“—and that is tomorrow's weather, Gull Rock, so don't say nobody told you.”

The voice came through the static like a hand through a curtain. Hal stopped with the oil can tilted over the lamp's brass collar, and a bead of oil ran down onto his knuckles.

Bea. Reading the night bulletin, fast and bright, the way she read everything, as if the sea were a joke only she had heard the end of.

He set the can down. The radio sat on the shelf by the stair rail where it always sat, an old wooden box gone dark with years of salt, its dial cracked straight across the glass. He had not touched the tuning knob. He was almost sure he had not touched it.

Wind leaned on the tower. Somewhere below, the cottage shutter he kept meaning to fix banged twice and went quiet.

“Mainland's welcome to you,” he muttered to the lamp. “You never stayed for it.”

The lamp turned. Its beam swept out over black water and came back.

On the radio, Bea's voice dropped half a tone. He knew that drop. It was the one she used when the numbers stopped being pretty.

“Wreck warning, all stations. Trawler Heron's Due, out of Pelling, taking water and driven onto the Teeth northeast of Gull Rock at oh-four-hundred. Four souls. Repeat, Heron's Due, oh-four-hundred. That's tomorrow's bulletin for the eleventh. This is Bea Fallon, keeping the light on for you.”

Hal looked at the calendar nailed beside the window. The tenth. He had crossed the ninth off himself that morning, with the stub of red pencil that lived behind his ear.

Tomorrow's bulletin. Tomorrow's date.

He tapped the radio's side with two fingers, the ones that still had their tips. Static rose and broke like surf.

“Heron's Due,” he said. He had never heard of her. He knew every boat that worked these waters, and he had never heard of her.

The clock on the landing said ten past one.

He went to the window. Out past the landing the sea was coming up white over the rocks, the same white it had been eleven years ago, the night he'd stood right here with the handset in his fist and thought, Danny knows better. Danny's not fool enough to go out in this.

His left hand had found the window latch. It was holding on.

The coast-guard handset hung on its hook by the stair. If he called in a wreck that had not happened, from a radio that heard tomorrow, they would log him as a drunk keeper on a lonely rock. Gus Amory had lost his license once over a keeper's false alarm; the whole coast knew the story. They would know Hal's too, by breakfast.

And Bea, on the night desk, would be the one who took the call.

The lamp turned. The beam went out and came back.

Hal took the handset off its hook and held it, not yet keying it, while the shutter below began to bang again.

He keyed it.

“Gull Rock to Pelling Coast Guard.”

Static, a breath of it. Then her, not the radio voice but the real one, a little hoarse from the late shift.

“Pelling, go ahead, Gull Rock. Hal? You never use this line.”

He pressed his thumb hard against the key. The lamp turned behind him.

“Trawler. Heron's Due. She'll be on the Teeth at four.”

“There's no Heron's Due on my board.”

“There will be.”

“How do you know that?”

“I heard you read it. Tomorrow's bulletin. For the eleventh.”

Nothing came back. Not even static. He could picture her at the desk with the headset pushed down around her neck, freckled fingers flat on the logbook, the way she held still when the numbers turned ugly.

“That's not funny, Hal.”

Her voice had gone flat. He knew that one too.

“No.”

“Are you drinking?”

“No.”

A pen clicked on her end. Clicked again. Again.

“Fine. I'm logging a keeper's sighting. A sighting. Not a radio. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Then say something else, since you're up. Anything.”

He looked at the window latch, at the white water past the landing. There was a sentence he had carried for three winters. It sat behind his teeth and would not come.

“Get some sleep, Bea.”

He hung the handset on its hook before she could answer.

The clock on the landing ticked. He trimmed a wick that did not need trimming. He wiped the brass collar twice. At twenty to three he went down and wedged the cottage shutter with a split of driftwood, and stood in the rain longer than the job took.

At three fifty-two the working channel woke up. A cutter's voice, clipped and bored, then a fishing skipper's, high and shaking: Heron's Due, new-bought, first run out of Pelling, pump failed, under tow, four aboard and all of them breathing.

Then Bea, on the same channel, quiet.

“Heron's Due alongside at Pelling. Four souls. Gull Rock, thank you.”

He did not answer. He sat on the stair with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging, and the beam swept over him and away and over him again. Eleven years. He had made the call eleven years late, for strangers.

He took the red pencil from behind his ear to cross off the tenth.

The shutter was quiet now. The wind had dropped. In the new hush he could hear the lamp's motor turning, the drip from his coat, and under it, rising from the shelf by the rail, a hiss he had not tuned.

The cracked dial glowed.

“Bulletin for the twelfth.”

Bea's voice. No teasing in it. No poetry. Every word set down like a cup on a table that might tip.

“Supply boat Marigold, Gus Amory master, lost off the Gull Rock landing in heavy weather, oh-six-forty. Search ongoing.”

A pause. A rustle, as if a sheet were being taken from her hand.

Then a man's voice, someone Hal did not know, reading carefully for her.

“Missing: one crew. And one passenger.”

The pencil was still in Hal's fingers. He felt it bend.

“Beatrix Fallon.”