What the Water Knows

The harbor master's booth smelled of salt and old coffee. Elena pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching the water churn beneath the pier. Three years since Marcus left, and still she tracked the tides like they might bring him back.

"You're going to wear a hole in that glass."

She jumped. A man stood in the doorway, rain dripping from a yellow slicker, a calico cat curled around his neck like a living scarf. The cat regarded Elena with eyes the color of sea glass.

"She likes you," he said. "That's rare."

"I'm Elena."

"David. This is Marmalade. She's the real harbor master, I just push the papers."

He was older, maybe fifty, with lines around his eyes that suggested he'd spent decades bearing things he couldn't name. He told her he'd found the cat as a kitten, abandoned near the old cannery. She'd been waiting for someone, he said. They both had.

Elena told him about Marcus — the fights that started like summer storms and ended like winters that never quit. How he'd said she was too much water, always pulling him under. How she'd come to the harbor because at least the waves were honest about when they'd crash.

David nodded like he understood. "My wife died four years ago. Cancer. She made me promise to get a cat. Said I needed someone to talk to who wouldn't try to fix me."

They sat on the bench outside the booth as dawn broke, the water turning pink and gold. Marmalade abandoned David's shoulder for Elena's lap, purring like a small engine.

"You know what they say about cats," David said softly. "They choose you. You don't choose them."

Elena looked at the water, then at David, then at the cat who had apparently decided she was staying. "Maybe that's true of people too."

The waves kept crashing against the pier. But for the first time in three years, Elena didn't feel like she was drowning.