The last sixty miles of the drive from Portland to Morrow Bay were the ones Ingrid Solís had been dreading since she'd signed the research contract in January.

Not the whole drive — the first three hours through the Willamette Valley were neutral territory, farmland and highway and the particular Oregon grey of March that was not gloomy if you'd grown up with it and completely gloomy if you hadn't. She'd grown up with it. She found it, at thirty-two, the same as she'd always found it: like the weather had strong opinions but wasn't going to explain them.

The last sixty miles were different. At Lincoln City the highway met the coast and you could smell the Pacific — that specific smell of salt and cold and something biological that she had spent a decade in formal study learning to name and still thought of only as ocean. Then the coast road, the 101 south, curving with the headlands, and the towns arriving in the specific order she had memorized before she could drive: Depoe Bay, Newport, Waldport, and then the turn inland and the unmarked county road and then Morrow Bay.

Population 2,400 in a good year. Gray whale research station, established 1987. The Callahan Marine Services dock, established four generations ago. The Full Moon Café, open since 1962 and going nowhere.

She pulled over at the overlook above town and sat in her rental car and looked at it.

The harbor, visible from the overlook: eight commercial fishing vessels, three research boats she recognized as Kessler Institute fleet, a line of private craft in winter storage. The town behind the harbor: the main street with its storefronts, the cannery that had become a restaurant that had become a brewery, the residential streets climbing the headland behind. The fog bank sitting offshore, debating whether to come in.

Eli Callahan's boatyard was on the south end of the harbor. She could see the red roof of the main shed from the overlook.

She sat with this.

Then she put the car in gear and drove down.