Nora asked again whether anyone had truly seen the Serpent Line before her father disappeared, or whether the story had only swelled afterward because grief and greed made such a convenient pair. Maggie did not answer directly, which gave Nora her answer.
She took her father’s notebook back to her old room and read it again from start to finish. Most pages meant little: weather notes, tide marks, sketches of the shoreline. But ever so often, a line would appear that made her stop, like a voice speaking through the fog.