The year is 1986 and a young woman named Roxy Raines steps into the warm August night and is never seen again.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

FRIDAY 28 MAY

The morning ferry leaves at nine and I’ve been in the parking lot since six, watching the sun unfurl its first pinkish tendrils over the Atlantic, which is wide and vulnerable and, despite appearances, not actually blue.

Departure time’s approaching now but I’m still the only one here. Directly to my left is a small booth with an unmanned window, like a drive-through, covered in peeling white paint and with an indigo awning that reads TICKETS; to my right, a larger information centre framed by rickety benches and yellow-tipped ferns; ahead, the empty dock. I know the place is quiet because it’s still early, but the lack of noise feels more like abandonment than inactivity. I’m the ghost of the pier.

In the far distance, there’s the illuminated strip of land pressed against the horizon, thin as a strand of hair. That’s where I’m going.

This is what I’m saying about the ocean: it’s blue because of what it reflects rather than what it absorbs, as in, water molecules absorb the red and orange and yellow waves of light and reflect the blue, as in, the ocean is blue because blue is the only colour it’s not. This is true of everything. Not to mention the steps that occur in the brain to even perceive colour in the first place.

I’m simplifying things, of course, and anyway, I’m probably wrong.

There’s a prickle on the back of my neck and I turn, but nothing stirs. Behind is a quiet trailer park, patchy grass like an afterthought on top of the bone-dry lot. I’m under-stimulated. I tune my ears on to the radio.

… and a high of ninety-one. Whew! Heard reports just today that hurricane season’s comin’ early this year, the first storm predicted possibly as soon as mid-June, and it’s looking like a doozy, folks, so …

And then the speck of the ferry first appears along the curve of the earth, the natural spotlights casting across it like some inviolable holy direction.

I stare at the morsel for as long as I can without blinking and count. One minute seven. One minute fifty-four. My longest is two minutes thirty and by then the ferry’s grown to the size of my fist, close enough to make out the details: it’s shaped sort of like a heron’s head, an elongated lower bill and raised skull with seating and a windowed cubicle for the captain. There are no other passengers, as far as I can see. A faded American flag sags heavily against its helm, wilted in the windless summer-cusp heat.

The ocean spreads beyond me, infinite, like I’m at the edge of everything.

My phone vibrates in the cup holder.