The sedan fishtailed gravel, trying to turn onto the river path. The driver misjudged. Tires spun; pebbles spat. The two men at the pump house split—one toward the flatboat, one toward the car.
Caleb burst from the doorway and took the path at a diagonal, pipe in hand, cutting across their line of advance. He didn't look heroic. He looked inevitable. He feinted toward the man on foot, forcing him wide, then vaulted the low wall onto the jetty. Leona's chest loosened by an inch as he landed in the flatboat with a grunt and a, "Go."
The pilot gunned the engine. The boat leapt forward. Water slapped hull. The river took them, current muscular but not cruel. Behind, the sedan found purchase and lunged onto the path, pace matched to theirs. The man with the pry bar sprinted for the next jetty downriver, waving.
Mahmoud crouched by the gunwale like someone who had loved boats longer than he'd loved ledgers. "Keep low," he said. "They'll play chicken."
Leona braced the tote with her knees, fingers white on the rope. The copper tube dug into her thigh. Kemi snapped her seatbelt instinct—one hand on the gunwale, one on Leona's sleeve. Caleb balanced at the prow, pipe down, eyes on water.
The sedan accelerated parallel along the river path, driver leaning, window down. No gun—thank God—just a camera with a long lens, pointed and hungry.
"Spectacle," Mahmoud said with gentle disgust. "Worse than bullets, sometimes."
"Edge!" the driver shouted to the boatwoman, cheerfully adversarial. "Let's talk terms!"
She laughed like a sparrow daring a hawk. "Talk is for docks."
He swerved closer to the waterline, too close. The earth gave a little, a crumble hiding under grass. The sedan lurched, corrected, spat stones.
Ahead, the river narrowed between pilings. Current tightened. The flatboat's motor complained, then found a note it liked.
"Hold," Mahmoud said softly.
The sedan made the same choice—badly. The driver tried to overtake, clipped a low bollard with the undercarriage, and tore something vital. Fluid hissed. The car swore in mechanical language and dropped back, limping. The man with the pry bar reached the next jetty too late, lungs burning, face red with the kind of anger that mistakes failure for injustice.
Still, the boat wasn't safe. The narrowing meant more speed but less room to maneuver. The driver could cut downriver and wait. The men could call friends. The river could change its mind.
Leona looked ahead. The bridge's shadow crossed the water, cool as a hand on a fevered brow. Past it, the bend opened to a long, bright reach. A barge moved slow in the distance like a continent on holiday.
Caleb said quietly, "Now would be a good time for your tubes to explain themselves."
Leona wedged the copper cylinder between her knees, unscrewed the first cap. Inside, paper rolled tight around a dowel slid free with a whisper like silk. She unrolled it just enough to see:
A map—river channels drawn not like geography but like veins, annotated in a hand she knew. Francine's. Lines looped to the pump house, to a second mark upstream, to a third farther out than she would have guessed. In the margins, notations:
Light writes at 10:17.
Water answers at 12:13.
Frame breathes at dusk.
Kemi read over her shoulder and made a noise that belonged in a cathedral. "We're going to be busy today."
The flatboat shot under the bridge and into bright. The world widened. The sedan, far back now, wheezed to a stop, hazard lights blinking like a sulk. The man with the pry bar stood at the jetty, small and impotent, shouting words the river ate.
Mahmoud straightened, wind stroking his hair like a good story. "We'll cut into the side channel," he told the pilot. "Let them think we're headed for the main landing."
"On it," she said, and swung the tiller. The boat heeled, corrected, skimmed into a narrow cut beneath willow whips. The world suddenly smelled of crushed green and low sunlight. Ripples slurred into one another; dragonflies stitched quick silver seams close to the surface. Leona felt the river's temperature change against her shins where spray had found her—cooler here, more intent. Kemi let out a shaky laugh that wasn't permission so much as protest. Mahmoud passed her a square of cloth without comment. Caleb glanced back once, measuring distance and angles, and then finally let his shoulders drop a fraction.
"Breathe," Mahmoud said, not as advice—just as a way to return their ribs to service. "Inventory, then silence. Tube, map, clock."
"Tube," Leona echoed, gripping it. "Map." She patted her jacket where the pages lived. "Clock."
"And you," he added, softer. "Don't misplace yourself."
Kemi found the biscuit still in her pocket, broke it in half, handed a piece to Leona like a sacrament with sugar. "Eat a victory crumb before the river gets ideas."
Leona took it, the sweetness absurd and exactly right. The backwater hushed around them, a small forgiving room inside a large indifferent building. For a fleeting minute, she believed they could keep what they'd taken.
A shadow slid over the water ahead—another bridge or a cloud. The pilot glanced up. "We have one more guest," she said, tone not surprised.
Leona followed her gaze. On the footbridge above the channel, a figure leaned on the rail, watching. Thin shoulders. A tilt of the head she knew too well.
Her breath stuttered. "Dad?"
The figure lifted two fingers in the small salute that had haunted glass and mirrors since last night. Then it turned and walked off the bridge without a sound.
Leona's heart tripped once, hard. She blinked; the rail was empty. Nothing fell. Nothing splashed.
The boatwoman didn't slow. "You'll want to hold that map tight," she said.
"Why?"
"Because wherever he's walking," Mahmoud said quietly, "the next door opens there."
The motor coughed, caught, and the channel forked. The pilot took the left with the confidence of someone who'd memorized the river's grammar.
Behind them, on the main reach, the black sedan finally died. Ahead, the willows closed fingers over water like a promise kept in green.
They shot the fork.
And the boat hit something that wasn't there. The hull leapt; the world knocked out of alignment.
The copper tube tore from Leona's knees and went airborne. She snatched for it—and missed. The river took it like a thief with good manners.
Leona lunged for the gunwale, hand outstretched, the tube flashing once in the water like a fish, then vanishing into the cut's dark.
"Leona!" Caleb's hand closed on the back of her jacket an instant before she followed. The boat rocked, slammed, found a new center. Water sloshed over the side and into her shoes like cold mercy.
The tube was gone.
The pilot swore. Mahmoud shut his eyes like a prayer hurt. Kemi squeezed Leona's arm so hard it would bruise.
Leona's breath sawed. She gripped the gunwale, river on her tongue, map clutched to her chest with both fists.
Then, from beneath the surface ahead, something bright rose where the shadow clock's brass pointer would have pointed if light lived underwater. Another tube—or the same one. Or the river's idea of making things even. It rose, rotated, and clicked against the hull.
"Take it," the pilot said.
Leona reached, fingers shaking, and lifted the dripping cylinder from the river's palm. It felt fractionally warmer than the water, as if the metal had kept one secret for itself. She held it a beat longer than necessary, letting pulse and metal argue about custody.
Kemi wiped river from her eyes. "If that's not the same tube, it has the same tailor."
Caleb leaned close, listening with his hands. "Thread on the cap matches. Weight, too." His voice gentled. "It came back."
Mahmoud opened his satchel and produced a piece of oilcloth. "Wrap it," he said. "Let the pages rest before we make them speak."
The pilot eased the boat deeper into the willow shade, where the wind forgot their names. The chase noise thinned to ordinary distance: a gull reprimanding a dock, a far truck shifting gears, a boy laughing at a joke the river promised not to repeat.
Leona's hands steadied. She slid the tube onto the oilcloth and wrapped it carefully, as if the gesture could serve as thanks. The linen strip under her coat warmed once against her skin, then settled, like agreement.
Only then did the image on the footbridge return to her with its deliberate quiet—a man's outline, the familiar tilt, the salute that used to make her roll her eyes because affection embarrassed her more than grief ever did. She could have pretended it was a trick of light. She didn't.
Kemi nudged her knee. "You with us?"
"Yes." Leona found her voice. "Just counting what the river keeps and what it gives back."
"Today it gave back more than most people would," Caleb said, not looking at her when he said it, which made the sentence kinder.
Mahmoud's gaze rested on the map peeking from Leona's jacket. "We have hours, not days," he said. "We'll catalogue what we can at the shop. Dry feet, warm light, quiet hands."
The pilot tapped the tiller, a small promise. "I can put you two streets behind the ledger. No sightseeing."
"Good," Kemi said. "I've seen enough for three Tuesdays."
Leona glanced at the sky, already imagining the handwriting of noon—the appointment the notes had made without asking her permission. She didn't mind. She cradled the wrapped tube and let the boat's small shiver travel up her arms to where belief lives.
The river had taken. The river had returned. She could refuse spectacle. She could keep witness.
When the boat's nose brushed the shadowed landing, Leona stood and felt the weight of the cylinder settle into something that wasn't dread. It was responsibility; it fit.
"Thank you," she told the water, too quietly to be ridiculous.
The water, busy pretending it was only water, said nothing. But a small curl lifted along the wake and uncurled again, like a nod from a stranger who recognizes you before you remember why.
They went ashore. The day kept its appointment with brightness.
And behind Leona's ribs, a knock answered—once, then once again—like a door learning her name from the inside.