✍️ Part 3: The Coordinates of Hope
The old diesel engine coughed once before it caught, as if waking from a long sleep.
Tom tapped the throttle gently, easing The Ellie Mae out past the pier, the morning tide nudging her forward like an old friend encouraging one last dance.
Abby sat on the crate beside him, hugging Ellie’s logbook like it was a Bible.
“Are you sure it still floats okay?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Tom said.
The boat groaned under its own weight—sagging wood, rusted joints, a hull that had seen too many winters.
Just like him.
They passed a row of lobster buoys, the bright colors bobbing with deceptive cheer in the gray light.
Tom adjusted the compass, squinting at the numbers.
43.9890° N, 69.3130° W.
That’s where Ellie had sent him.
He remembered that place, though barely. A rocky inlet past Owls Head, where the wind curved like a whisper and the cod once came in thick and fast.
They hadn’t fished there since 1985, after a storm took out half the harbor moorings.
He remembered hauling in a strange, oversized halibut that day—eyes like mirrors, and Ellie crying for reasons he never quite understood.
Now, she was crying again. But only in memory.
They motored on in silence.
Tom glanced at the fuel gauge.
Just under a quarter tank.
Enough to get there and back—if the tide didn’t turn against him.
Abby flipped through the logbook beside him.
“Grandma wrote this on her birthday one year,” she said, reading aloud:
“There’s a place in the sea that still knows our names. If you forget who you are, go there.”
Tom tightened his grip on the wheel.
His hands were shaking.
It wasn’t just the cold.
He hadn’t told Abby everything. Not about the money.
Not about the foreclosure letters or the voicemail from Mariner First Credit Union, where the woman’s voice sounded too friendly for the words she said:
“We understand this is difficult, Mr. McCrae, but non-payment will result in immediate seizure and liquidation of property assets, including registered marine vessels.”
He’d spent the past week staring at the listing he was forced to approve.
“‘76 Downeast 30′ — solid condition, needs cosmetic work, motor strong. Asking $6,000 OBO.”
Six grand.
For the boat that had carried him through hurricanes and honeymoons.
That had held his wife’s laughter and the sound of his daughter’s first shriek when she saw a jellyfish.
Six grand.
Less than the cost of her final round of chemo.
He had wanted to burn the papers.
But instead, he signed.
The wind stiffened. Abby zipped her coat.
“Grandpa,” she asked, “why did you stop going out here?”
He thought for a long moment before answering.
“Because sometimes, when something breaks you, you stop going back to where it started.”
Abby tilted her head.
“Do you think Grandma sent us here for a reason?”
Tom didn’t answer.
But he looked out over the bow, toward the jagged horizon, and for a moment—just a moment—he thought he saw a shape moving beneath the waves.
Something slow. Something big.
He blinked.
Gone.
An hour passed. Then two.
The engine growled as they approached the coordinates, the depth sounder clicking erratically.
And then… nothing.
No fish.
No birds.
Not even the wind.
A silence as thick as regret.
Tom killed the motor.
They floated in the stillness like ghosts.
Abby looked up.
“Do we fish now?”
He hesitated.
He thought of the bills. The letters. The tiny bottle of painkillers in the drawer back home.
He thought of the last time Ellie held his hand and told him not to be afraid.
He reached for the rods.
“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s see if this place remembers us.”
He baited the first line, hands fumbling, old reflexes rusty but not gone.
As Abby dropped her line over the side, the water shimmered strangely.
The surface split—and something brushed against the hull with a soft thud.
Abby leaned over.
“Grandpa… what was that?”
Tom’s eyes narrowed.
He didn’t know yet.
But whatever it was…
it wasn’t just fish.
✍️ Part 4: The Deep Remembers
The line jerked so hard it nearly yanked the rod clean from Tom’s hands.
He caught it mid-whip, knuckles cracking, knees locking as he dug his boots into the grooved floor of the deck.
“Whoa!” Abby shouted, standing.
Tom gritted his teeth.
Whatever was down there—it was heavy.
He leaned back with practiced instinct, letting the drag do its work, muscle memory waking like a beast in his bones.
The rod bowed like it might snap.
“Is it a shark?” Abby cried.
Tom didn’t answer.
His heart was thumping too loud to think.
The line kept peeling, the reel whining like it was in pain.
“No shark,” he muttered, bracing himself. “Too deep. Too slow.”
It moved with weight—not wild, not panicked—just deep and deliberate.
Like it belonged down there. Like it knew it had been found.
Tom hadn’t felt a pull like that in thirty years. Not since that halibut in ‘85. The one Ellie swore had eyes like mirrors.
He shouted for Abby to grab the gaff.
She scrambled to the crate and pulled it out with both hands.
“Hold it tight, and stay back,” Tom said, voice low and sharp.
His arms were burning now.
His shoulder screamed.
But he didn’t let go.
He couldn’t.
This wasn’t just a fish.
This was hope on a hook.
Twenty minutes passed. Maybe thirty.
The water darkened.
Then—a flash of silver.
Abby gasped. “It’s huge.”
Tom’s eyes went wide.
A bluefin tuna, easily 300 pounds, breached just under the surface, tail cutting a clean arc like a scythe through seaweed.
He almost forgot to breathe.
“Help me land it,” he grunted.
Together, they wrestled the beast closer.
When it finally hit the deck with a wet THUD, the planks groaned under its weight.
It lay there, gills pumping slowly, eyes black and still.
Tom dropped to his knees.
He reached out—half in reverence, half in disbelief—and laid a calloused hand against the shimmering side.
The scales felt cold. Slick. Real.
Very real.
He’d once sold a tuna half that size for $12,000 to a Japanese buyer out of Boston.
This one?
Could fetch $30,000–$40,000 easy. Maybe more.
He could pay the hospital, cancel the foreclosure, refit the boat, and even fund Abby’s future.
One fish.
One miracle.
Abby was quiet, watching him.
“Do we keep it?”
Tom hesitated.
He looked toward the horizon. The clouds were thickening.
Not angry yet—but changing.
He glanced at the GPS. The coordinates Ellie left.
Then at the fish.
Then back at Abby.
“This could save everything,” he whispered.
Abby nodded, but she wasn’t smiling.
She was staring at the logbook in her lap.
“There’s a part in here,” she said quietly, “where Grandma writes, ‘What you think you need isn’t always what God wants to give you.’”
Tom’s breath caught.
A low rumble rolled across the sea.
Thunder.
He stood, body aching, and covered the fish with a net.
“We’ll ice it down,” he said, “then head back before the front moves in.”
Abby didn’t move.
“Do you think this was what she meant?” she asked. “Coming here. Catching this.”
Tom looked at her.
His granddaughter. His blood.
The wind picked up, whipping strands of hair across her face.
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “But I know we can’t outrun what’s coming.”
He fired up the motor. The sound was unsteady.
Rough.
He tapped the gauge.
Just under an eighth of a tank.
Damn.
He’d miscalculated. Or maybe the old thing was lying again. It had done that before.
They turned slowly toward shore, the fish secured, the boat groaning, the clouds rolling in from the east like a dark tide rising.
Tom adjusted the wheel.
His hands were steady.
But somewhere deep in his chest…
something began to crack open.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Something older.
Something like doubt.
Or debt.
The kind you don’t pay with money.
