The Tide That Listens

Salt blew in through the bus’s cracked window as Elena Markova watched the cliffs of Klintis rise like weathered bones over the sea. The town looked smaller than memory, roofs tiled in russet and slate, gulls stitching white arcs over the harbor cranes. The lighthouse at Skerry Point stood aloof on its spit of rock—glass crown, iron ribs—an eye that had learned to stare without blinking.

Her mother met her by the stop with a hug that smelled of wool and bay leaves. “You came fast,” Tatiana said, holding on too long. The worry had hollowed her voice.

“I switched trains at Jelgava,” Elena said. “Inspector Ozols called me on the way. He said they suspended the search at night. He said they’d start again at dawn.”

Tatiana’s mouth drew thin. “Arnis is doing what he can. The sea does what it wants.” She looked toward the bruise-blue water. “He left for the lighthouse just before the storm. He promised to call at nine. He didn’t.”

They walked past nets hung to dry, past the fishmongers throwing crushed ice with hollow scoops. The air had the metallic chill of early autumn. Elena’s field bag bumped at her hip, laptop and notebooks heavy. She had left the city job, the precise geometry of transit maps, the breathing subway tunnels, because a part of her belonged to these cliffs, to this lighthouse, and because Alex was the closest thing in the world to a compass for her.

Inspector Arnis Ozols waited on the quay, jacket collar turned up, hair freckled with spray. He was broad-shouldered in a way that softened around the eyes. “Elena,” he said, shaking her hand, not letting go immediately. “I’m sorry. The coast guard swept the shoals. We found his kayak beached near Skerry Point. No sign of him.”

“He was volunteering with the lighthouse keeper,” Elena said. “Surveying—something with the old lamp?”

Ozols nodded. “Jonass Birznieks said Alex was curious about the lamp room and the old clockworks. He asked a lot of questions about tides. We found his field book in the keeper’s cottage. It’s bagged with evidence. You can look.” He glanced at Tatiana and lowered his voice. “There’s talk that Viktor Kalns has been sniffing around the point again. He wants to push through his marina extension. The council hasn’t granted it. Still.”

A gull shrieked, knifing air. Elena felt the familiar itch of a puzzle. The map in her head unrolled, lines and contours: shoals, current arrows, wind roses, the stubborn rising of basalt. “I want to see his room,” she said. “Whatever he left.”

“Come,” Tatiana said. “It’s all waiting upstairs, exactly as he left it.” She wasn’t crying. That was worse.

They climbed the narrow stairs in the house where Elena had grown up, paint peeling in the stairwell like flaked fish-skin. Alex’s door was half open, as if he had meant to step through at any moment. The room smelled of salt and pencil shavings, a faint trace of coffee. Maps lay everywhere—coastline sketches, tide charts copied by hand, a photograph of the lighthouse with a note scrawled on the back: “When the tide listens, the watch will speak.”