The day the parcel arrived, the sea lay flat as hammered pewter. Lila Anstruther pressed a palm to the institute’s kitchen window and felt cool glass against the heel of her hand. Somewhere below, the compressor in the walk-in freezer coughed awake. The kettle clicked off. She poured tea, then noticed the cardboard package on the table, its brown paper faintly damp from the mist.
Her name was written in spidery ink, the letters uneven, as if the pen had snagged on rough emotions. From: Jonah Anstruther. Her grandfather’s name tugged at her chest. He had been gone three weeks, and still she looked for him at the harbor, in a certain whistle on the wind.
Lila slid a thumb under the twine. The knot loosened with a softened sigh. Inside, wrapped in old sailcloth, lay a ledger the color of tarnished brass. A scent rose, salt and mildew, and something sharp like iodine. She placed it on the table. Its cover was cracked, the leather bubbled where it had once gotten wet. A brass clasp held it shut.
She clicked the clasp and lifted the cover. The first page held tide markings in Jonah’s hand, neat and precise. But the next pages were different. The lines were cramped and angled, peppered with tiny triangles and circles. Columns danced into coils, then into stanzas that looked like poems but broke off oddly. The dates were all from a century ago.
Her colleague Nikhil swung into the doorway, his hair blown wild. 'Is that for me?' he asked, eyeing the tea. Then he saw the ledger and stepped closer. 'From Jonah?'
Lila nodded. 'He kept something back. He must have. Why send me this?'
Nikhil rounded the table. 'Old nautical charts sometimes hide corrections in the tide tables. Not this old. Look at those symbols. They’re intentional.' He touched a fingertip to a small triangle. 'These are not tides.'
Lila turned the page. The ink here had bled blue, little halos around each note. Someone long ago had pressed a dried sea grape between pages; it left a ghostly oval. In the margin, a faint pencil line: K. Penhal, 1891. Lila mouthed the name.
Down the hall, a delivery door banged. The institute was a converted cannery, all brick and rivets. Gulls pecked at an abandoned pasty near the loading bay. Lila kept turning pages, the sound like a moth’s wings, until her thumb hit an envelope tucked near the back.
She pulled it free. A single sheet slid into her palm, thin and brittle. The letter had been written with a blunt pencil, the strokes blunt and fierce: Do not read further. This is not yours. Leave what you do not understand to the sea. The last line slanted: We are watching.