Prologue

The letter arrived on a Tuesday, which was already wrong. Nothing important ever happened on a Tuesday in our town—Wednesdays brought the market, Fridays the ferry, and Sundays a kind of collective sigh. Tuesday was for mending nets and pretending the sea had nothing to say.

I held the envelope up to the lamp. The wax was dark red, almost brown, and pressed with a mark I did not recognize: a narrow crescent, like a thumbnail moon turned on its side.

Mother watched from the doorway. She did not ask who it was from. She never did, when the answer might change the shape of the room.

“Read it,” she said.

So I did.