Chapter 1 Fog That Doesn’t Lift

Grief changes how a town sounds.

Graybridge has always been quiet—waves, gulls, wind slipping between the slats of old shingles—but ever since Silas Merrick vanished, the quiet feels heavier. Tighter. Like the fog swallowed more than a person. Like it swallowed breath.

Three days.

Three nights.

No sign of him.

People lose hours in this town—caught between tides and fog banks—but not days. Not Silas. Not a man who knew the harbor better than he knew the lines on his own hands.

I stood on the edge of Dock 12 again, the same spot where I last saw his boat’s deck light glowing through the haze. The boat was gone now. Hauled away for “processing,” is what Sheriff Donovan Pike called it.

Sheriff Donovan Pike—stoic, broadshouldered, a man whose silence says more than his words.

He’d introduced himself properly the first day:

“Sheriff Donovan Pike. I’ll be handling the investigation personally.”

He said it gently, the way someone speaks to a grieving person.

I hated that tone.

I hated that he used it with me.

Today the fog was thin, stringy instead of dense, but the emptiness on the water was the same. The pier looked wrong without Silas’s boat tied to it. As if something had been erased and the town hadn’t caught up yet.

I tightened my scarf and scanned the harbor again—like maybe I’d missed something before. Like maybe he’d simply drift back into view if my eyes were sharp enough.

“Still here, Eveline?”

The voice came from behind.

Sheriff Pike’s boots creaked against the pier before I even turned around.

“Yes,” I said without looking at him. “I can’t go home yet.”

A pause.

Then: “You haven’t been home much since the night he went missing.”

Missing.

That word felt like a knife pressed gently into my skin. Not deep enough to kill—just enough to remind me it was there.

“I don’t sleep well,” I answered quietly.

He stepped beside me, hands tucked into the pockets of his worn brown jacket. The wind lifted the edges of his coat, revealing the edge of his badge.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said, eyes fixed on the water. “We found traces of blood on the maintenance shack and along Dock 12. Some belonged to Silas.”

I swallowed hard.

I already knew.

I’d found some of it before the sheriff even arrived.

“But some,” he continued, “didn’t match his blood type.”

My head snapped toward him. “Then someone else was injured.”

“Or someone else did the injuring.”

The wind stilled.

Just for a moment.

Like the harbor itself was listening.

I forced my eyes back to the water. “Silas wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Did he ever tell you anyone was after him?” Pike asked.

I stiffened.

He had.

More than once.

In halffinished sentences, broken glances, quiet warnings he swallowed back down.

“Eve, if anything ever—”

“Sometimes the past shows up again.”

“Not everyone forgives.”

But I wouldn’t give the sheriff pieces I didn’t understand myself.

“No,” I lied.

Pike studied me longer than I liked. “You two were… close?”

“Yes.”

A single word, but it carried years inside it.

He nodded as if expecting that answer. “If you remember anything—even something that seems small—call me.”

He slipped a card into my hand.

I didn’t look at it.

When he walked away, I let out a breath I’d been holding since he arrived.

Silas was out there somewhere.

I felt it in my bones.

A strange, persistent ache that pulsed beneath everything else.

But the pier was empty.

And the fog refused to lift.

Later That Afternoon

Graybridge’s only bookstore, Shoreline Pages, smelled like paper and dust and comfort. My comfort. My mother, Margaret Shore, ran it with a perfection only a former schoolteacher could maintain.

She looked up from the register when I entered, her eyes softening instantly.

“Eveline, sweetheart,” she whispered. “Come sit.”

I did.

Mostly because if I didn’t, I would fall.

She set a mug of tea in front of me. Chamomile and honey—her answer to every ache since I was five.

“You went to the harbor again,” she said. Not a question.

I nodded.

“It won’t help, darling.”

Another lie adults say because they think it cushions reality.

I wrapped my hands around the mug. “He wouldn’t just leave.”

“I know.”

“He asked me to meet him that night. He wanted to tell me something.”

My mother hesitated. “Eveline… sometimes people have secrets we can’t carry for them.”

“But what if his secret is why he’s gone?”

She exhaled softly, brushing a strand of hair away from my face. “Then we pray the truth finds its way back to you.”

I looked away, blinking hard.

Truth wasn’t what I needed.

I needed him.

His voice.

His boots on the pier.

His crooked halfsmile when he pretended not to worry about me.

His presence—solid and warm and stubbornly alive.

My mother touched my hand gently. “Eveline… Silas is strong. He’ll come back.”

I nodded, but my chest felt hollow.

Not because I doubted Silas.

But because something in me whispered—

He didn’t disappear by choice.

Evening

I returned to Dock 12 before sunset.

The fog arrived early, sliding between the boats like a thief. The pier lights flickered on, casting blurred halos over the planks.

My breath caught.

A single object lay near the place where I last saw Silas’s boat tied.

Small.

Dark.

Halfhidden beneath a coil of rope.

I stepped closer.

Kneeling, heartbeat hammering.

My fingers brushed something soft—velvet.

A box.

I picked it up slowly, the damp fog clinging to its corners.

The moment I opened it, the world tilted.

Inside was a ring.

A simple silver band.

Worn around the edges.

Beautiful in the way only something deeply meant can be.

My knees nearly gave out.

Silas hadn’t asked me to meet him that night to say goodbye.

He had planned—

He had wanted—

My breath broke.

And just as I pressed the box against my chest—

a soft click echoed behind me.

Footsteps.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I turned.

A shadow stood at the far end of the pier.

Unmoving.

Watching.

And then, without a word—

it slipped into the fog.