Dawn came in bruised colors over Bracken Cove, the kind of morning that made the sea look like hammered lead. Eli Moran—forty-two, widower, fisherman since his hands learned to tie knots—pushed his skiff off the shale and let the tide take the first decision for him.
The gulls were late to their arguments. Nets creaked like old bones. Eli tasted metal in the air, a tang that didn’t belong to weather and made memories stir where they’d been told to sleep.
He steered toward the north shoals, where the bottom rises fast and old wrecks whisper to the hull. The fish ran deep this month, and deep meant fuel, and fuel meant debt doing math against his name.
Halfway out, the depth finder hiccuped. Then the line on the screen flattened, as if the ocean floor had suddenly learned to lie.
Eli throttled down. A slick of oil—too old to shine—spread like a shadow that didn’t care if the sun showed up. He marked the spot with a glance and an ache between the ribs he only felt when the sea wanted something.
Something clinked under the hull—small, precise, like chain breathed on by a ghost. He killed the engine and listened. The sound came again, farther forward, timed to the keel’s slow rock.
He grabbed the boat hook and leaned over the bow. The water there was darker than it should’ve been, an ink welling up from the past.
When the hook snagged metal and the sea answered with a sound like a locked door waking up, he knew this wasn’t a net day—it was a decision day.
