The gangway groans under the weight of a few straggling passengers as Margot Ellery steps back onto the soil of Harlow’s Bay. The air here is thick with a familiar, briny dampness that clings to her wool coat, a scent of crushed shells and cedar that twenty years in Brooklyn couldn't scrub from her memory. She grips the handle of her suitcase, her knuckles pale against the black leather, and watches the ferry’s wake churn white against the grey harbor water.
Every shingled storefront along the wharf looks smaller than she remembers, weathered by two decades of Atlantic gales she wasn't here to witness. She checks her phone, but there is no new message from Cora. Her daughter had been here for three days already, chasing ghosts Margot had spent half a lifetime trying to outrun. A tarnished silver key weighs heavy in her pocket—the only thing Eli Tallon left her besides a cryptic letter and a debt to the past she isn't ready to pay.
The rain shifts into a steady, rhythmic drumming against the terminal roof. She pulls her collar up and moves toward the designated pick-up lane, the streetlamps flickering to life in the gathering gloom. A silver pickup truck is slowing by the curb, and the driver's side window is rolling down.
