“Rio! I was just about to leave for school,” she exclaimed, widening her eyes when she saw the expression on his face. “But . . . come on in.”

He followed her into the cabin, which, despite the wind, was snug and warm, and settled down with a whoosh on the bench.

“Birch?” he asked.

“Getting some supplies. When the weather’s bad like this, he uses the time to stock up the boat and make any repairs.”

Marina busied herself at the stove, filling a pan full of milk and making hot chocolate. The noises were comforting and reassuring. Once made, she sat on the bench opposite Rio and slid the hot drink over. “You know . . . if you ever want to talk about things, I’m a good listener,” she said quietly. “Ocean’s promise I wouldn’t tell a soul. Not even my dad.”

Rio cupped his hands around the mug. He hadn’t spoken about his mother for so long. Even if he knew where to start, the words were trapped somewhere so deep inside of him that they had gotten tangled and caught.

Could he trust Marina? Really trust her?

Had she ever let him down? No. Not since the very first moment they’d met and she’d found the picture of White Beak and handed it back. She’d even believed him about hearing the whales without any real hesitation.

Rio paused. His heart was hammering and his palms were sticky. He took a deep, shaky breath. Just as he was about to speak, there was a loud crash outside.

“I better go check,” said Marina. “Something might have fallen over in the wind.”

Suddenly he was alone in the cabin and the words he had been about to say disappeared. It wasn’t long before she returned, letting a gust of cool air into the cabin with her. She sat back down. “Where were we?”

“We were about to update the database.”

“We were?” she asked, and then she spotted Rio’s set expression. “Of course we were.”

She slid the laptop out of its cubbyhole and pulled up the Happywhale website. Rio let out a breath, grateful she hadn’t pressed him. “We’ve just got the other day’s sightings to upload.”

Since his time as part of the crew, Rio had gotten more adept at telling each whale species apart. Although they primarily counted the gray whales, they still made a note of all the different types. The humpback was easy to spot with its white belly and love of slapping its dorsal fin on the surface of the water. However, some whales, like the finback and the minke, looked almost identical, and the only way of telling them apart was from tiny differences in the shape of their flukes.

“So, remember, this is the column where we put the sightings of the individual whales we know more about. That humpback, did you notice how he had some chunks missing from his tail? Looked a bit like fingers, didn’t it? Probably a boat propeller,” she said, her brow puckering in disgust.