at her shoulder. "Somebody wanted that buried."
"Somebody drew a map of where. And a second mark under a hearthstone."
"Which means somebody else was meant to find it."
"Later." She turned the photograph over. Nothing written. A smudge of pencil that might have been a number, or a shadow. "After the water did its work."
Nora brushed the sand off her knees. The tin box sat on the granite, lined with rust the color of old tea.
"You know anybody in this town who'd recognize them?" she asked.
"I've lived here my whole life."
"That's not an answer."
"It's close to one." Ben wiped his hands on his jeans. "Nobody I know keeps a picture like that in a box in the ground."
"You're sure."
"Sure enough to say it out loud."
Nora read the date again.
"The coin's from 1921. The almanac's from 1923. Whatever this is, it happened in that window."
"You're building a case out of a photograph."
"I'm building a timeline out of three objects. It's what I do." She held the photograph up to the light again, and the light didn't help. "Who stands in front of a house that isn't finished, gets their picture taken, and then buries the picture in the ground?"
Ben didn't answer. The tide worked at the seawall below them, breathing in, breathing out.
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