Beside the lens stood a small desk, and on the desk lay a logbook bound in green cloth. Nora almost didn’t open it; she was afraid of her grandfather’s handwriting, of how much of him it might hold. But she did. The early pages were exactly what she expected: weather, wind, visibility, the date and time the lamp was lit and extinguished, all in neat blue ink.
She turned toward the end and stopped. The last entries were not from ten years ago. The final one was dated nine days earlier. Wind northwest, light swell, visibility good. Lamp lit at 6:12 p.m. Eight boats counted out, seven counted in. The handwriting was unmistakably Elias’s: the looping capital E, the tail on every g.
Her mouth went dry. Either someone had been forging his hand for ten years, or the court had been wrong. She read the line again. Eight boats out, seven in. Whoever wrote it had been counting, and seemed to think the missing boat mattered more than anything else on the page.
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