Cold Water - Chapter 23
Noir Mystery
Chapter Twenty-Three
Anker drove out of the Portwick terminal and up the harbor road. She turned inland at the light the way she always did, the coast road behind her, the November fields opening on both sides, the trees bare now, the sky the same grey as the water had been on the crossing.
She had been driving for twenty minutes when her phone buzzed on the passenger seat. She glanced at it at a red light. Vasquez.
She drove through the light and pulled onto the shoulder a quarter mile past it and picked up the phone.
The text read: NOAA accepted the submission. Voss’ report is in the federal record. Review process restarts in the spring.
She read it twice. She looked at the road ahead—the inland road, the bare trees, a farmhouse set back behind a stone wall with its porch light on in the grey afternoon. She thought about the forty-seven-page draft report saved at 8:31 on an August evening by a young woman who had been practicing a rigatoni meal and was going to take the train to Boston on Friday to share it with someone special. The report was in the federal record now. The water on the north shore would be remediated. The nursery habitat would recover, eventually. The findings that Mara Voss would have submitted would get where they needed to go.
She typed back: Good. She looked at the word for a moment and then added: Thank you for seeing it through.
She watched the three dots appear. Then: How was the island?
She thought about the co-op window lit before five in the morning, the two empty stools at the counter, the Red Sox pennant at its permanent angle, the ferry and the fog. She thought about the harbor at six in the morning. Mara Voss had liked the island.
She typed: The same.
The dots appeared. Then: I’ll be in Portland next week. Tuesday. If you want to get dinner.
She looked at this for a moment. The farmhouse light was still on down the road. A crow crossed the field on the right, low and purposeful, going somewhere specific. She thought about her days. She was a person of routine but had no one in her life to share with.
She thought about the scar on the inside of his left forearm and the pencil turning end over end at the window and the way he had said someone needs to submit it—not as an instruction but as a simple fact. He understood that things that needed doing needed doing.
She typed: Yes. I’d like that very much.
She put the phone in her jacket pocket and allowed herself a small smile, her dark mood a bit brighter now.
She pulled back onto the road and drove toward Portland.
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