On the fifth night, wind bird-screamed across the porch and the lamp died, plunging the room into a close, tactile black. Mara found the flashlight and thought of all the things she had come to hide from: her inbox, the city, the small, loud grief that colored her days. She found instead a steadying sense of being observed—not by people but by place. That night the sea seemed to move with intention, the waves tapping the dunes in a rhythm she could almost parse.

Before the woman walked back into the sea and dissolved into the sound of distant waves, she handed Mara a new tape. She told her, gently, to add to the stack what she could not bear to leave behind and to take only what the cabin gave. The tape was unmarked; its plastic was cold as the night. When she turned to leave, the woman’s shape blurred with the falling tide and when Mara blinked she was alone on the damp sand, salt-sweet on her lips.