ON THE BEACH
The kindly man who’d helped me select a new phone that morning slides me a scrap of receipt paper when I approach the Walmart electronics counter for the second time that day. “Are you Megan?”
“Megan, 30’s, looking for a phone. Call Terrie. EMERGENCY” the note says.
“Now don’t panic,” my friend Terrie Calder says when I call her. “Your boat has come off its mooring and run aground. You’d probably better head up there when you’re done. Colin’s up there now, and Paul’s on his way.”
These message has filtered through a chain of no fewer than six people, starting with the harbormaster in Belfast, Maine. Though friends were checking on Narwhal daily, I’d been cruising the Maine coast aboard Paul Calder’s Cape Dory and hadn’t laid eyes on her in over a week. As visions of waves sloshing my boat against rocks run through my mind, I buy a SIM card and dash out of the store.
It’s now 1430, there are hours of daylight left, but no moon afterward, which at least guarantees us a large tide. High tide
