Ebb considers for a moment, then shakes his head slowly. “It’s just wishful thinking.”

“Wishful why?”

Ebb shrugs.

“Ghosts and time. It’s the thing that torments us. Too much of it now that we are dead, too little of it when we weren’t.” He smiles ruefully. “The Time Witch has a lot to answer for with us.”

I remember skimming past the Time Witch in The Witch Hunter’s Guide, a woman with clocks dangling from her neck. But the Memory Thief is the only witch I can think about.

We stand gazing at the setting moon—which glows, aloof and distant, above the mirror of the sea for a few more moments before it sinks out of sight. I think of my mom and dad, meeting somewhere out at sea so long ago—somewhere in the time when the ghosts lost track of her, before she showed up in Seaport with me in her tummy. And then a spark ignites inside me.

I turn to Ebb, try to grab his arm, but my fingers, of course, slip through him instead.

“My mom likes to say, ‘He’s out there swimming, waiting for me.’ I used to think she was talking about my dad. Do you think he could be a ghost, out there somewhere, swimming? Do you think she’s talking about him?”

Ebb looks at me for a moment. He glances sadly up to the glowing haze above.

“I’m sorry, Rosie. I’ve heard nothing about your dad except what Homer said, that your mom met him on a freighter while crossing the ocean back when she was chasing witches.” He squints as if trying to remember. “And that he drowned before you were born. Not because of witch mischief or anything like that, I don’t think. Just because… bad things happen.”

Unanswerable questions rise up one after the other about my dad—What was he like? Did he have the sight too? Did he love my mom from the moment he met her? I feel an empty place inside ache. Ebb waits for me to say something, but I’m silent, so he continues.

“The ghosts who stay behind are a rarity, Rosie. Most times people are just gone, Beyond. Your dad—if he were out there somewhere, I think we would have heard about it by now.”

I stare down at my feet, crestfallen. But why would my mom always talk about someone waiting for her in the sea, if it’s not him? I tuck and fold the hope inside me to think about later in secret. Maybe that feeling of always missing another half—maybe that’s my heart knowing my dad is somewhere out there, trying to find me and help me.

There’s a deep kindness in Ebb’s voice when he speaks again.