With a wave to Carl, Frank walked slowly back to his car, his cane making a soft plunk in the sandy soil with each step.

* * *

Late evening was always Liza Bullock’s favorite part of the day, when everything glowed lilac and rose and the rising moon threw wavy lines of light onto the river. It almost made living here in this tiny backwater town worth it. Liza had been the editor of The Sugar Bend Observer for close to a year, and the most exciting thing she’d covered was the farmer who pitched a tent in the middle of the highway last month to protest speeding logging trucks that scared his cows. And that was only marginally more exciting than the conflict between two spray paint–wielding neighbors who’d defaced each other’s backyard fences. What would be next? A standoff between the two shoe stores on Water Street? A food fight at the Christmas Jubilee?

She hadn’t gotten a journalism degree to spend her days writing about peeved farmers and crotchety neighbors. She needed something, just one little story, that would catapult her out of this sleepy inlet. If she could find a story with enough meat on its bones, she could write a sizzling exposé and land herself at a copy desk in Birmingham or Atlanta. Maybe even New York or Los Angeles. Why not aim high?

Liza stretched her legs out straight in front of her on the lounge chair at the end of her dock and closed her eyes. She was exhausted and the half glass of white wine she’d poured herself was only increasing her fatigue. Her day had started with a city council breakfast meeting at eight, followed by a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Palmer’s Tires, a dedication ceremony for the new hospital wing, a staff meeting back at the office, then a trip to check on the housing development Fox Cove. It was a ramshackle stretch of town, but the developer, Carl Waters, promised that once the neighborhood was renovated, house prices would rise, which would attract wealthier home buyers and funnel more money right back into Sugar Bend. At least that was how he’d explained it to the zoning board, which was why they gave him the variances he needed for the work.

Once she’d asked her questions and taken the necessary notes to write her feature on the development, she strolled down to the water’s edge and spied the old boat on the sand. Carl told her it had washed up onshore and that he was waiting on someone to claim it. Without thinking much about it, she snapped a photo of it with her phone, then went on about her day.

Sitting on her dock in the waning daylight, the photo called to her, so she pulled her phone out and scrolled to it. The boat wasn’t much of anything—just a rusty hunk of green-blue metal with barnacles and algae clinging to its side—but it nearly pulsed with life there on the screen.