✍️ Part 5: The Front Line
The first raindrops fell like whispers.
Tom glanced skyward, jaw clenched.
He could read clouds better than any weather app—and these weren’t bluffing.
The sky was splitting open in slow motion, and the horizon had vanished into a sheet of dark steel.
“We’ve got to move,” he said.
Abby tucked the logbook into her coat and tightened her hood.
“Will we make it back in time?”
Tom didn’t answer.
Not yet.
He throttled forward. The engine coughed once—twice—then held.
The boat groaned into motion, heading southwest, back toward Camden.
Wind slapped across the bow. Salt spray turned sharp.
Tom glanced at the fuel gauge again.
Worse than before.
It hovered near empty, needle twitching like a lie unraveling.
“Hold on,” he said.
The fish was lashed to the deck. Every jolt of the boat threatened to slide it loose.
Tom kept one hand on the wheel, the other bracing the throttle.
Then a wave hit.
Not a big one—but sharp.
It knocked Abby sideways, and she slammed into the crate.
“Abby!” he shouted.
“I’m okay!” she winced, holding her elbow. “Just bruised.”
Tom’s knuckles whitened.
The wind rose again, louder now, like a voice.
Not a scream.
Not a warning.
Something in between.
He pulled his jacket tighter and scanned the coastline.
Still too far. Too gray. Too late.
Behind them, the clouds had swallowed the sun.
The motor began to sputter.
Not stall. Just… stutter.
Like an old man catching his breath mid-sentence.
Tom’s gut turned.
He eased off the throttle, trying not to spook it further.
They couldn’t afford a stall. Not out here. Not with fuel this low.
Abby looked at him.
He didn’t say anything.
Didn’t need to.
She knew.
Then, another wave hit—this one higher.
Water sloshed across the deck, soaking the net that covered the tuna.
The ice was melting. Slipping.
The weight of it—the literal value of it—shifted toward the edge.
Tom lurched forward and grabbed the net before it went overboard.
“Not today,” he hissed. “Not now.”
He dragged it back, muscles screaming.
Abby rushed to help.
But the strain was too much.
The boat tilted hard to port.
The engine sputtered again.
A flash of lightning cracked the sky—and for a split second, everything turned blue.
The radio crackled.
“…small craft advisory… repeat… 40-knot winds inbound…”
Tom yanked the volume knob.
Dead static.
He wiped rain from his eyes, looked at Abby, then at the fish.
He had seconds to think.
Seconds to choose.
Because the weight of that catch was shifting again.
And if it flipped the boat…
He saw Ellie’s face.
Not young. Not dying.
Just… knowing.
He turned to Abby.
“Get inside,” he barked.
“What about you?”
“Now!”
She obeyed, slipping into the cabin, heart hammering.
Tom staggered back to the deck.
Wind in his ears. Salt in his mouth.
His hands on the net.
He looked at the fish.
All that money.
All that salvation.
One catch.
One fix.
He could pay everything. Start over.
But…
He looked toward the cabin.
She was just a little girl.
She didn’t know what poverty cost a man’s pride.
But he did.
And he also knew what it cost to bury someone too young to go.
He made the call.
With shaking hands, he sliced the net open, unlashed the rope.
The fish thudded once against the side rail.
And with a hard shove from Tom’s shoulder—it slid over.
Gone.
Back to the deep.
The sea took it like it had been waiting.
He staggered back to the wheel, breath heavy, pain blooming in his chest like fire.
The engine whined, tired.
The fuel gauge dipped into red.
“Hold on, Ellie,” he muttered. “I did what I could.”
Rain hit harder now.
He pressed the throttle gently.
Just enough.
Enough to head home.
Empty.
But alive.
✍️ Part 6: What Remains Afloat
The fish was gone.
The sea had taken it back without a ripple of gratitude—just the flat, hollow sound of finality.
Tom stood there for a moment, soaked and shaking, watching the water churn where the tuna had vanished.
That was it.
The debt would remain.
The boat would go.
The phone calls wouldn’t stop.
But Abby was still alive.
He turned toward the cabin and saw her peeking through the narrow window, tears in her eyes and hands clenched into the sleeves of her jacket.
She’d seen it.
She knew.
Tom limped back to the wheel, lungs burning.
The rain now came sideways, stinging like gravel.
He wiped his face with a trembling hand and looked at the fuel gauge one last time.
Below empty.
The needle had dropped and didn’t bounce back.
The motor sputtered twice… then cut.
Silence.
And then —
A gust slammed into them broadside.
The boat heaved, and Tom hit the wheel hard with his ribs.
He coughed, tasted blood.
Abby burst out of the cabin.
“Grandpa!”
He waved her off. “Stay down!”
She clung to the cabin doorway, eyes wide.
The boat was now drifting.
No engine. No steering.
Just wind and water and luck.
Tom scanned the coast. There were no buoys. No other boats.
Only jagged rocks far to the north, black and rising like teeth from the sea.
He yanked open the emergency kit, praying the flare gun hadn’t rusted.
It hadn’t.
He loaded it with shaky hands and fired one shot into the sky.
The red flare arced, then sputtered out like a dying star.
Nothing.
No answer.
Abby came to his side, silent now.
She didn’t ask about the fish.
She just held onto his coat.
“Sit down,” Tom whispered, voice hoarse. “Hang on tight.”
The boat rocked harder.
The radio spit static.
Tom reached for the mic.
“Mayday, this is Ellie Mae, 30-foot trawler, two passengers aboard. Engine failure. No power. No anchor. South of Owls Head, drifting north. Repeat, drifting north.”
Nothing.
He tried again. Louder.
Nothing but a hiss.
Tom dropped the mic and sagged back against the wheel.
His arms were numb. His knees buckled.
He slid to the floor.
Abby crouched beside him.
“You okay?”
He nodded. Lied.
She pulled the soaked logbook from her coat, holding it like it might matter.
“Grandma wrote something about storms,” she said. “Want to hear it?”
He couldn’t speak.
So she opened it anyway.
“When the boat is lost and the way is gone,
When maps are wet and voices fail,
Look for the light not from above, but from within.
That’s where the Lord always waits.”
Tom’s eyes burned.
He didn’t know if it was rain or regret.
Maybe both.
Time blurred.
The storm worsened.
The boat pitched, stalled, floated.
Tom faded in and out — part exhaustion, part pain.
He heard Abby praying. Quietly.
Just like her grandmother.
Somewhere in the haze, a voice crackled faintly from the radio.
But he couldn’t move.
He drifted again.
Darkness gathering at the edge of his sight.
And just before it took him, he thought he heard Ellie’s voice—
Not a dream.
Not a memory.
Something clearer.
“You kept your promise, Tom.”
Then the world tilted one last time.
And went still.
