Chapter 21: The Tie

Ten days before zero, the whole harbor came to the town pier at sunset to say yes.

Winifred had gone door to door with a handwritten sign, and Daniel had rung the church bell.

The new Bureau clerk stood at the foot of the pier with a clicker in his hand.

He was the boy from the archive, the one who ate sandwiches over keyboards, and his ears were red.

"One at a time," he said. "Face her. Say it out loud. I count each one."

He had set the clicker to fourteen, which was every yes Seren already had on the Bureau's book.

Cora's side stood at a hundred and forty-one, and nobody on the pier needed to be reminded of that.

Cora's number hung over the water at 10.

Mine floated beside it in the glass of the harbormaster's window, the same thin white.

Tiernan stood at the very end of the pier, past a rope the supervisor had tied across the planks.

He wasn't allowed to cross it, and he wasn't allowed to leave.

He looked at me over forty feet of empty wood, and I looked back.

Winifred went first, leaning on her cane.

"Yes," she said. "To Seren. Every day she's got."

Click.

My father came next and took off his cap.

"Yes," he said. "Not after. Yes."

Click.

Cora stepped up with her hands wrapped around her cup.

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