In the morning Nora walked down to the village with the logbook hidden inside her coat. Marrow Point had one street, one café and one grocer, and every door seemed to close a little as she passed. At the café, a young woman with ink-stained fingers set down a mug of tea without being asked. “You’re Elias’s granddaughter,” she said. “You have his jaw.”
Her name was Mara Quill, and she ran the café with her mother and kept the island’s accounts in the evenings. She was friendly right up until Nora said her grandfather’s name a second time. “People here don’t talk about him,” Mara said quietly. “It isn’t that they don’t miss him. It’s that talking draws attention.”
“Whose attention?” Nora asked. Mara glanced at the window, where Dale Pruitt’s truck had just pulled up outside the harbor office. “Drink your tea,” she said. “And don’t show that book to anyone.” Nora hadn’t mentioned a book.
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