The Crossing That Wasn't Open

Rachel kept the ledger on her knees all the way down to the river. She held it shut with one hand and the van’s map with the other, telling Declan which turns to take. I sat beside her with my hands on my thighs. The route book lay under the dashboard, its red line hidden beneath the cover.

At the first junction, the road sign pointed toward Muirin Quay. Declan said the ferry stopped running at midnight. Rachel told him to take the turn anyway.

“That’s an hour out of the way,” he said.

“Then we’ll be an hour out of the way.”

He glanced at me in the mirror. I could have argued that the quay was another destination the route had selected. Instead, I said, “Take us there.”

The answer settled the matter for Declan. He drove without speaking again.

We reached the terminal before four. The passenger building was a low block of concrete beside a narrow slipway. A single sodium lamp lit the car park. Beyond it, the water erased the far bank. The ferry schedule on the outer wall showed the first crossing at six, with the night service crossed out in red ink.

A light burned behind the ticket window.

Rachel took the ledger with her when she got out. I followed her to the building. Declan stayed by the van, watching the road we had come down.

The terminal door was locked. A pale line of powder ran across its sill, tucked close to the metal frame. Elderflower and bone ash. The same careful boundary I had seen at the hut in Druim Glas.

Rachel looked at me. “You expected this?”

“No.”

She waited, giving me time to make the answer useful. I had nothing to add.

A woman opened the ticket window from inside. She was in her fifties, with a wool cardigan over a uniform shirt and a ring of keys clipped to her belt. She looked first at Rachel’s hands, then at the powder by the door.

“Are you waiting for the morning sailing?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “We need to get across.”

The woman unlocked the door from the inside but kept the chain on. “There’s no sailing before six.”

“We can wait.”

The woman looked at me again. “You’re the one from the radio.”

I turned toward the van. Its cab was dark. The radio had been off since we left Druim Glas.

“What did you hear?” I asked.

“Your voice. On the harbor channel.” She pointed toward a gray marine radio on the counter. “It said you were coming.”