Tide table

The kitchen table has been my desk since February.

There's a ring on the wood from the mug I use every night, a Tide Table printout folded in thirds that I stopped needing to consult two weeks ago because I've memorized the pattern, and the notepad with its logged episodes filling most of the first half.

Tonight the notepad is open to a blank page.

I've been looking at it for about twenty minutes.

I know roughly where it is.

I've been turning the same two options over for four days, and they haven't changed shape.

The first, I take what I have the logged episodes, the tide table correlation, the archive PDF, the regulatory reference number, the fact that Judy Ramirez wore long sleeves in a room running at full heat in late March and I put it in front of someone.

A journalist, a regulator, someone with access to more than I have.

and at my feet, deposited by the black surf, three objects, a rusted child's bicycle, its bell twisted into a spiral, a silver whistle threaded on a tangle of fishing line, and a soul-touched notebook, half its cover burned, but the words Margaret Holt, Crabapple Station, 1926, still faintly visible.

I bent down, heart thumping.

The bike's frame trembled under my hand, every steel part overlaid with a pattern of fine etching, what looked like tide tables intersected by unfamiliar symbols.

As I moved the lamp closer, I saw the etchings glimmer with salt not yet dry.

Oddest of all was the whistle, not corroded, but pitted as if it had been thrown into fire and dragged back out.