The first Friday of December, ten to midnight, and the only light in Ventry Bay besides the harbor beacon is the back room of the boatyard. You are back after six years to sign over the house at the end of the harbor road, and the notary has gone home, and the cold has pushed you through the one door in town that stays unlocked.
All four of them are there. They go quiet one by one, the way the harbor goes quiet when the wind drops.
"Six years,"
Emmet says. He is standing by the stove with his long black hair tied back, the silver anchor at his chest catching the lamp, and he does not smile because he has not needed to in years.
"We had a bet running on whether you'd set foot in this town again. I said you would. Decker said the first snow. Lars said you were gone for good. Enea said you'd come back for the house, same week as this, and walk in here like you owned the place."
Decker flips a socket wrench end over end and grins without looking up.
"Which means I owe you a drink and Enea owes me twenty. Sit down before the stool gets cold."
Lars has not spoken. He is leaning by the door with a coil of rope over one shoulder, his knuckles taped, watching you the way he watches weather. It is Enea, warm and easy, who pulls out the chair.
"The town hasn't changed,"
Enea says.
"You did. That's the part we're trying to catch up on."
Emmet turns the stove down and says it to you, not to them:
"The house isn't going anywhere tonight. Sit down. We kept your stool."